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His pops knew something was up. Why else would his son put himself on the calendar? The suspense ended immediately, as soon as the meeting started. Kent quit. Caught off guard, stunned by the revelation just before June’s NBA Draft, Joe Lacob took a moment. He stared at his boy, processed the news, then uttered his initial response. “Well,” he said, “that took some balls.”
Always competing with the privilege, though, is a tugging at his core. The part of him that’s fully aware that every door he walks through is already open. His quiet disdain for the nepotism charges he can never shake, no matter how hard he works. Kent is a basketball nut who sometimes can’t believe the dream he’s living, working in the front office of the NBA. But even the glow of the Warriors can’t rid the shadow of his father’s enormity. It’s what convinced him he must leave it.
Kirk and Kent dreamed of working in the NBA, once reality crushed their dreams of playing. Kirk envisioned getting into a front office one day. Four months after graduating, he was Golden State’s director of basketball operations. He didn’t want the Warriors job at first because of how it would look. Then, five years later, after the first championship of this era, the same impetus prompted him to consider going to business school. But then, and each time leaving came up, he opted to stay. His father’s message remained the same: Don’t throw away a dream opportunity because you feel bad about how you got it.
But several sources have indicated that the Warriors have been unenthusiastic about the general idea of a Kuminga sign-and-trade from the outset. The broad context is that Joe Lacob remains a fan of Kuminga's and is determined to either keep the 22-year-old on the roster or get real value in return. And he's willing to wait it out.
Future WNBA franchise overall rankings: 1. Indiana: The Fever hold a slight edge in this exercise over the league’s other 12 teams. The duo of Caitlin Clark and Aliyah Boston lift Indiana to the No. 1 ranking in the player category (our most heavily-weighted section), and the Fever don’t rank lower than eighth in any of the four other categories. A new facility in 2027 should only make Indiana a more desirable place to play. 2. Golden State: It’s hard to imagine a better first half of the 2025 season for the Valkyries. They are hovering around .500 at the All-Star break, while leading the league in home attendance. Owner Joe Lacob wants Golden State to win a title in the next five years, and that goal doesn’t seem too lofty in reality. The Valkyries already have proven their front office is strong, and it’s coupled with an ownership group willing to invest. Their roster is deep, with a number of high-potential young players and facilities that will help them become one of the league’s most appealing teams.
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Sam Amick: But I mean—yes—like, it’s Steph’s party. It's right next to Chase Center at the Splash restaurant and bar that they have there. It’s a Warriors evento. Yes, and it’s almost midnight. And Giannis and his wife Mariah—they come to the party. They go up the stairs, and the room kind of stops. Like, I’m literally talking to Joe Lacob in that moment, and it was pretty entertaining to see Joe kind of turn and start having—you know—kind of hearts in his eyes as he looks up the stairs. But that being said, the Warriors—and my colleagues at The Athletic just put this out yesterday—all signs point to them being all-in on the Jimmy Butler era. Major changes are not the focus right now. They want to build around their new Big Three. So, we’ll see where it goes.
But Lacob’s sentiment is notable when attempting to get a read on the front office’s planned path forward. The lead decision-makers — Lacob, general manager Mike Dunleavy, assistant general manager Kirk Lacob — don’t plan a major shakeup, team sources said. They’re plotting a retooled middle of the rotation below Curry, Jimmy Butler and Green, still believing that veteran core can contend. “It’s in some ways kind of a win to get here, to get (to) the second round,” Lacob said. “Yeah, we lost four games to one. Not good. But to a team that is playing very well. They took the Lakers out four to one also with two of the greatest players in the world on their team. We didn’t have one of ours. So we can all sit here and make what-ifs, judgments, but I can’t be really upset with what happened, given that we just didn’t have our biggest force.”
Warriors owner Joe Lacob: If we had Stephen Curry, we'd have won this series
Five minutes after the final buzzer, Warriors controlling owner Joe Lacob slid into a courtside club down the tunnel of a celebrating Minneapolis arena, complimentary of the home team but more willing than others in his organization to voice what many believed. “Disappointing,” Lacob said, settling into a 10-minute conversation with The Athletic. “I really hoped we could extend the series and I’m …” This is where he paused, understanding his next statement would come off as a discredit to the Timberwolves, but he fired it off anyway. “I am pretty positive that if we had Steph, we’d have won this series,” Lacob said.
Warriors owner Joe Lacob: There were concerns about Jimmy Butler, but he's worth every freaking penny
What mattered, and what Joe Lacob acknowledged in our chat afterward, was that the Warriors’ choice to strike that balance between desperation and calculation that led to adding him had clearly paid off. “Yeah, there were (concerns about Jimmy Butler),” Lacob said. “But you do your analysis, you make your choices, and, yeah, it was a little bit of a risk. But we’ve got to take risks in this life. And he’s worth every freaking penny. That’s all I can say. He’s fantastic.”
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It didn’t even matter to Lacob that Butler wasn’t the star this time around. What mattered, and what Lacob acknowledged in our chat afterward, was that the Warriors’ choice to strike that balance between desperation and calculation that led to adding him had clearly paid off. “Yeah, there were (concerns about Butler),” Lacob said. “But you do your analysis, you make your choices, and, yeah, it was a little bit of a risk. But we’ve got to take risks in this life. And he’s worth every freaking penny. That’s all I can say. He’s fantastic.”
Andrew Bogut on Jonathan Kuminga: I know Joe Lacob loves him. Joe drafted him. Joe does have an infatuation with players he's involved with during the draft process, so I think that's a big reason why there's a push for him. I think Steve [Kerr] might see it differently, where he doesn't think Kaminga is a big rotation-minutes guy.
Draymond Green was very close to joining Grizzlies in 2023
So much has been said in the war of words between Golden State Warriors forward Draymond Green and the Memphis Grizzlies organization that it's hard to believe just how close he came to signing there as a free agent in the summer of 2023. "Very," a source close to Green told ESPN, when asked how serious Green was about leaving the franchise he'd won four titles with to join the young upstarts he'd feuded with so publicly during a heated six-game playoff series a year earlier. Green had even called Warriors coach Steve Kerr and teammates Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson to warn them that he was close to joining the Grizzlies via a lucrative sign-and-trade deal, sources told ESPN, before Warriors owner Joe Lacob and new general manager Mike Dunleavy swooped in with a four-year, $100 million extension to keep him in the Bay.
After wrapping up a long weekend of activities throughout the Bay Area with the All-Star Game on Sunday at Chase Center, Lacob spoke exclusively to NBC Sports Bay Area's Bonta Hill after the game, where she shared his thoughts on the festivities, specifically in San Francisco. "Everything just came out so great," Joe Lacob told Hill. "By the way, I want to say this: San Francisco is back, OK? Let's just make it very very clear, it is back. The city looked great this weekend. People delivered, there were parties all over the city. I had people talk to me constantly [about] how much they enjoyed the city and they were surprised. Well they shouldn't be surprised. It's back, and that's a great thing."
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