Post Mortem: Warriors Ownership Group Unstable, About to Implode.

Joe Lacob & co. were all talk.

The behemoth of inexperienced and generally idiotic co-owners (The Corporation) couldn't make a deal at the trade deadline and are apparently fighting amongst themselves as they await the Hard Cap (or bust).  As my go-to source for excellent insider Warriors bits, Deep Throat, put it (s/he chose the name without any help from me, sorry),

"new ownership group NOT on same page. Paralysis until new CBA. Fight for control after that." 

Goddammit. Worse than Cohan.

More thoughts from Deep Throat:
"long-term plan of the team completely dependent on there being a hard cap in the new CBA." 

This was clear to all who paid attention.  NO ONE falls over themselves to overbid the way Joe Lacob and Peter Guber did unless they're all in on something.  Peter Guber's creep show interview with Adrien Wojnarowski is a handy audio-visual reminder that HE's all in on "Entertainment" and squeezing an easy "top 5" fan market. First city he names: San Jose.  Fuck L.A. douche bags. Seriously.
The dude is just weird:

Meanwhile, Joe Lacob's all in was predicated on that Hard Cap business Deep Throat refers to.  This is the clear, undeniable aim of the owners in the CBA negotiations and this is precisely why there will be a very long, very tempestuous lockout heading into the 2011-12 season.  And according to Deep Throat,

"Is there's not one, we're going to see Cohan-like cash grabbing." (sic)
I told Deep Throat we're already seeing it. 

Besides any number of private financial savings the roster doesn't indicate directly (though the coaching staff status quo certainly doesn't hurt Lacob's pocket book), the team cut Rodney Carney to save $800k earlier this year.  Remember, they could have signed Jeff Adrien right then and there despite outright lies this weekend about the Troy Murphy-for-Brandan Wright and Dan Gadzuric trade opening up a roster spot for the D League All Star. Literally.  He was a D League All Star.  And I like him plenty. 

At any rate, it was no secret Lacob and his pals were small potatoes conservative fuckwads itching to stick it to the players, pander to the fans (Jeremy Lin, Nate Robinson, etc.), and run a rigged game with the Stern Hard Cap crew.  That's why their employees are diligently arguing the merits of a hard cap every chance they get.  That's why Stern seems to have frozen Larry Ellison out of the Warriors ownership and then made the league buy the Hornets instead of sell to Ellison.  And this may influence the Pistons and Kings situations next.

Legit money and/or brains ownership doesn't need the hard cap and doesn't need the idiotic owners to be protected from their own incompetence and desperation.  Legit money/brains owners scare the shit out of the mid-market shell gamers.  PS, the Bay Area IS a mid market if you don't step up and get the players and bigtime NBA folks to give a shit about its Farmers' Markets, great schools, temperate climate, and suburban enclaves.  Ellison was ready to spend and win.  Only collusion kept him out.  The predictable, panicked rush by online plants and accessible interview targets "in the business" to smear him and mock his supposed failure to walk some arbitrary bid schedule line like it was the U.S. Constitution said it all.  They rigged it and are ecstatic it worked.

The "sale" was a rigged up mess and Joe Lacob is a bigger bust than the last Stern-pimped "record" team purchaser, Phoenix Suns owner Robert Sarver. Incidentally, that sale was also facilitated by.... Sal Galatioto. To my knowledge, that sale did not include $150 million in league loans to get it done and did not require multiple small percentage ownership stakes to raise the cash for the "sale" over MONTHS of time after the supposed bid win back in July. But Lacob is in position to completely out-Sarver Sarver and he'll gab ANY name he can in a desperate attempt to lend any sort of credibility to his worthless, irrelevant name and business. Steve Kerr is a fucking trainwreck as an executive but they'll hire him because they're cynical, uncreative, lying money launderers.



On the recent antics of our terrible mess of an ownership collective.

They've moved on to the usual excuses their favorite son, Robert Rowell, has pushed for years: Blame Mullin (no picks to trade!), Blame Riley (he was asleep at the wheel!), Blame Nellie (they're still in a post-Nellie funk!).  In other words, blame all the set up, public, sacrificial lambs with actual NBA connections and knowhow (albeit flawed, questionable, inconsistent, or outright incompetent, what have you), but NEVER let that public spotlight fall on the suits calling the shots behind closed doors and off camera.

Joe Lacob talked tough and bragged about his championship experience in Boston and his keen eye for talent.  He tried to sell us his son, Kirk, as the only executive hire, Jeremy Lin, his son Kirk's friend from high school, as the major backcourt addition, and David Lee, the fat stat peripheral NBA name accidental All Star, as a "great" player, and all the rest. Now they'll refuse to buy out Troy Murphy and they'll try to tell us he's a major difference maker. Meanwhile, they brought back good and decent (but not team saving) Jeff Adrien when they never should have let him go in the first place (they had him to start the season and cut him for the shitty Ekpe Foyle show).  And they may sign some more D League talent yet.  Robert Rowell croney and team player personnel director Travis Schlenk is not going anywhere any time soon.  Neither, of course, is  that moron Kirk Lacob.

Sidenote: Ekpe Udoh fucking sucks. Worst rebounder among all rookies, Adonal Foyle numbers in general thus far, and he's a stone-handed idiot taboot.  But I digress.  Back to The Corporation of Lacob & co. and their epic Trade Deadline failure-by-design.

They made hamhanded attempts to say they were in on major deals when they were actually running Fire Sale cash dump scenarios by Milwaukee for Michael Redd's expiring contract (Biedrins and Lee), by Phoenix for Vince Carter, and by Utah for Andrei Kirilenko.  They took a run at Antawn Jamison as a last resort but, of course, couldn't close the deal that would have sent Troy Murphy there for a year of Jamison after this season.  That would have actually helped, if it was ever legit (Warriors undoubtedly tried the famous Rowell Hardball! tactics to extract a pick or whatever else they felt entitled to).  They were NEVER close on Kendrick Perkins despite having put the majority of their time and effort into getting him.... except never putting any legitimate offers together.  And their early work on Nick Collison and Jeff Green went nowhere fast. 

Waste too many teams' time being a fickle, prissy, miserly interlocutor and you simply won't get your calls returned.  The Warriors figure to have very quiet phone lines for a very long time after this trade deadline failure.   Oh, almost forgot the best part: They almost, really and truly, gave the fans a Nate Robinson PR campaign for the final 25 games.  According to Deep Throat, the entire objective of that acquisition:

"Fan Relations Purpose."

Whoop dee fuckin doo.
The PR team is trying its best (fuck you, Flunkster Dude Ray Ridder & co.) to subdue dissent but the fans are booing this shitcan team of their own accord at Oracle now.  Not sure who the PR hypesters and social media marketing dweebs think they're fooling these days.  Old Lacob/Cohan pal Garry fucking St. Jean is a public persona on the team's payroll for chrissakes.  May as well pack it in, astroturfers.  The Season Ticket season will be a rough one and you'll have to refund everyone due to the lockout, anyway.

Lacob was calling personnel shots back in July and he had input via Rowell LONG before that.  But he's letting Rowell try to throw anyone BUT Rowell or this shitty, disjointed, and fighting ownership group under the bus of their own incompetence.  Absolutely nothing has changed.

The team is a lie and a gimmick.

Joe Lacob's very good friend is Chris Cohan. He's also very close with Robert Rowell and Bob Fitzgerald, and they're keeping ALL of their marketing and PR folks on.  So expect no changes.  It was a non-sale.  Shuffling of the deck chairs because the Cohan brand was such utter shit.  But folks are wising up to the Lacob knockoff of the Cohan brand much sooner than that beady eyed little fucker anticipated.  This includes some of his minority investors, who already want out.

Frankly, the idiots who bought in deserve this, just like Fred Harman and co. deserved their strife after they greedily bought in with Cohan, THROUGH Rowell, all those years ago.  Fred Harman, I might remind you, is an owner with Lacob after having been an owner with Cohan.  So finally we can say, with confidence,


Lacob & co.: Worse than Cohan.


Wake me after the lockout.

-CC