“We’re thrilled to have Stephen in the fold for the next five years, with the vision of him playing his entire career with our franchise,” said Warriors President of Basketball Operations / General Manager Bob Myers. “He epitomizes everything that you’d want in the leader of your basketball team with incredible character, humility, community-minded spirit and a team-oriented approach. On the court, he’s a generational player who has changed the game and won consistently at the highest level. We’re blessed and fortunate to have him on our team, and are thankful to be part of an organization, led by Joe Lacob and Peter Guber, that is committed to winning.”
Joe Lacob Rumors
Andre Iguodala headed back to Golden State?
Marc Stein: The momentum behind an Andre Iguodala return to Golden State is bubbling strong already after Miami declined Iguodala’s 2021-22 team option. As Warriors owner Joe Lacob told @Anthony Slater: “Now we add a few veterans. We’re going to do that. You’ll see in the next few days.”
Joe Lacob: 'We're going to add a few veterans'
“Now, we add a few veterans. We’re going to do that (in free agency). You’ll see in the next few days. Then we now have some incredible potential that we can bridge to the future. When you can do both those things at once, it’s magic. Who does that? The Lakers didn’t make the playoffs for six straight years. I don’t want to be the Lakers, I don’t want to be six years out. It’s too important to me. I don’t want to sit and be a losing team. I think we’re going to be good and hopefully great every year.”
The Warriors hired Kenny Atkinson, Jama Mahlalela and Dejan Milojević this summer. All three have strong player-development backgrounds. “Maybe we get lucky and some guy emerges right away,” Lacob said. “But maybe it’s in Year 2. Look at Poole (late last season). Kobe Bryant didn’t emerge until Year 3. If you go back and look at history, that’s the way it’s been. Your expectation has to be generally that it’s Year 2 or 3. I’m OK with that. Maybe some of our fans aren’t. But I think they don’t understand our payroll limitations. We can’t add another star without losing one of our stars. And I like our stars. So this is the next-best thing to do, the way we’re approaching this.”
“I thought there was no chance we were ever going to get Jonathan Kuminga,” Lacob said. “To me, he was one of — certainly the top five prospects in the draft — but, for me, probably higher. When it looked like he could drop, I couldn’t believe it and neither could Bob (Myers). We didn’t know. Nobody knew what Sam Presti was going to do. Nobody. Literally nobody. As you saw, he took someone nobody predicted. Although I kind of had a feeling he’d go (Josh) Giddey and surprise everyone.”
“I’m ecstatic,” Lacob said. “Ecstatic. We’ll probably never have two lottery picks again. If we do, we’ll have a problem. The thing that’s most amazing to me is how it worked out. I shouldn’t say where they were on our board, but it’s hard for me not to say it. I’ll just tell you they were both clearly in our top 10. We feel like we got really fortunate on Kuminga. Then with Moody, I think it’s pretty common knowledge we were seriously considering him at seven. So it’s pretty astonishing to me that we could get him at 14.”
