Joe Lacob Rumors | HoopsHype

Sarver, who has owned the Suns since 2004, has developed a reputation locally and nationally for leading an organization in perpetual tumult — marked by a great deal of losing and a rotating door of coaching and front-office hires. “You just hit the nail on the head,” Oubre said during an appearance on “Damon, Ratto & Kolsky,” on 95.7 The Game in San Francisco. “I can play for an owner — somebody who actually cares about the organization and not just the perception of the organization on the media end of it. It’s all about the foundation for me, man. You have a beautiful foundation, can build a beautiful [future].”

“In the middle of all that, Bob Myers is sitting next to me and he says, ‘a 911 call from Klay’s agent,’” Lacob told me Thursday on my podcast. “And I looked at him, I said, ‘what?’ And he picked up the phone and I could tell there was a problem and then he walked off to talk to him I think more privately, there were a lot of people in the room. And that’s when it happened. “He came back in. I mean, just devastating news for him and for us as an organization. Of course, it put us all in a situation where we had to react really quickly, not panic. But certainly we could’ve decided to change our approach literally two hours before the draft based on imperfect information. Not knowing exactly what had happened or how bad it would be.”

“First of all, we would never do that, as you know,” Lacob said. “We didn’t try to bag last season. Some really bad things happened and unfortunately, we were really bad; we have to admit that. And we wound up with the second pick in the draft, which I think is hopefully a transformational pick for our franchise. “But I can tell you when this happened and we thought what the consequences might be, if the injury was as bad as we thought, two hours before draft night, I thought about it for about 15 minutes. And then I got everybody together in the war room right before the draft and I addressed them. Bob also addressed them.

Through all this, does Lacob think this team will actually contend for a title this season? Is the dynasty still (somewhat) alive? “I don’t know what to say about that,” Lacob said. “Let’s see what moves we make. I think we have still a great core. You know, most teams only have, some teams don’t have any great players, but some have two great players or maybe they have three at the most that are max contracts. We have four, which is one of the things that makes it so difficult. We were in a go-for-it mode, as you know, and the NBA salary structure and system is not built for four max players (Curry, Thompson, Draymond Green and Andrew Wiggins). So now, when you’re hit with something like this, it’s even more difficult. But we’re going to figure out a way to try. We won’t be able to replace him. We’ll try to replace him the best we can. Hopefully, we drafted well, we’ve got the free agents to sign starting tomorrow.

Anthony Slater: Joe Lacob told @TimKawakami he gathered Warriors front office after Klay news: “I said: ‘We’re not tanking. If anyone’s even thinking that, get it off your mind. Forget it. Give me options. What can we do to make this team as good as we can make it?” Pod: theathletic.com/podcast/13-the…

Drew Shiller: Joe Lacob to Tim Kawakami on James Wiseman: “He was my No. 1 forever basically. I think he’s a once in a decade kind of guy. Other than Embiid, I don’t know that there’s another center prospect that’s come along in the last decade that you would put in the same category.”