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There was not a lot for Joe Lacob to love — or even barely tolerate — about the Warriors in the first few quarters on Thursday, though things changed enough in the second half that he wasn’t grumbling at everybody afterward.
I was OK, either way — with Bad Mood Joe or not — for this interview, which we’d scheduled long before the Warriors fell behind by 33 points to Boston at Chase Center then rallied and eventually lost 121-110.
But in a game without Stephen Curry and that began so horribly, Lacob was slightly brightened by the Warriors debut of Kristaps Porzingis, who, like all of his new teammates, started slowly then played much better in the second half.
“He showed you a little bit about what he can do and why we got him,” Lacob said of Porzingis, who scored who scored 12 points in the game and went 2-of-5 from three-point distance. “He’s always been one of my favorite players, to be honest, just in terms of his skill set, his size.
“You know, Mike Dunleavy and the guys always laugh because I’m always yelling for more size. And we finally got it. He’s 7-foot-3, so I’m happy with that. We’ve got two real 7-footers on the team now [along with Quinten Post]. I like what I saw. Let’s get him ready, get him back to playing, get his timing back, and get used to our players. I think it’s encouraging.”
Porzingis, of course, was acquired at the trade deadline earlier this month in a deal that sent Jonathan Kuminga to Atlanta and ended months and months of debate and agonizing about Kuminga’s fit and future with the Warriors.
There are questions about Porzingis’ continuing health issues, questions about his pending free agency, questions about his potential trade value, and questions about how much the Warriors will want to pay him in any new deal.
But there’s little doubt that with his size and unique scoring skills, Porzingis is a very interesting player to watch over the final 26 games of the regular season — or however many he actually plays.
He won’t be playing with Curry, though, for a while, after the Warriors announced that Curry’s lingering knee issue will keep him out for at least another four games. Couple that with Jimmy Butler’s season-ending ACL tear last month and the inability to land Giannis Antetokounmpo at the deadline and … where are the Warriors now really?
“I don’t know when [Curry]’s coming back,” Lacob said. “But we’re just going to have to gut it out, win some of these games. The good news is we’re not too far away from falling [in the standings], but we’re not too far away from moving up a little bit, too.
“I think we have a shot. I’m an optimist, as you know. I think our players, hopefully, will step up and play as best as we can, integrate Porzingis, get Curry back, and hopefully we make a decent run.”
Can an owner who likes to try to speak things into existence truly be realistic about the Warriors the rest of this season and into the future — with a championship wholly out the window and even getting out of the play-in tournament a long shot?
“Look, this season matters to the fans who bought tickets for this year,” Lacob said. “Hopefully, they’ll be our fans next year as well, obviously. I think you should always be trying to win and do the best you can.
“We’ve been dealt a couple of tough cards here right now. And our expectations probably shouldn’t be as high as they were. I thought, with Jimmy, since we acquired him, we were the fourth best record in the league, I think. …
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“And unfortunately, the Jimmy injury just came at the exact wrong time. I know that’s difficult, but we just have to figure out a way to win. Maybe the expectations for where we can get are not as high, but we can still be good. We can still be in the playoffs. We still have Steph Curry. We still have some really good players. And I think we can upset some people. Who knows how far we can go? I’m not going to try to think about that or judge it, I think we should just work as hard as we can, play as smart as we can, and get as far as we can.”
Which bumps right into the NBA topic du jour: The great gaggle of bad teams that are quite strenuously trying to be as bad as possible to get a better shot in the lottery and land a potential star in the draft.
The Warriors aren’t doing that. I didn’t get too far into the question for Lacob to leap in with his answer on tanking.
“I saw where another owner came out today and spoke on it, [the Suns’] Mat Ishbia,” Lacob said of Ishbia’s social-media comments lambasting the idea of tanking. “I think you know, it is not in my DNA, nor in this organization’s DNA, to do that. … It’s not a good look. This is sports. We’re supposed to play to win.
“And that’s just not a way I would be comfortable, ever, trying to improve our team.”
I could’ve pointed out that the Warriors did some extra-effort losing at the end of the 2011-12 season to ensure keeping their protected first-round pick. But I didn’t call Lacob on it because that was a long time ago and it was very early in his ownership tenure.
“Some of our fans, I’m sure — I hear it all the time — would love us to, whatever you want to call it, lose for a better draft position because they assume we’re not going to win this year,” Lacob said. “I could never do that. And I don’t think our coach is built that way or our team.
“I don’t like it. It is happening, obviously, around the league. And it is a way to build a franchise, I guess, to get draft choices. But it also takes a lot of years to do that. …
“So I’m sure there will be a day where we have to build our team through the draft more. But right now, I still think we’re formidable if we can just get healthy. Obviously, we don’t have Jimmy. We will get Steph back here, but we’re not fully healthy. In the NBA, obviously, when you lose a top-10 or top-15 player, that’s very difficult.”
Let’s get back to one of the most interesting trade deadlines in recent Warriors history …
Lacob has always been one of Kuminga’s biggest fans in the franchise. And it was always clear that he wouldn’t stand in the way of a Kuminga trade — hey, they actually did trade him — but that Lacob would demand getting a lot of value if it happened.
Maybe Porzingis isn’t top value, but he’s not nothing. I asked Lacob: Was it hard for you to sign off on trading Kuminga?
“Not hard; everyone assumes a lot about that,” Lacob said. “Look, I liked him as a player, I like him as a person. … And at times, he showed a lot of potential for us. Just never quite really worked entirely. And he got injured at inopportune times.
“I think we all knew we had to do something. But we weren’t going to give him away, either. Because he is a talent, and a lot of people think that, too. It just worked out — we got something that we thought was worth doing. Otherwise, we would’ve kept him.”
Could you have gotten more for Kuminga if you’d looked hard to trade him a year or two ago?
“I don’t think so,” Lacob said. “People say I loved him as a player, I was protecting him, I was whatever. That’s just not true. I did like him. I like all our players. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be acquiring them if we didn’t all like them. But you know, it just didn’t work. It looked like it was going to work. It was off and on a lot.”
Jonathan Kuminga, pictured talking to Lacob, was the No. 7 overall pick in the 2021 NBA Draft. | Source: Jeff Chiu/Associated Press
In the process of the Giannis discussions and reporting, Draymond Green’s name was prominently mentioned as part of a potential Warriors offer — quite sensibly, because a salary-matching deal would have to include either Draymond or Butler.
After the deadline, Dunleavy pushed back on the presumption that Draymond was actually offered because the Warriors and Bucks only spoke in the most general terms. Lacob backed that up.
“He was never discussed in a trade; Mike was 100% correct what he said,” Lacob said. “I know he got a lot of crap for that. And it did look defensive. I mean, I think he would say that in retrospect.
“But the truth is, the way these things are, you don’t just easily banter around names unless you’re getting serious. … We never really got engagement on some of the big deals to the point where you get into specific names. People can look at the roster and they can make assumptions about who might or might not have to go if you’ve got a certain person.
“But I can tell you he was never shopped in any way. He’s a core person in our franchise. You don’t trade a Draymond Green simply or easily. You do it if you have to, and you’re getting tremendous value and you’re improving your team. Even Draymond has said he understands that. You have to look at these things. But his name was never specifically discussed with another team. And that’s the truth.”
OK, one more hot-button topic: Is there any clarity about Steve Kerr’s future beyond this summer, when his contract expires?
“I think Steve has answered that question; there’s nothing more I can say,” Lacob said. “He has said we’re going to wait until after the season. That’s 100% accurate. We’ve discussed it. No point in talking about it now.
“He’s got a job to do. Let’s just let people focus — I mean, why would you do that now? Let’s just focus on the season. Really, it’s up to him. What does he want to do? And he doesn’t know, I don’t think. So we’ll have that discussion later.”
Are you happy with the job Kerr’s done this season?
“I don’t look at it in one season,” Lacob said. “I look at it — he’s been our coach for 12 years. I think you can make the assumption that I think a lot of Steve Kerr. He’s a great coach. He’s been very successful. He’s won us four championships. Been to six Finals.
“He is a great human being, I really really, really respect him, admire him. But it depends what he wants to do and how he feels at the end of the season, and where we’re at. We’ll take all of it, put it into a bowl and figure it out. And I’m not really very worried about it, and I don’t think he’s very worried about it, either.”