-UPDATE: A source with knowledge of the purchase said that Joseph Lacob will definitely be the primary owner. Guber will be in a secondary role.
Very fast thoughts on Chris Cohan agreeing to sell the Warriors for a reported $450M to Joseph Lacob and Peter Guber… and not to Larry Ellison:
* Unless something bizarre happens, the Warriors will remain in the Bay Area.
There’s no indication that this group would spend all this money to move the team away from one of the richest, best markets in sports–particularly a market that has supported the W’s so well through constant losing.
* It’s a stunner that, in the end, Ellison didn’t win this bid because he possibly spent more money to win the America’s Cup than he offered for a whole NBA franchise and, if the difference in bids was $50M, that’s less than .02% of his reported wealth.
But from the beginning of the process, sources with knowledge of Ellison’s strategy warned that he would not overpay the W’s.
Some suggested that someone in Ellison’s place would fear paying a “Cohan Failure Bonus”–that an extravagant bid would be rewarding Cohan for failing, and for realizing that any change in ownership would instantly up the value because Cohan was such a terrible owner.
* I wonder now if Ellison will just go shopping for another NBA franchise and I wonder what the NBA would think of that.
* I’ve no doubt that Lacob, already a minority owner of the Celtics, will get league approval, presuming the financing is there and I believe it is.
Guber is known in sports-ownership circles, too.
But I also have zero doubt that commissioner David Stern wanted Ellison to win this–Stern, however, can’t tell Cohan who to pick and Stern, along with the rest of the owners, want the highest price possible to keep franchise values high.
* Lacob will have to sell his minority interest in the Celtics. At this point, that’s just pretty much a formality.
* I don’t know when Lacob and Guber will make their first public statements about the team and the direction they plan to take, but if they keep the current front office, they will be an immediate failure.
They could probably recover–the way Eddie DeBartolo recovered quickly after initially hiring Joe Thomas to run the 49ers after buying the team.
But Eddie D had Bill Walsh to turn to immediately. There aren’t many Walshes out there.
And it’d be a colossal misstep to keep Rowell, Riley and Nelson in place for any longer than a few weeks.
* Marcus Thompson II had this one nailed. He mentioned Lacob a few days ago, kept telling me Lacob was moving ahead, and last night told me he thought Lacob could probably win this thing soon.
Everybody had to wait, because you never know what Ellison will do, but MT-2 was on this. Then I heard early this morning–from someone who does not know Ellison–that I’d better get ready for an ownership change today.
