Joey Lightyears was in the house Wednesday morning at the San Francisco studios of 95.7 The Game.
Warriors owner Joe Lacob joined Bonta Hill and Joe Shasky of “The Morning Roast” for an hour-long chat on the state of the franchise and much more. You can hear the full interview below.
Back in 2016, Lacob told the New York Times, “We’re light years ahead of probably every other team in structure, in planning, in how we’re going to go about things. We’re going to be a handful for the rest of the NBA to deal with for a long time.”
Lacob has since gone on to admit regretting the hyperbolic statement and on Wednesday was singing a different tune, saying there’s a class of franchises around the league that the Warriors admire.
“Clearly, there are about seven teams in the NBA -- I’m not going to name them today -- but that I think are really well-run, and we really all as an organization respect across the board,” Lacob said. “I say around seven. ...
“I do respect, certainly the [San Antonio] Spurs, what they were able to do on the court for so long, I think that’s fantastic. I respect a lot of what the [Boston] Celtics did. I respect [the] Miami [Heat]. I’m not going to name them all, but a couple of organizations that I think really run well.
“But, again, we take from all of them -- the good parts -- and then try to avoid the bad parts we see other places and put it all together and say, ‘How can we be the best?’ Because our goal isn’t to be comparable. Our goal is to be better. Our goal is to be the best and maintain being the best. Every single day that’s all I think about.”
Listen to Bay Area sports talk now on Audacy and shop the latest Warriors team gear
Lacob’s team sits 9-1 atop of the NBA with a two-year-old fan-filled arena, one of league’s most electrifying players in Steph Curry and a fun brand of basketball that’s drawing national attention again.
Despite the olive branch he threw other teams, you can still sense some of the “light years” energy with Lacob.
“I have to be honest, we’re our own thing,” Lacob said. “We want to do it our way, which may be different. It may be similar, but it may be different in other ways. That has its roots in me growing up in Boston and [being] in L.A. with Showtime [during the 1980s], with the Celtics in the 60s.
“It has roots in some other things too, being in Silicon Valley for a long time and how companies are run there. It has a lot of different things that go into it. I’d say for the most part, we want to create our own image, our own vision of how a sports team should be run. I think we’ve tried to do that.”
