With this offseason going as poorly as it has for the Golden State Warriors, it’s easy to lose hope. The dynasty is fading more and more by the day and owner Joe Lacob may be forced to confront a difficult reality regarding his legacy.
For anyone who is familiar with the documentary The Last Dance, which chronicles the Chicago Bulls dynasty of the 1990s and came out some six years ago, it’s easy to remember who is painted as the villain: general manager Jerry Krause.
The executive was the architect who helped assemble the roster that won six championships in that decade, but he is seen as a villain by many in Chicago because he decided to blow up the roster after the team won its final title, leading the team to being simply dreadful afterwards.
Joe Lacob has been trying to move Warriors beyond Stephen Curry
Lacob may be headed towards a complicated, Krause-like legacy with the way things have gone. He deserves a ton of credit for helping turn the franchise around after becoming the owner in 2010. Golden State went from being a laughing stock to a dynasty and the best team of this century. Maybe that doesn’t happen without Lacob’s leadership.
Yet Warrior fans know that Lacob has been thinking about the post-Stephen Curry era for years. He insisted on the team drafting players like Jonathan Kuminga and James Wiseman because he wanted to lay the groundwork for success beyond Curry, Draymond Green and Klay Thompson. Those decisions backfired spectacularly.
Now Golden State are in this weird state of limbo where they are not good enough to be a true contender, yet are not in full rebuild mode and still have a veteran team. They seem to be content with mediocrity for the last few years of Curry's career which feels like an awful waste for the greatest player in franchise history.
If the Warriors never win another title with Curry -- which seems to be the likeliest outcome as of right now -- then there will forever be a contingent of the fanbase that will blame Lacob for limiting his greatness or not doing enough to try to maximize the team’s championship window with the two-time MVP still playing at an incredibly high level.
Perhaps in a documentary about Golden State’s dynasty twenty years from now, Lacob will be painted as the villain. Just like Krause, it will be an unfair characterization if not given proper context, but fans are naturally going to get greedy when a team wins titles and wants them to double and triple down on a generational talent like Curry or Michael Jordan. Lacob’s legacy should not be completely tainted by the last few years, but it has certainly become complicated as a result.
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