Why Lacob won’t just trade Warriors youngsters to win ‘for Steph’

Why Lacob won’t just trade Warriors youngsters to win ‘for Steph’ originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

Warriors owner Joe Lacob won’t shy away from a trade to make his team better, but not at the expense of his franchise’s future.

The CEO recently addressed what Golden State is willing to do in order to take advantage of Steph Curry‘s remaining NBA seasons, telling The Athletic’s David Aldridge and Marcus Thompson why he can’t just trade away all of the team’s young talent to acquire another superstar.

“Marcus, you’re assuming that by trading all of your emerging young players, potentially young stars, that you are going to be better,” Lacob told Thompson on the “Hoops Adjacent” podcast when asked why the Warriors don’t make such a trade to help out Curry. “We run analytical models on all that stuff. We will make the deal that makes us better. We look at the short term and the intermediate term and, to some extent, long term as well, but that’s a factor.

“We have an incredibly complex model these guys run about how good we will be, and it’s not everything what the press writes all the time, or what people say on the internet blogs. So, we’re very aware of that. And you can’t make a trade that makes you worse, and then expect to be better.”

The Warriors reportedly are engaged in current trade talks with the Utah Jazz for All-Star forward Lauri Markkanen, but the two sides don’t appear to be on the same page when it comes to a potential package. In alignment with Lacob’s comments to Aldridge and Thompson, Utah’s original asking price of Brandin Podziemski, Jonathan Kuminga, guard Moses Moody and draft capital was a “non-starter” for Golden State, The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported Monday, citing sources.

While adding a player of Markkanen’s caliber certainly would give the Warriors a better shot at helping Curry win a fifth NBA title next season, Lacob revealed his thinking in assessing big trades.

“We want to be as great as we possibly can,” Lacob said. “… The caveat is that we can’t bankrupt the team in an unbelievably dumb way for a decade. You can’t bankrupt the entire team’s future to go for one year because it’s very, very hard to win. Even if we have the best team, you can sustain an injury. It’s usually what happens, and somebody else wins.

“So, within reason, we’re going to always try to do whatever we can to win now. Not just for Steph, but for me. For everybody. For our fans. It’s everybody, and Steph feels the same way.”

It’s hard to win even with a generational talent like Curry, but Lacob believes Golden State has plenty of time left with the two-time NBA MVP despite the 36-year-old’s contract expiring at the end of the 2025-26 season. And even though the end to Curry’s career is closer than the beginning, Lacob’s outlook on building his team hasn’t budged.

“I think Steph’s got a number of years left, but … the odds would suggest that we’re getting certainly nearer to the end, for sure,” Lacob told Thompson and Aldridge. “And we’re aware of it every single day. We want to win, but you wouldn’t change my mind. I want to win … We’re always trying to get the best team we possibly can, subject to all the different difficulties in doing that.”

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