Joe Lacob still thinks about Warriors fans’ boos, Bill Simmons story

Set to begin his 14th year as the Warriors’ owner, Joe Lacob has become beloved by the Golden State fan base.

But in an hourlong sit-down interview with 95.7 The Game’s “The Morning Roast” show on Wednesday, Lacob made it clear that the “rock bottom” moment of his tenure still sits with him, even if he says it doesn’t.

Only six days prior, Lacob and the Warriors traded guard Monta Ellis to the Milwaukee Bucks for center Andrew Bogut. Fans were upset that Ellis, a fan favorite, was sent off for someone who couldn’t play at the time, as Bogut was out for the rest of the season with an ankle injury. When Lacob took the mic during the halftime ceremony, fans rained down the boos from Oracle Arena, even as both Mullin and another Warriors legend Rick Barry pleaded with them to stop.

The boos eventually stopped for the night, and Lacob told the Mercury News after the game that he understood where the fans were coming from. While others across the country may not have, they got insight two days later from a Bill Simmons article at Grantland.

Titled “How to Annoy a Fan Base in 60 Easy Steps,” Simmons walked readers through the several decades of Warriors fandom since their last title in 1975. Simmons devotes the final eight steps to Lacob’s ownership, from his arrival in 2010 to the decisions made prior to the Ellis trade, which is Step 60.

Simmons ends the article asking his readers to read that entire history, imagining they were a Warriors fan, and asking them if they would boo. While Simmons may not love the current state of San Francisco, he was clearly on board with Warriors fans, many of whom loved that article at the time.

Lacob was not one of them. He said on Wednesday that he “hated that article” and made a sniping comment at Simmons: “How wrong can one person be?”

It’s understandable why Lacob feels that way about Simmons now. After all, even the moves Simmons bashed in Step 60 were all brilliant: the Ellis-for-Bogut trade was the right move to focus around Stephen Curry, it helped the Warriors retain their first-round pick, which they used to select Harrison Barnes, and even netted them a late first-rounder that they used on useful backup big man Festus Ezeli.

And beyond that article, the Warriors’ success over the past 11 seasons since the booing incident is unmatched in the NBA — and perhaps all of U.S. professional sports. Four NBA championships, six appearances in the NBA Finals and a state-of-the-art new arena in San Francisco. 

Lacob claims that he doesn’t think about the booing incident very often … but also views it as a moment that the organization built from. 

“All successful people have times when they fail,” Lacob said. “I got booed here in the first few years — I don’t know if that was a failure, but it felt like it. Everyone has to overcome those things, and you are stronger when you go through things like that, and you become better at what you do.”

Lacob continued on the booing: “I look at it as, in retrospect, a really good thing to have happened. Because when you hit rock bottom, there’s nowhere to go but up.”

Up is where the Warriors have gone, to heights that few have reached in the NBA. Lacob now gets to bask in the reverence the Warriors fan base seems to have for him, but made one thing clear: He doesn’t want to hear the boos ever again.

“I’m not an idiot. I like walking down the street and somebody saying, ‘Thumbs up,’ or ‘Great job’ or whatever instead of ‘Hey you screwed up,’” Lacob said on Wednesday. “And you know, I got booed once a lot of years ago now, 11 years ago. That was not fun, I don’t want that again. We want to be successful and we want to do something great for the community.”