Monday, March 22, 2010

FOR SALE: Golden State Warriors


Anyone want to buy an NBA team? It's a little bit of a fixer-upper, but it should pay out in the end.

The Golden State Warriors announced Monday that their disappointing franchise is up for sale. Larry Ellison, who has shown extreme interest in buying the suffering franchise, is in the clubhouse as the favorite to succeed Chris Cohan as owner. And why shouldn't it be Ellison? He would be the owner of the team whose arena bears his company's name. Oracle Arena. It sounds just about right.

For the Warriors fans who have waited forever for a contending team, you can start paying attention now. Many thought that the "WE BELIEVE" year was the turnaround for this franchise and that they would never go back to being a bad franchise ever again. Hang on. This was because they had a core group of players with Baron Davis, Stephen Jackson, and Al Harrington. But they forgot one thing, Chris Cohan was still the owner, and his track record would suggest that the success they were having would not last long.

Of course, a few years later they let Davis go, then traded a disgruntled Harrington, and then recently an even more disgruntled Jackson, and there they were again, back at square one.

A couple years ago, they tried the rebuilding process after all hopes of winning with the team they had was out the window. But it was never going to work. This franchise was never going to work. That is until there was new ownership. The Warriors were never committed to rebuilding because the main issue that needed to be rebuilded was the ownership.

It needed to start at the top, and finally Cohan has succumbed to the jeers wanting him out of Oakland and has let this franchise at least have a chance at succeeding, which was never going to happen with him at the helm.

So here we stand, the Warriors finally agreeing to sell the team, and Warriors fans could not be happier. Will this be enough to turn this historically disappointing franchise around? Not sure quite yet, there is a long way to go. But naming Larry Ellison as the owner should be the first move. And maybe we look back and say that this was the start of something great, or maybe we don't. But this franchise, and most of all its fans, need a different path entirely, because the path Chris Cohan was leading the Warriors down has been one that has gone in circles for the last 15 years with no results. Change will come. Here's to the next 15 years.

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