Warriors owner Joe Lacob calls Porziņģis situation “disappointing”

Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob has spoken publicly about Kristaps Porziņģis leaving the team. “It’s disappointing,” he told Tim Kawakami, a sports columnist for The San Francisco Standard, in an interview published on 10 November.

Porziņģis left the team on the eve of training camp and stopped being paid. On 6 November he announced he was stepping away from basketball for now because of his health.

What Lacob said

“We did not plan on the Porziņģis situation. Obviously, we thought he had played well last spring, worked hard this summer, and up until the day before training camp, as you’ve heard, we assumed he was coming and was going to be a pretty significant part of the team,” Lacob said.

“It’s disappointing. We certainly had every intention of him being a core part of the team. We knew it was a risk. He’s had some injury history, but it was a good risk worth taking, in my view,” he said. Lacob added that general manager Mike Dunleavy “did the right thing” by signing the Latvian and that he thought the deal was good.

“I guess you could sit there and say somehow you should have anticipated this, but there’s no way you could. He played last spring. We thought … we had the medical condition under control, and … right up until the beginning of training camp, we had every belief that he was going to come in and be a serious contributor to our team. So it is what it is. Now we have to adjust. We have to be flexible. We have to make the best of our situation,” the owner said.

What comes next

Kawakami wrote that the Warriors can trade Porziņģis’ contract and almost certainly will by February. Lacob did not go into detail. “I’ll let Mike address all that,” he said. “I think you guys know it’s been speculated on, but I think there’s room to do something.” The club has not announced what this means for Porziņģis.

The Warriors acquired Porziņģis in a trade last February that sent Jonathan Kuminga the other way. Without him, they started the season 0-3 but were 8-3 at the time of the interview.

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