Warriors owner Joe Lacob attempted to pay tribute to Chris Mullin during the latter’s jersey retirement ceremonies last night, but found himself the targe of verbal abuse from Golden State fans enraged by the recent trade of Monta Ellis. After Rick Barry scolded the paying customers, the San Jose Mercury News’ Tim Kawakami defends Lacob, calling his refusal to run for cover, “stern and determined.”
OK, yes, Lacob probably shouldn’t have chosen that moment to speak; he was again grabbing center stage when it was better left to others, and I believe that led to some of the crowd’s anger.
But Lacob didn’t deserve THAT treatment. He’s not Cohan, and if fans were torturing him for the Monta Ellis trade, he really didn’t deserve that, because it’s a good far-sighted trade.
“I’m not going to let a few boos get me down, and I don’t expect a few boos to get our team down,” Lacob said. “I think everybody has to stay tough, these are tough times, we’re going to go out there and we’re going to compete and we’re going to win.
“And that’s my job as an owner, too, we’re going to do everything we have to do. Not going to let a few boos stop us. I obviously think whoever was booing is incorrect in their assumptions, but we’ll just let time heal all wounds. Winning will solve all things.”
I was there and it was one of the most uncomfortable experiences I have ever had, not just in sports but in life. There are any number of reasons it happened, but in addition to the Ellis trade, hindsight of Lin’s unrecognized potential, a terrible first half of the game, broken ownership promises, 35 years of sucking, first opportunity since 2000 to directly address ownership, exhaustion at endlessly being called “the greatest fans in the world” etc there is one semi-petty but totally real and as far as I know unreported reason the mood got so bad so fast: They ran out of Chris Mullin bobbleheads and I think a lot of people who showed up for those (many of whom may never have even seen Chris Mullin play) were very disappointed. Seriously.
One other underreported item- the first wave of boos came when Chris Mullin acknowledged “the greatest commissioner ever in professional sports, David Stern.” He had to get the crowd back on his side after that one. The ceremony went on and on and on and when Lacob finally came out he seemed to be almost mimicking Stern’s anti-charisma. I have to give him some credit however, as he was on the radio this morning sounding pretty reasonable:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/KNBR680GaryLarry (BTW the “Larry” there is Larry Krueger of “brain-dead Caribbean hitters hacking at slop nightly” fame.)
http://cstb.wpengine.com/hello-larry-kruger-suspended-for-racist-spiel