The Golden State Warriors last regular season game in Oakland (because there will be more games at Oracle Arena as the NBA Playoffs approach), was captured on Instagram, as many of the top posts on that social media site were from last night’s history-making game. But, before we look at some of them, a note on how we got here.
In 2012 Warriors Owner Joe Lacob Said Oakland Had Leadership Challenges
When Partner and Strategic Advisor of Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Joe Lacob, purchased the Golden State Warriors from then-owner Chris Cohan for $450 million on July 15th 2010, and in the process outbidding Oracle Founder Larry Ellison, many were relieved because the common belief was Ellison would move the team to San Francisco, which was a hated notion.
But, after several meetings with Oakland Mayor Jean Quan on a new arena, and the aggressive push of the late San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee to get the Warriors to SF, Lacob said to me that Oakland has “leadership challenges.” He pointed to the need to keep all three teams, Oakland A’s, Oakland Raiders, and Golden State Warriors, but didn’t want to wait for Oakland elected officials to solve his arena needs problems; then along came San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee.
And at the time, the Warriors owed the City of Oakland and the Coliseum Joint Powers Authority $105 million in money that went to pay the bond issue used to rebuild what’s now called Oracle Arena. That’s something then Oakland City Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente reminded viewers – even as the Warriors brass and then-NBA Commissioner David Stern were celebrating what was the original plan to build a new arena at Pier 32 in San Francisco.
The overall problem (save for the Oakland Raiders matter, and because Mark Davis tippy-toed around and did not tell the Oakland Officials about his Las Vegas gambling desires in 2016, or for that matter 2014) was borne of a lack of political will to keep the Warriors and to forecast that new sports and convention facilities were needed. This underscores what is a major problem in Oakland: regardless of who the mayor has been of late, Jerry Brown, the late Ron Dellums, Jean Quan, or Libby Schaaf, there has been an overall reluctance to have government build public facilities for people.
In the case of Jerry Brown, the now-former Governor of California famously fired then-City Administrator Robert Bobb for wanting to build a downtown stadium for the Oakland A’s. Dellums tried to get the new-stadium ball rolling, but was too passive-aggressive, electing to talk about the issue, but not take any real, meaningful action to get buildings built.
So, to this day, Oakland lacks a true, large convention center of over 500,000 square feet, and doesn’t have a plan to build one. Oakland has no official inventory of sports, entertainment meeting space, either. Overall, the lack of effort has to make one ask what that economic development department does with its time? But, I digress. You came here to see Instagram photos, so here they come. It was just important to explain how this situation materialized.
Oakland has no business having just one sports team.
Oakland should look at itself, and regain control of its economic development direction. Under Quan and Schaaf, “market forces”, meaning people who don’t like Oakland or Oaklanders, have either taken sports teams from the City, or made Oakland so expensive to live in that people who’ve made up its rich artist-oriented lifestyle have been chased away. Oakland can do this, it just has to want to.
Stay tuned.