Warriors owner Joe Lacob has sights set on the draft, offseason: ‘We can reimagine the next dynasty’

Mark Medina | USA TODAY

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CHICAGO – No longer are the Golden State Warriors "light years ahead" of the 29 other NBA teams. Instead, they sit at the bottom of the league with the worst record (12-43) coming out of the All-Star break.

For a team that won three NBA titles and reached the Finals in each of the past five seasons, they now have their sights set on the draft and free agency and not the playoffs.

“The great thing about this is we can re-imagine the next dynasty,” owner Joe Lacob told USA TODAY Sports during the NBA’s Tech Summit during All-Star weekend. “I think it’s been a good year for us to take stock with where we’re at and try to recreate.”

Here's how the Warriors have handled their inventory.

They are on their way toward collecting an NBA lottery pick for the first time in eight years. They traded guard D’Angelo Russell to Minnesota for small forward Andrew Wiggins. Lacob considered Wiggins a “perfect fit on our team” after the Warriors struggled to find a definitive small forward less than a year following Kevin Durant’s free-agency departure to Brooklyn. They also unloaded role players Jacob Evans and Omari Spellman (to Minnesota), Alec Burks and Glenn Robinson (to Dallas) and Willie Cauley-Stein (to Dallas). In return, the Warriors collected a four second-round picks and a top-three protected pick.

The Warriors also avoid falling into the repeater tax, a penalty that prevents teams that habitually spend over the luxury tax from upgrading their roster. So while the Warriors will trim their payroll, they also have the ability to sign players two ways. They will have a tax-payer mid-level exception worth around $6.2 million and a $17.5 million trade exception stemmed from trading Andre Iguodala last summer to Memphis, a spending tool that can be used on one or a combination of players.

Oh yeah, and the Warriors expect to have a fully healthy Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Kevon Looney next season.

“You add one guy and it can change everything,” Lacob said. “We already happen to have two of the greatest shooters of all time. Look at the games. We’ve only been losing by six or eight points. But add those two guys, and we’re already pretty good. I think Wiggins is going to help a lot.”

Thompson has stayed sidelined ever since injuring the ACL in his left knee in the Warriors’ decisive Game 6 loss to the Toronto Raptors in last year’s Finals. The Warriors plan to reevaluate Thompson this week.

“Klay might come back for a few games at the end. He might not,” Lacob said. “That doesn’t matter so much. Maybe we’ll err on the cautious side. Maybe. That’s up to him.”

As for Curry? The Warriors plan to reevaluate him in early March after fracturing his left wrist only four games into the season. Since then, Curry has spent the last three months healing. He has spent the past month completing various shooting workouts.

“Steph is coming back. That’s not even a discussion internally,” Lacob said. “He’s ready to play so he should play. By the way, we’ll try to win every game. I’m not really about, ‘Let’s lose every game so we can get the best pick.’ You try to do that, you’re messing with the basketball gods. So we don’t believe in that.”

Instead, Lacob believes the Warriors are only months away from beginning yet another dynasty.

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