Spike Lee and Chris Rock or Jack Nicholson and Adam Levine? When one wonders who has the chicest audience in the NBA, the choices always seem to fall on the New York Knicks and the Los Angeles Lakers. Lee, the eclectic director who won an Oscar for his career in 2016, has been a season ticket holder since 1991: front row seats 14 and 15. In Los Angeles, however, the seats next to the commentators’ table are reserved for the actor from Shining even when it’s not there.
If you take the Pacific Highway from Los Angeles in a northerly direction, where the Californian nature reserves border the coasts of the Pacific Ocean, between San Josè and San Francisco, the Silicon Valley it looms over the United States with a mystical aura, illuminating the world with its genius.
In that part of America there are two pagan cults: the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) and the Golden State Warriors of the National Basketball Association (NBA). Since 2010, when the Warriors were bought by entrepreneur Joe Lacob, first the Oracle Arena and then the Chase Center have been stormed by the CEOs of the companies that shape the future of the United States, inaugurating a bond that began with tragic low points and culminating in building one of the strongest teams ever seen on a basketball court.
Joe Jacob had a dream
When at the end of the 60s he is forced to leave New Bedford, Massachusetts, to go to Anheim, California, young Joe Lacob does not yet know that the choice made by his father will be propitious for his professional life.
In 1978 he obtained his first diploma in biological sciences, then a master’s degree from the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in epidemiology, before completing his studies with another degree in medical sciences from Stanford University. Lacob’s academic career doesn’t know what terrain it will take him to, but it instills in him a passion for statistics with which he enjoys monitoring his reference sports. A few years later, in 1987, he became a partner of the investment company Kleiner Perkins, based in Menlo Park, with which he decided to focus on research projects in the field of medicine, although the most profitable operation would be with Autotrader.com, a of the largest used car retailers in the US.
The possibility of entering the sports business has not yet touched him: he will do so only at the beginning of the 2000s. A passage in the women’s basketball league and in 2010 the big break. The owner of the Warriors, Chris Cohan, decides to sell the franchise and Lacob, together with his longtime partner, Peter Gruber, takes it over for 450 million dollars.
Bringing Silicon Valley into the franchise, and with it the informal, creative environment that leaves room for people to be inspired, is a cultural issue. How to change the fortunes of a team that before 2010 only made the playoffs once in fifteen years? No one is fired in the first six to eight months of the new management, a management team is created to measure up and investments in technology begin.
Bringing Silicon Valley into the Warriors’ front office means reshaping the mentality that existed on the shore of Oakland Bay up to that point. As assistant general manager (GM) Bob Myers is chosen, a player agent, rejected by several franchises because he is considered unable to understand the dynamics of a basketball company. Lacob has a more lateral approach: Myers is young and has experienced the same situations as a GM but on the opposite side of the desk. He’s the one who won’t trade Steph Curry when his ankles start to feel brittle, he’s the one who helps pick Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. He is always the one who brings Andre Iguodala to Oakland first and Kevin Durant a few years later.
The Silicon Warriors
The harmony between the Valley and the Warriors is a cultural fact. LA has the actors, New York has the stockbrokers, Golden State has the CEOs of Apple, Rakuten and Youtube. The marriage between technology and parquet takes place instantly. Following in the footsteps of teams like the Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder, Lacob decides to have state-of-the-art SportsVu cameras installed atop the Oracle Arena ceiling. The equipment is able to analyze every single movement made by a player: arm angle at the moment of shooting, trajectory parabola and so on. All data to be thrown to the large group of data analysts who work for the Warriors.
Since then, Lacob’s franchise has never looked back. The problems that can be solved with technology are endless and are not limited to parquet. How is it possible to make the experience of a fan who shows up at the arena better? Easy, the new cameras designed by Zoom that show replays in 4D. And on the parquet? After the 2019 Finals, when Golden State found itself without Kevin Durant and Klay Thompson due to injuries, the debate centered on how data can help prevent and treat aches and pains. A sorcery? “We won’t be able to prevent all injuries, but we can start trying to predict when a player is at risk,” Lacob said with conviction after the loss to Toronto.
The relationship with Silicon Valley has also had a balmy effect on the players, who constantly have the opportunity to deal with the best minds of the 21st century. It is no coincidence that Steph Curry is a shareholder of Palm Tech, or that Kevin Durant, after meeting the CEO of Youtube, has opened his own information company that produces his podcast, or that Andre Iguodala has been seen several times attending technology panel.
Contamination, local roots and openness to all the innovations that the world of technology offers to sport. If the Lakers and Knicks have always bet on glam, the Warriors have chosen the path of nerds. And they were right.
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