OT, and not sure what made it pop into my head, but I'm bummed for Robert Williams III, who, having nearly sacrificed his knee to the Celtics title run, got traded to the organization with the absolute worst track record of player health management in the entire league.
FYI, The Golden State WNBA team is taking deposits for season tickets. Order matters. Also, if you are a GSW season ticket holder, you’ll get priority.
Webber is the only guy who actually had the talent to be the chosen one and he could have uplifted the franchise but instead tanked it. All the other Warriors top picks that didn’t work out were just bad drafting. The rest of the league didn’t have much interest in any of them that I recall. Kind of like choosing JaMarcus Russell with the first pick.
Well, I don't remember Webber making the Hall of Fame, so while egregious, not in the same leagues as punting on McHale and Parish to draft Joe Barely Cares. Webber did engender a media circus though, while the Joe Barely media reactions were limited to eye-rolling and snickers. Oh, and a cigar-lighting ceremony from Red Auerbach
How? He got traded and became great. The trade was frustrating and understandable, and probably one that owners point to and say: "See, this is why we should keep the player and fire the coach." Webber wasn't a disappointment, imo... maybe he tenure in GS was, but...
You sense correct Master Turing. I must not feel disappointment for the failure of the prophecy of the Two Timelines. The Council has no choice but to not grant me the rank of Master...
Thursday at Chase Center as the Warriors’ WNBA expansion franchise was announced for the 2025 season, Lacob vowed to carry out the same promise for his latest venture.
“I’m telling you right now, we will win a WNBA championship in the first five years of this franchise,” Lacob said.
Joe's gonna be Joe, but this is much better than hearing: I'm just doing this as an investment, and will only put in the minimal resources to make sure I get my money out of it.
Lacob's an investor for sure but he's also competitive as hell, I would not expect him to treat a WNBA team any differently in that regard. I think the thing that aligns Lacob with Steph (and Dray and Klay by extension) is that he absolutely hates losing, even more than he likes to win.
He is doing this as an investment... Joe style, as you say. It's gonna be hilarious when they start enacting rules to prevent him from spending $$ on his new WNBA team. If they've got a hard cap, they're going to find other ways to lure the best talent (e.g. private flights, etc.).
Cameroon has never played Olympic basketball so they might not even enter a team. If they did, there's a long process he would have to go through with FIBA to be eligible to play for Cameroon, and he already went through that process last year to qualify to play international ball for France and the USA. Embiid isn't a Cameroon citizen, and he never played international basketball for Cameroon. So that wasn't a realistic option.
He is a French/American dual citizen, and some people are slamming him for not playing for France, which was the other option. But he has lived in the USA since he was 16, his son was born here, and France already has Rudy and Wemby, while the USA has no true big 5s lined up yet. (AD is a maybe.)
Apparently it was considered a long shot, but would you rather fight for playing time with Rudy and Wemby, or with Walker Kessler? Not to disparage Walker, who has been great for the Jazz.
Now Grant Hill just has to hope everyone stays healthy all season.
So what should the name of the new WNBA team be? Should it resemble "The Warriors" in any way or be its own thing entirely, perhaps something associated with the Bay?
I got it wrong, anyway. I thought that Rosie the Riveter was based on a Bay Area worker. Turns out is was 'Wendy the Welder', who was based on a worker in in the Richmond Kaiser Shipyards.
The Bay Area must have been a sight to behold during WWII. Factories and shipyards everywhere (Sausa-fricking-lito built Liberty ships). My grandmother and grandfather were US govt lawyers in World War II in the Bay Area ... they used to tell stories of hiking in Marin, and hearing the anti-aircraft artillery firing during drills (all those bunkers out on the Marin Headlands).
Former "Rosie" Betty Reid Soskin helped develop the plans for the Rosie the Riveter Museum and worked there leading public programs and telling the old stories until her retirement last year. Now 102 years old, she was the oldest National Park Service employee at the time of her retirement.
If they stick with Golden State ___, they could go with something in the blank that didn’t play on the “warrior” idea, which would open up a much bigger creative field
I'd like to see the WNBA team have its own identity so a name that isn't directly warriors-related. No Amazons or Valkyries. What about San Francisco (or California) Gold Rush for instance? Or if we're going with Golden State, how about the Seals? Has SF roots, and who doesn't like seals?
It would be cool to have a unique name with its own identity that isn't Warriors-related but I also wouldn't want it to be the same as the 49ers cheerleading squad (Gold Rush) or a former minor league baseball team (Seals).
I think it'd be cool if they went with a singular / collective name as is common in the WNBA: Dream, Sky, Sun, Fever, Liberty, Lynx, Mercury, and Storm. The NBA has a few of these too (Heat, Jazz, Magic). Hard to think of one that really fits the Bay Area while having the aura appropriate of a team name—typically something fearsome or inspiring. (The NBA has some pretty non-intimidating names, too, of course... teams named after footwear, underwear, and sports equipment among other things.)
As an alternative, the "Golden State Bridges" (or just Bridge?) sounds pretty wacky for a team name, but they could use some of the best logos we've got with less cognitive dissonance than the team currently has representing a warlike name with a symbol of trade and peace...
ok, here's a pitch. Extremely Bay Area, singular, and it can be your choice of inspiring, terrifying, or anything in between. Aaannnd, it doesn't have anything to do with killing (unless you want it to)...
Ew. Maybe go with the Golden State Orchards to pay an homage to the beautiful farmland that used to dominate the South Bay before Silicon blanketed them over.
Maybe the Golden State Wine, lol. Or the Oakland Roots (that's a soccer team already, but probably pretty easily bought out)... but they'll play in Chase.
Regardless, I'm ready to root for the Splash Sisters.
Monarchs. They should have a contest all around the bay area, and then someone gets to decide which is the preferred name. Sort of like the birds up in the campanile, where a couple of kids got to choose their names.
I’d think they’d want to closely tie the new franchise to the Dubs brand. The more people associate them with the Warriors winning culture, the more people will both buy in AND give them the benefit of the doubt while trying to improve.
“Warrioress” is a word, but sounds made up, and the plural sounds awkward.
As a retired marketer, I’ll go “Warrior Queens”, which sounds badass and would provide huge merchandise sales opportunities to a variety of demos.
I like something that starts with a “W” so “Go Dubs” hits the same. I don’t like gendered names, cus it’s unnecessarily drawing attention to gender. Wonders, Waves, Wasps, probably plenty of better options than those.
Earlier this summer, there was a discussion about naming a fictional women's sports team set in California and gendered naming came up. I think Sabs(?), the writer, went with "California Wild." Been thinking about it on and off since then and feel some affinity for Golden State Wonders, Miracles, or Sierras.
Good point, though I feel some chagrin at ceding all those California place names (e.g. Sierra, Catalina, Mojave) and big cats (e.g. Mountain Lion, Panther) to a tech company.
(edit: almost forgot, California Dream. I'm a big Cass Elliot fan)
Yeah, even though that would pass my "Does this name mean we don't have to change our DNHQ name?" test. She Dubs, She Hulk, She-Man... icky and so artificially gendered.
"Lacob's Girls" or like "Warriorettes" would be silly af but for an example that's less comical, the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx have a pretty cool duality that doesn't make either name seem like the lesser of the two. Not saying that's necessarily the way to go but it could be done tastefully.
Slater has video of Steph and CP doing a 2 man work out with three assistants working together on hit-and-hand drills so that CP can quickly pick up Dubs’ system.
I was rooting for Oakland but of course the $ machine of the Warriors makes sense here. But could Bob Fitz have been any less excited about it? His angle was more or less that Lacob bought a new pearl necklace and might want to look for something else to go with it. Not a great start to their marketing effort. Clearly they're not W fans, struggling for precedent for the new in season tournament ignoring that the W launched the commissioners cup last year. I would have expected at least Lacob to know that.
Maybe some people root for Ant despite the rest of the team. I root for Wiseman despite the rest of the team. I rooted for TJD in college, despite the rest of his team. I rooted for Moody when he had to go down to the Santa Cruz Warriors and that pretty terrible team….Chacun á son goût.
Kyrie Irving has been appointed to a "Creative" executive position for a Chinese company that makes shoes and has been linked to human rights abuses. I don't know what else to say about this guy.
I'd wager that every basketball shoe company is linked to foreign producer countries with little regard for human rights so I'm not going to dump on Kyrie for this. Nike, for example, has certainly had problems in this area. That is what happens when capitalism becomes a race to the bottom.
Yup. Nike isn't foreign, but that's actually the point imo. This article wouldn't be written if it didn't serve an anti-Chinese agenda.
The Warriors literally play in Chase Center. Yes, the same Chase that was collaborating with the actual Nazis. The entire NBA is rife with "ties to human rights abuses", but just like outside of sports, our media brings this stuff up selectively.
Fully agree with the point about media selectivity on reporting on this stuff, but at some point past sins of a family and organization have to age out of the 'whaddaboutism' defense. The 18th, 19th, and first half the 20th century were much more violent and brutal than high school history classes make us believe, across all civilizations and continents. There are legitimate concerns about modern China that can be addressed without pointing out that the publisher's great-great-grandfather had a role in the slave trade. We can't do much about that now, but we can certainly address current human rights abuses in a much more even-handed manner. Sorry for the digression.
I do not agree with the concept of "whataboutism" being applied when only the enemies of the West (China, Russia, Venezuela, etc.) are disproportionately highlighted by Western media for wrongdoing. If "whataboutism" as a concept prevents pushing back on an agenda that has nothing to do with human rights and everything to do with imperialist influence, then I consider it a useless concept at best, propagandistic at worst (I'm not calling you a propagandist, to be clear). This story is not being written because of human rights abuses, it's being written because of China.
Like, this article is literally talking about Anta, a fucking shoe company. Steph owns equity in Under Armour, and oh wait what's this article from 2019?
Did the Rolling Stone write an article about Curry's involvement with this company with "ties to human rights abuses"? Not that I can tell (if I'm wrong let me know and I'll admit that it is a bad example), but they did have this interview with him where they uncritically let him talk about his Under Armour deal:
Apologies to Apricot for going this far off topic, I'll cut this shit out once the basketball starts getting played. If Apricot wants to delete (although I'd mention that I'm still giving basketball-relevant examples), I understand.
Hypocrisy of those who buy into predatory capitalism is a given in the NBA and elsewhere. IMO it seems that human rights abuses in the United States, should be addressed. Class-ism, racism, human trafficking, antisemitism. Most are saying nothing about what’s going on on our southern border. It’s old news! But abuses are alive and well here. It’s rather more convenient to talk about China.
I don't think he should delete, since social issues like these have become interwoven with the fabric of basketball and relevant to what the on-court product is.
We've discussed social issues at DNHQ before. The NBA's relationship with China and the issues surrounding shoe and other companies that make basketball apparel are somewhat OT but not unreasonably so. There's not much basketball news for the moment, and our discussions here have been respectful.
Funny enough, you reminded me of a story about when I was traveling abroad in Germany and I had asked some of the younger dudes I was staying with about their feelings on the Nazi regime.
They said they were tired of hearing about the sins of their grandparents because that’s not who they are today. And yet the German government goes to great lengths to educate their kids about how terrible it was, and have extremely aggressive laws on hate speech, Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial.
Sometimes you need to have visible reminders of the past to prevent making the same mistakes in the present and the future. Otherwise history will repeat itself, or rhyme at the very least.
Agreed though that it needs to not be brought up selectively, and all corporations should be held to account appropriately.
I support this. Went to the Memory and Tolerance Museum in Mexico City which was created because after the genocide of WWII the world said "Never Again"... but we did do it again... a lot! It highlights and aims to educate citizens on the subtle shifts in society (the Red Flags if you will) that can lead to one of humanities worst actions because people thought they were doing the right thing...
If he can bring up his FT % that will be a big deal. It seemed like there were times where he was a bit "Simmons-ed" about even driving hard to the basket because he was struggling at the line. But, Wiggs didn't put out a PR video of him hitting 10! FTs in a row in a quite gym, so I guess he isn't really serious like Ben.
I still don't understand the huge mid-career dips in FT% he and Iggy had. Especially as he's become a better 3 point shooter. I guess it's not completely correlated but seems strange to me.
OT, and not sure what made it pop into my head, but I'm bummed for Robert Williams III, who, having nearly sacrificed his knee to the Celtics title run, got traded to the organization with the absolute worst track record of player health management in the entire league.
Pretty funny you’d point at Portland when the worse team in this regard is the one he’s coming from.
Yeah, good point. Poor guy's had it rough.
Trust us Isaiah!
Isaiah, but exactly
Corrected, thanks
Are you sure?
GAAAHHHH
How so? Did he take the staff with him?
FYI, The Golden State WNBA team is taking deposits for season tickets. Order matters. Also, if you are a GSW season ticket holder, you’ll get priority.
https://www.wnba.com/golden-state
Embiid has committed to play in the Olympics for…. team USA! This team is gonna be stacked….
I don’t think team USA needs Embiid to win gold, but I wonder if he will be healthy to play.
Despite he never plays all the games of regular season, and few more of playoffs, the end of season takes always some injury.
Therefore it’s improbable to watch him play at Olympic Games, unless he put on risk the next season.
France must be bummed. They could have trotted out a front line of Gobert, Embiid, and Wemby.
In a stunning, non-related bit of news, we dropped our latest travel video: Lisbon, Portugal https://youtu.be/q1EqjWaOLco?si=e_HewwEVbLrYhqnl
We need a Loki Season 2 Open Thread
Oh good, more Marvel tripe.
Starting small forward on the Asgard Hammers?
I can't wait to see CP3 explode when Steph & Draymond goes into their "lala land" mode and throws a couple of those WTF passes.
I wouldn’t be mad if he can whip our young stars curry and green into shape
He will find a sympathetic ear in Steve Kerr.
Kerr & CP3 after the third consecutive TO:
https://youtu.be/Yr0Tt3J-Na0?si=2t8zRq0xvB7wOuE6
Kerr’s mind bubble: now I have somebody to help me cope in these moments!
CP3’s mind bubble: This MFer got me on the bench while these knuckleheads are pulling this crap?!?!
Gonna try a Poll on here! Vote for your biggest "YOU WERE THE CHOSEN ONE!" draft that disappointed you the most...
Webber is the only guy who actually had the talent to be the chosen one and he could have uplifted the franchise but instead tanked it. All the other Warriors top picks that didn’t work out were just bad drafting. The rest of the league didn’t have much interest in any of them that I recall. Kind of like choosing JaMarcus Russell with the first pick.
Chris Washburn
Biedrins. Looked like an actual talent (for that era) until he realized he would have to shoot FTs every now and then
He had a real bad stomach tear that did him in.
Joe Smith
I'm old enough to remember drafting Joe Barry Carroll at #1 (instead of hanging onto Robert Parish and drafting Kevin McHale) and Chris Washburn
How can it be anyone other than Chris Webber?
Well, I don't remember Webber making the Hall of Fame, so while egregious, not in the same leagues as punting on McHale and Parish to draft Joe Barely Cares. Webber did engender a media circus though, while the Joe Barely media reactions were limited to eye-rolling and snickers. Oh, and a cigar-lighting ceremony from Red Auerbach
Wiseman, man.
How? He got traded and became great. The trade was frustrating and understandable, and probably one that owners point to and say: "See, this is why we should keep the player and fire the coach." Webber wasn't a disappointment, imo... maybe he tenure in GS was, but...
Webber's tenure on the court for the Dubs was excellent. It was Don Nelson who was a disappointment.
Sure, Anakin Skywalker wasn’t a disappointment either, he got traded and was great. Not a disappointment at all.
anachris skyweber. cast us into the shadows for 2 decades.
Yeah, if the Sith-lords would ever play more than 2 guys at a time, they could be really good.
Always two there are. No more, no less. Too much ego, too few touches to go around.
Two timelines
May the Schwartz be with us all
THATS DIFFERENT!
Gotta be Wiseman. #2 pick? Young, athletic big? The face of the two-timeline approach?
Yah. That.
Maybe, but it was not a deep draft. The only guy who looks to be exceptional was already off the board. So what Hall of Famer did they pass on?
The sleeper would have been Haliburton, as we've discussed often. But nobody had him at #2.
I had him at #2
of course I had Okongwu at #1 😬
Well at least you can say you did better than the Warriors. Who definitely didn’t have Edwards at 1.
Anthony Randolph
I had such hi hopes for him and he said and did all the right things coming out of college but alas...
Probably POB. Back then, I didn't know a thing about bball. I'm a wee bit more cynical now (though I drink the Koolaid every year).
I never expected anything from POB. He was Todd Fuller 2.0. Just a WTF pick.
As was typical in the bad old days, the guy we **really** wanted in the POB draft got snapped up by the Rockets one pick in front of us.
Fortunately, the Curry era settles all debts. Rudy Gay, come on down. :-)
2022 Patrick Baldwin Jr.
Chasing ... please don't take this the wrong way, but I'm sensing a bit of disappointment from you.
You sense correct Master Turing. I must not feel disappointment for the failure of the prophecy of the Two Timelines. The Council has no choice but to not grant me the rank of Master...
2022 Ryan Rollins
2020 James Wiseman
Forever and always. Dude was smart and stacked. Just not a great basketball player :(
Second choice maybe Joe Smith.
2020 Nico Mannion
2020 Justinian Jessup
2019 Jordan Poole
2019 Alen Smailagić
Mavs Wolves game flashes up a shot of Omri Casspi, with the title "NBA Legend". Hmm, that's a bit of legend inflation there, I think
Technically, there was an urban legend that he would take a shot upon occasion.
Oh he did take shots, just not in a Warriors uniform.
They flashed up a shot of a guy who couldn't flash up a shot (for the Dubs)?
Wasn't shy when he played for the Kings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Qju1J_UWB4
Thursday at Chase Center as the Warriors’ WNBA expansion franchise was announced for the 2025 season, Lacob vowed to carry out the same promise for his latest venture.
“I’m telling you right now, we will win a WNBA championship in the first five years of this franchise,” Lacob said.
Joe's gonna be Joe, but this is much better than hearing: I'm just doing this as an investment, and will only put in the minimal resources to make sure I get my money out of it.
Lacob's an investor for sure but he's also competitive as hell, I would not expect him to treat a WNBA team any differently in that regard. I think the thing that aligns Lacob with Steph (and Dray and Klay by extension) is that he absolutely hates losing, even more than he likes to win.
He is doing this as an investment... Joe style, as you say. It's gonna be hilarious when they start enacting rules to prevent him from spending $$ on his new WNBA team. If they've got a hard cap, they're going to find other ways to lure the best talent (e.g. private flights, etc.).
I hope he does not spend other teams out of existence.
How? 1. Aren't they hard capped? 2. If his spending generates a powerhouse, I only see a growing fanbase (for an expansion team).
There are other considerations, costs, perks, besides salary.
I wonder whether there was a conversation and agreement with Joe about that before he was awarded the franchise.
Haven't seen this posted yet:
Embiid has declared for Team USA in the Olympics. There goes our size problem.
https://bleacherreport.com/articles/10092256-nba-rumors-76ers-joel-embiid-commits-to-play-for-team-usa-at-2024-olympics
Might be his only chance to win a championship. I imagine that his fellow Cameroons are probably not pleased with this.
Cameroon has never played Olympic basketball so they might not even enter a team. If they did, there's a long process he would have to go through with FIBA to be eligible to play for Cameroon, and he already went through that process last year to qualify to play international ball for France and the USA. Embiid isn't a Cameroon citizen, and he never played international basketball for Cameroon. So that wasn't a realistic option.
He is a French/American dual citizen, and some people are slamming him for not playing for France, which was the other option. But he has lived in the USA since he was 16, his son was born here, and France already has Rudy and Wemby, while the USA has no true big 5s lined up yet. (AD is a maybe.)
Woohooooo
I can see these Olympics being real fun—you get the joy of assembling kind of an all-star team, except there are real stakes and competition.
And, we get to see Kerr draw up plays for a scoring big man. Or, maybe he'll leave him on the bench and lean into small ball (I'm kidding, I think).
Apparently it was considered a long shot, but would you rather fight for playing time with Rudy and Wemby, or with Walker Kessler? Not to disparage Walker, who has been great for the Jazz.
Now Grant Hill just has to hope everyone stays healthy all season.
So what should the name of the new WNBA team be? Should it resemble "The Warriors" in any way or be its own thing entirely, perhaps something associated with the Bay?
How about the Golden State Whip or Golden State Ghost in honor a hallowed Oakland tradition?
If we're going with Oakland tradition, how about the Panthers?
I love this
The Riveters
More seriously, it would be nice if the name made a nod to Latina culture. And probably not a bad marketing move.
A long shot, but that's got a ring to it
so to speak
I got it wrong, anyway. I thought that Rosie the Riveter was based on a Bay Area worker. Turns out is was 'Wendy the Welder', who was based on a worker in in the Richmond Kaiser Shipyards.
Really not making this up:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosie_the_Riveter
And, just to get as OT as possible:
The Bay Area must have been a sight to behold during WWII. Factories and shipyards everywhere (Sausa-fricking-lito built Liberty ships). My grandmother and grandfather were US govt lawyers in World War II in the Bay Area ... they used to tell stories of hiking in Marin, and hearing the anti-aircraft artillery firing during drills (all those bunkers out on the Marin Headlands).
There's a Rosie the Riveter museum in Richmond that's worth checking out.
Former "Rosie" Betty Reid Soskin helped develop the plans for the Rosie the Riveter Museum and worked there leading public programs and telling the old stories until her retirement last year. Now 102 years old, she was the oldest National Park Service employee at the time of her retirement.
Well, crap. I used to live in Pt. Richmond. Never knew it existed until now. Next time I'm in the Bay Area, I guess.
Are we going to hammer this joke theme?
If they stick with Golden State ___, they could go with something in the blank that didn’t play on the “warrior” idea, which would open up a much bigger creative field
Golden State Golden Girls? Nah, that one doesn't work
I don't know; I'm kinda partial to that one! :-)
Hahaha, yes I guess you would be :) And, it works for you, but I assume you are closer to my vintage than the 20 year olds that will be on the floor.
Yup, definitely a golden oldie 😉
I'd like to see the WNBA team have its own identity so a name that isn't directly warriors-related. No Amazons or Valkyries. What about San Francisco (or California) Gold Rush for instance? Or if we're going with Golden State, how about the Seals? Has SF roots, and who doesn't like seals?
I like the idea. Just thought I'd mention it's sea lions rather than seals basking on the piers. Not sure if that changes things
I don't know if there is a 'Sail' club, but Golden State Sails might work.
And, when Lacob sells the team later, the advertisements write themselves.
It would be cool to have a unique name with its own identity that isn't Warriors-related but I also wouldn't want it to be the same as the 49ers cheerleading squad (Gold Rush) or a former minor league baseball team (Seals).
I think it'd be cool if they went with a singular / collective name as is common in the WNBA: Dream, Sky, Sun, Fever, Liberty, Lynx, Mercury, and Storm. The NBA has a few of these too (Heat, Jazz, Magic). Hard to think of one that really fits the Bay Area while having the aura appropriate of a team name—typically something fearsome or inspiring. (The NBA has some pretty non-intimidating names, too, of course... teams named after footwear, underwear, and sports equipment among other things.)
As an alternative, the "Golden State Bridges" (or just Bridge?) sounds pretty wacky for a team name, but they could use some of the best logos we've got with less cognitive dissonance than the team currently has representing a warlike name with a symbol of trade and peace...
golden state rush
ok, here's a pitch. Extremely Bay Area, singular, and it can be your choice of inspiring, terrifying, or anything in between. Aaannnd, it doesn't have anything to do with killing (unless you want it to)...
The Golden State Technology
Golden State Machine?
Really hated that one, but maybe by free association I came up with another one that has a backdoor tech linkage*: Golden State Wave.
You can't stop us, you can't even contain us, all you can do is try not to get wiped out.
(* My favorite failed Google experiment)
Edit: DFiB sorta beat me to it downthread
Golden State Venture?
I found Lacob.
Ew. Maybe go with the Golden State Orchards to pay an homage to the beautiful farmland that used to dominate the South Bay before Silicon blanketed them over.
Maybe the Golden State Wine, lol. Or the Oakland Roots (that's a soccer team already, but probably pretty easily bought out)... but they'll play in Chase.
Regardless, I'm ready to root for the Splash Sisters.
The Golden State Wine seems like a dangerously effective sales and marketing opportunity...
I would like to have a name that has nothing to do with killing. I do like one syllable names.
Monarchs. They should have a contest all around the bay area, and then someone gets to decide which is the preferred name. Sort of like the birds up in the campanile, where a couple of kids got to choose their names.
I really doubt they’d summon the name of a WNBA team that went belly up.
Seals go belly-up all the time, and often look quite cute and comfortable in the process.
And otters
Lacob said it’ll likely be “Golden State _”, so yeah, they’ve got a lot of options.
The name should also have a connection to the Bay Area specifically. Let's see...
- Quakes: already taken
- related Bounce? Probably too graphic.
- Sourdoughs: nah
- Fog, maybe the Karlettes? /s
- Unicorns?
- Jam, as in traffic jam? I guess already taken.
There's a reason this isn't my job, I guess.
Karla was a nice callout
Were you writing a book with a sports team you were thinking of naming "California Wild"?
Amazons? Valkyries? Other famous mythological warrior women?
Research link: https://greekreporter.com/2023/08/24/warrior-women-female-military-units-throughout-history/
Golden State Valkyries sounds nice.
I thought about that but too much connotation with the ecommerce company (and probably too much messy legal stuff to hash out as well).
Screw Amazon, next thing we'll talk if the South American region needs to be renamed to avoid trademark issues...
I’d think they’d want to closely tie the new franchise to the Dubs brand. The more people associate them with the Warriors winning culture, the more people will both buy in AND give them the benefit of the doubt while trying to improve.
“Warrioress” is a word, but sounds made up, and the plural sounds awkward.
As a retired marketer, I’ll go “Warrior Queens”, which sounds badass and would provide huge merchandise sales opportunities to a variety of demos.
I like something that starts with a “W” so “Go Dubs” hits the same. I don’t like gendered names, cus it’s unnecessarily drawing attention to gender. Wonders, Waves, Wasps, probably plenty of better options than those.
Thank you.
Earlier this summer, there was a discussion about naming a fictional women's sports team set in California and gendered naming came up. I think Sabs(?), the writer, went with "California Wild." Been thinking about it on and off since then and feel some affinity for Golden State Wonders, Miracles, or Sierras.
1. There's already the Minnesota Wild of the NHL, so I think that's out
2. I vote staying away from Apple OS names, so Sierra is out, but I do like homages to local flora/fauna/monuments
Good point, though I feel some chagrin at ceding all those California place names (e.g. Sierra, Catalina, Mojave) and big cats (e.g. Mountain Lion, Panther) to a tech company.
(edit: almost forgot, California Dream. I'm a big Cass Elliot fan)
Simple answer: Ignore the Apple use of names of places and big cats. That's irrelevant. Golden State Sierra is fine if we want to go that route.
So “She Dubs” is out?
Yeah, even though that would pass my "Does this name mean we don't have to change our DNHQ name?" test. She Dubs, She Hulk, She-Man... icky and so artificially gendered.
Biting my tongue until it bleeds, for sooo many reasons.
S&M?
Maybe. Warrior Queens could headline next year's Folsom Street Fair.
That was exactly my point. The team’s merchandise store in the Castro would sell out of everything.
Sorry, I was talking about you biting your tongue until it bleeds ;)
I like the way Warrior Queens sound but I am personally not a fan of two-word sports team names in general
Be it’s own thing. No Lacob’s girls or Warriors lite.
"Lacob's Girls" or like "Warriorettes" would be silly af but for an example that's less comical, the Minnesota Timberwolves and Lynx have a pretty cool duality that doesn't make either name seem like the lesser of the two. Not saying that's necessarily the way to go but it could be done tastefully.
So it’s the Warriors and the Amazons.
Warrior Queens!
Elegant
Slater has video of Steph and CP doing a 2 man work out with three assistants working together on hit-and-hand drills so that CP can quickly pick up Dubs’ system.
https://x.com/anthonyVslater/status/1709319352523313504?s=20
It’s a great video. I’ll likely use it in future videos, and Joe has an article about it running tomorrow.
Will we get any pre-season game E1P's to see how the new roster is working??
My spirit says yes, we’ll see how the body feels
You could "preseason" it and just do a 2 minute video, mostly focused on the bench celebration...
It’s official, Warriors will have a WNBA team starting in 2025. Looking forward to covering some great local basketball!
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/sports/wnba-bay-area-expansion-team/3334701/
I was rooting for Oakland but of course the $ machine of the Warriors makes sense here. But could Bob Fitz have been any less excited about it? His angle was more or less that Lacob bought a new pearl necklace and might want to look for something else to go with it. Not a great start to their marketing effort. Clearly they're not W fans, struggling for precedent for the new in season tournament ignoring that the W launched the commissioners cup last year. I would have expected at least Lacob to know that.
Ah ha ha my decision to not start a long-distance relationship with one of the existing WNBA teams has paid off.
This makes me SO HAPPY. More basketball is coming to the bay and I finally will have a team I can root for!
That could certainly be the push I needed to watch WNBA games. Lot harder to get motivated to watch when I'm not invested in any particular team.
Local girl in playoffs. Starting Sunday. Sabrina Ionescu plays for the New York Lliberty.
For those of us who root for teams and not individual players, this doesn't really cut it. I'm definitely not rooting for a New York team.
Sorry to hear it.
I don’t root for Dame.
Maybe some people root for Ant despite the rest of the team. I root for Wiseman despite the rest of the team. I rooted for TJD in college, despite the rest of his team. I rooted for Moody when he had to go down to the Santa Cruz Warriors and that pretty terrible team….Chacun á son goût.
I am so outrageously excited for this!
Can't wait to find out their ticket prices are also unaffordable
Funny but I doubt this will be the case, WNBA games are relatively affordable even in places like LA or NYC. More incentive to go.
It really is more of a peoples game. I hope it develops to make some more $ but not to the outrageous extent of the NBA
Of course.
Kyrie Irving has been appointed to a "Creative" executive position for a Chinese company that makes shoes and has been linked to human rights abuses. I don't know what else to say about this guy.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-sports/kyrie-irving-anta-china-human-rights-abuses-1234839461/
Anta, the company Klay is a big sponsor for and talks about all the time?
The whole NBA is in bed with China, just ask Daryl Morey...
I'd wager that every basketball shoe company is linked to foreign producer countries with little regard for human rights so I'm not going to dump on Kyrie for this. Nike, for example, has certainly had problems in this area. That is what happens when capitalism becomes a race to the bottom.
Yup. Nike isn't foreign, but that's actually the point imo. This article wouldn't be written if it didn't serve an anti-Chinese agenda.
The Warriors literally play in Chase Center. Yes, the same Chase that was collaborating with the actual Nazis. The entire NBA is rife with "ties to human rights abuses", but just like outside of sports, our media brings this stuff up selectively.
Fully agree with the point about media selectivity on reporting on this stuff, but at some point past sins of a family and organization have to age out of the 'whaddaboutism' defense. The 18th, 19th, and first half the 20th century were much more violent and brutal than high school history classes make us believe, across all civilizations and continents. There are legitimate concerns about modern China that can be addressed without pointing out that the publisher's great-great-grandfather had a role in the slave trade. We can't do much about that now, but we can certainly address current human rights abuses in a much more even-handed manner. Sorry for the digression.
Respectfully, there are plenty of examples not from the 18th, 19th, or first half of the 20th century but right now. Here's an example about Apple:
https://www.thestreet.com/sports/nba-is-working-with-apple
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/apple-and-google-named-in-us-lawsuit-over-congolese-child-cobalt-mining-deaths
I do not agree with the concept of "whataboutism" being applied when only the enemies of the West (China, Russia, Venezuela, etc.) are disproportionately highlighted by Western media for wrongdoing. If "whataboutism" as a concept prevents pushing back on an agenda that has nothing to do with human rights and everything to do with imperialist influence, then I consider it a useless concept at best, propagandistic at worst (I'm not calling you a propagandist, to be clear). This story is not being written because of human rights abuses, it's being written because of China.
Like, this article is literally talking about Anta, a fucking shoe company. Steph owns equity in Under Armour, and oh wait what's this article from 2019?
https://fashionista.com/2019/06/malaysian-garment-worker-labor-violations-transparentem
Did the Rolling Stone write an article about Curry's involvement with this company with "ties to human rights abuses"? Not that I can tell (if I'm wrong let me know and I'll admit that it is a bad example), but they did have this interview with him where they uncritically let him talk about his Under Armour deal:
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/stephen-curry-trump-durant-obama-politics-retire-1234589154/
Apologies to Apricot for going this far off topic, I'll cut this shit out once the basketball starts getting played. If Apricot wants to delete (although I'd mention that I'm still giving basketball-relevant examples), I understand.
Hypocrisy of those who buy into predatory capitalism is a given in the NBA and elsewhere. IMO it seems that human rights abuses in the United States, should be addressed. Class-ism, racism, human trafficking, antisemitism. Most are saying nothing about what’s going on on our southern border. It’s old news! But abuses are alive and well here. It’s rather more convenient to talk about China.
I don't think he should delete, since social issues like these have become interwoven with the fabric of basketball and relevant to what the on-court product is.
We've discussed social issues at DNHQ before. The NBA's relationship with China and the issues surrounding shoe and other companies that make basketball apparel are somewhat OT but not unreasonably so. There's not much basketball news for the moment, and our discussions here have been respectful.
Funny enough, you reminded me of a story about when I was traveling abroad in Germany and I had asked some of the younger dudes I was staying with about their feelings on the Nazi regime.
They said they were tired of hearing about the sins of their grandparents because that’s not who they are today. And yet the German government goes to great lengths to educate their kids about how terrible it was, and have extremely aggressive laws on hate speech, Nazi propaganda and Holocaust denial.
Sometimes you need to have visible reminders of the past to prevent making the same mistakes in the present and the future. Otherwise history will repeat itself, or rhyme at the very least.
Agreed though that it needs to not be brought up selectively, and all corporations should be held to account appropriately.
And it should be noted that there's still a fair amount of neo-fascism in eastern Germany, especially. https://lithub.com/on-the-rise-of-neo-fascism-in-contemporary-germany/
I support this. Went to the Memory and Tolerance Museum in Mexico City which was created because after the genocide of WWII the world said "Never Again"... but we did do it again... a lot! It highlights and aims to educate citizens on the subtle shifts in society (the Red Flags if you will) that can lead to one of humanities worst actions because people thought they were doing the right thing...
T'Wolves up 32 to 15 over the Mavs early in Abu Dabi. Basketball is back!
Trying to decide if I should still hate Grant Williams now that he's not a Celtic
Mavs are pretty obnoxious and are in our conference, I am sure there will be opportunities for you to reaffirm your hatred of GW this season.
McDaniels doing heroic work denying Luka the ball and hitting threes.
NBA TV subscribers can watch here: https://www.nba.com/watch/nba-tv
...and Ant isn't playing.
I know, preseason...
Clearly Ant was holding them back last year
Yeah that Ant is no good. They should trade him to us cheap.
It's still amazing! Thank you so much for alerting me to this game!
Didn't see a mention of this yet, but a reporter asked Wiggs what he had worked on in the off-season, and I was pretty happy with his response:
Main thing was free throws, trying to get better. My free throws I feel like the last few years weren't that great.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4y4vPKxS6FQ&t=285s
If he can bring up his FT % that will be a big deal. It seemed like there were times where he was a bit "Simmons-ed" about even driving hard to the basket because he was struggling at the line. But, Wiggs didn't put out a PR video of him hitting 10! FTs in a row in a quite gym, so I guess he isn't really serious like Ben.
I still don't understand the huge mid-career dips in FT% he and Iggy had. Especially as he's become a better 3 point shooter. I guess it's not completely correlated but seems strange to me.