Monta Ellis: Joe Lacob β€˜deserved' Boos at Chris Mullin Jersey Ceremony

[CSNBY] Monta Ellis: Joe Lacob 'deserved' boos at Chris Mullin jersey ceremony
Drew Shiller

On March 13, 2012, Golden State traded fan-favorite Monta Ellis to the Bucks in exchange for Andrew Bogut.

Six days later, the Warriors retired Chris Mullin's No. 17 jersey during halftime of their game against the Timberwolves. And during the ceremony, the Oracle Arena crowd incessantly boo'd owner Joe Lacob to voice its displeasure with the franchise's decision to part ways with Monta.

It was a night Warriors fans never will forget.

Klay Thompson recently said that he felt bad for Monta because the 2005 second-round pick found out he was being shipped to Milwaukee by watching SportsCenter.

To nobody's surprise, Monta wasn't happy with how the transaction transpired because team executives told him hours before the deal became official that he would remain with the Dubs.

"Not only so much that they traded me, (but) just how they went about trading me," Monta recently told Marcus Thompson of The Athletic. "If they would've traded me and let me know the process of everything that was going down, it would've been a whole lot better.

"I mean, that was a career-changing experience right there."

The 2006-07 NBA Most Improved Player was watching live from his hotel room in Portland when Lacob got showered with boos.

"I was laughing - but crying at the same time," Ellis told Thompson. "Because it was bad. It was like, man, all I did for that city, for that organization. Put my body on the line. Even when they doubted me when I came back from my ankle injury.

"I felt like I deserved to know everything that was going on with the process of that whole little thing. It just went sideways. So when I (saw) that I laughed and I said, β€˜He deserved it.'"

[RELATEDKlay still owns first big purchase made after joining Dubs]

At the time, Dub Nation was fed up with losing and didn't have faith that things would improve.

Fast forward nearly eight years later and it's safe to assume that Warriors fans everywhere are extremely thankful that Lacob and Peter Guber own the Warriors.

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