Warriors owner Lacob confirms interest in buying Angels originally appeared on NBC Sports Bayarea
It appears that Warriors owner Joe Lacob is expanding his interests beyond the NBA.
Lacob has previously expressed his interest in buying an MLB team, and confirmed Thursday that he is exploring the purchase of the Los Angeles Angels.
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“It’s been reported that we’re looking at it, and that’s true,” Lacob said on the latest episode of "The TK Show" with the Athletic’s Tim Kawakami. “I don’t know what we’re going to do yet. I grew up there, it’s a little bit of an attraction for me, I was a peanut vendor for seven years. I lived a mile from that stadium. That stadium’s been around for a long time. I’ve always felt that it had great possibilities.
“L.A.’s a huge market, and it’s part of that L.A. overall market. And they’ve drawn over three million fans, I think, 17 of the last 20 years. We’re going to look at it, but it wouldn’t be the easiest thing in the world to do because it is not co-located like perhaps a local baseball team might be. But might be doable. So we’ll see.”
Hold your horses Dub Nation, Lacob clarified that his priority is the Warriors and repeating as NBA champions this season.
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But his MLB interest goes back to before his time with Golden State.
Before he bought the Warriors, built Chase Center in San Francisco and won four championships in an eight-year span, Lacob attempted to purchase the Oakland Athletics.
The deal “got yanked” from Lacob, he said in an interview last summer, and he learned a very important lesson from the experience.
Lacob built relationships around the NBA to put him in place to purchase the Warriors for $450 million in 2010, but his eyes still linger on the baseball team on the other side of the Bay Bridge.
There's just one problem.
“I’m really focused on what we’re doing here,” Lacob told Kawakami. “It’s the most important thing. I’ve made it known, we’ve made it known that, at the right time, should another major sports team that kind of made sense with our skill sets as an organization become available, that we would be interested and certainly could do it. But I don’t think they’re for sale, to answer your question.”
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But, the Angels are for sale. Angels owner Arte Moreno has started exploring options of possibly selling the team.
An MLB team in the Bay Area would be ideal, though, if the A's or San Francisco Giants ever hit the open market.
