Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob is in more hot water with the NBA following recent comments he made on a podcast surrounding ongoing collective bargaining talks.
The owner has been fined a whopping $500,000 by the league for criticizing the NBA’s luxury-tax system in calling it “very unfair.”
NBA rules prohibit owners from talking about collective bargaining communications.
The defending champion Warriors currently find themselves $36.5 million over the NBA's luxury-tax line. They are coming off a 2021-22 season in which they boasted a league-record $346 million combined payroll when taking into account luxury taxes.
Joe Lacob fined after NBA luxury-tax comments
Lacob made his comments on Andre Iguodala’s "Point Forward" podcast:
“The truth is, we’re only $40 million more than the luxury tax. Now, that’s not small but it’s not a massive number. We’re $200 million over in total because most of that is this incredible penal luxury tax. And what I consider to be unfair and I’m going to say it on this podcast and I hope it gets back to whoever is listening … and obviously it’s self-serving for me to say this, but I think it’s a very unfair system because our team is built by — all top eight players are all drafted by this team.”
The Warriors have been cricitized by other owners for paying a record luxury tax to keep their dynastic run going after winning their fourth title in eight years.
Unfortunately for said owners, there’s not a great argument to be made here. Three of the Warriors’ four highest-paid players in Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green were all drafted by the team. The other being a player in Andrew Wiggins who was brought on with a bad contract in a trade with the Minnesota Timberwolves back in 2020.
As for Lacob, this is the second time he’s been fined by the NBA in the past calendar year. The owner found himself out $50,000 for “tampering” with then-Philadelphia 76ers guard Ben Simmons during the 2021-22 season.
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