Warriors owner says Iguodala liked the Warriors during last year’s playoffs
By Ryan Donoho
The Warriors made a splash during the summer when they did a sign and trade for Andre Iguodala. He fits their team perfectly, and it seems as if he will flourish this season.
Iguodala left the Nuggets after they got beat by his new team in the first round of last year’s playoffs, and he ran the old “if you can’t beat them, join them” plan. Although the signing came out of left field, Warrior’s owner Joe Lacob had an idea that it could happen long before anyone else did:
"“It’s interesting, during one of the playoff games in Denver, I was sitting on the floor. It turned out per chance, that one of his cousins was sitting behind us. We introduced and got to know him during the first game. When we came back for the second game, he made it pretty clear that Andre liked the Warriors, liked the organization. Obviously, I couldn’t talk about that at the time, but when he did become a free agent, I didn’t have to sell a lot. He was pretty sold. He sees how we do things, and the word gets out among the players.”"
There may have been some actual talk between Iguodala and Lacob before the moratorium began on July 1st, but he wouldn’t say that publicly–that would be tampering. It’s interesting to know that he was thinking of joining the Warriors before season’s end, but he can thank the fact that the Utah Jazz wanted to tank. They took a lot of salary to make the trade possible.