Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob is already not happy with the massive luxury tax they are paying, so he'd probably be even more dismayed by the NBA's punishment on his recent comments.
According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, the NBA has slapped Lacob with a $500,000 fine for the comments he made on Andre Iguodala's podcast about the Collective Bargaining Agreement, specifically the luxury tax imposed on teams. Apparently the Warriors boss has violated the league's policy on team owners and NBA officials about “unauthorized communications regarding collective bargaining.”
ESPN Sources: The NBA has fined Golden State Warriors owner Joe Lacob $500,000 for his recent comments on the Point Forward Podcast discussing the league’s collective bargaining talks, which included Lacob describing the league’s luxury tax system as “very unfair.”
— Adrian Wojnarowski (@wojespn) July 21, 2022
To recall, Joe Lacob slammed the NBA for what he called as a “very unfair” luxury tax system. He highlighted how the Warriors' core is made mostly of players they drafted, but they are still paying $200 million because of the penalty.
“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,” Lacob explained. “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.”
Lacob has certainly gotten his message across to the NBA. Unfortunately for him, it came with quite the hefty price.
While the Warriors owner made a good point, especially since the league is basically giving little reward to team building, the NBA basically emphasized to him that there is a proper avenue to raise such grievances.
It remains to be seen how the Warriors owner will respond to the massive fine, but fans can expect that he won't be talking about the CBA or the luxury tax for some time.
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