San Francisco mayor Ed Lee and members of the Golden State Warriors spoke to media on the San Francisco waterfront today, making official the announcement we knew was coming: The Warriors intend to move across the bay in time for the 2017/18 season.
"We are working with the Warriors to get a state-of-the-art, multi-purpose arena built on the waterfront in San Francisco and completed in 2017," Lee said in a statement released by the team. "The Warriors have been the Bay Area’s basketball team for 50 years, and today sets the stage for the Warriors to be the Bay Area’s team for another 50."
As we outlined yesterday, there are a number of challenges facing Warriors ownership before the new, privately-funded San Francisco arena becomes a reality, but owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber are adamant that those obstacles will be overcome and that the move will be made by 2017, tweets Marcus Thompson of the Bay Area News Group.
The Warriors were previously known as the San Francisco Warriors from 1962 to 1971, but became the Golden State Warriors when they moved to Oakland in '71, making their home there ever since.
there goes the neighborhood