Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} 100 Things Warriors Fans Should Know and Do Before They Die by Marcus Thompson How Owners Bought The Team. 100 Things Warriors Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Danny Leroux covers plenty of the team's recent success with Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green and Kevin Durant. But it also explores the exploits of Run TMC, Latrell Sprewell, Purvis Short, Robert Parish, , Manute Bol and , among others. In this excerpt, Leroux documents how the sale of the franchise from Chris Cohan to the -Peter Guber partnership unfolded. The winning bid was $450 million. In July 2010, the dysfunctional Warriors, who had been to one postseason in 16 years, were officially the most expensive franchise in NBA history. It was perhaps the best execution of Chris Cohan's tenure as owner. News of Cohan looking to sell his 80 percent stake in the Warriors started in earnest in July 2009. By January 2010, billionaire Larry Ellison was sitting courtside at Oracle Arena for the first time, watching LeBron James dominate. Sixteen days after his debut at a Warriors game, Ellison confessed during a public event at Oracle headquarters that he was trying to buy the team. "I'm trying. I'm trying," Ellison (who was discussing Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems) replied to an audience member asking about him buying the Warriors. "Unfortunately, you can't have a hostile takeover of a basketball team." And just like that, it was on, the most engrossing drama involving the team in years: Who would buy the Warriors? On March 22, 2010, the Warriors announced Cohan would be selling the team and had hired Galatioto Sports Partners to execute the sale. Sal Galatioto had previously orchestrated the sale of the Phoenix Suns in 2004 for a then-record $401 million and had a similar game plan for the Warriors. Galatioto accepted blind bids from any groups interested in buying the Warriors with what he said was a hard deadline for getting the bid in. After that process, the most serious bidders would get full access and the ability to kick the tires on the Warriors but still had to finalize their bid without knowing the offer of any other group. The highest bidder got the team. This seemed to be a cinch for Ellison, who not even two weeks before the Warriors announcement ranked sixth on Forbes' list of the world's wealthiest people. They reported Ellison's net worth to be $28 billion, third among Americans behind Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. He was clearly the fan favorite to buy the Warriors. In February 2010, Ellison captured the 33rd running of the America's Cup, completing a 10- year personal quest that saw him spend $100 million. It was America's first win since 1982 and Ellison was onboard the BMW Oracle when it won. That process and its success provided fans a glimpse into the relentlessness he would bring to the Warriors, along with endless pockets that could make the Warriors relevant in a changing, more expensive NBA. Two days after the announcement, another big-pocket Bay Area icon publicly expressed interest in buying the team. Mark Mastrov , founder of 24 Hour Fitness, immediately went after the notion that Ellison's billions made him the best candidate. "I think I can do just as well, if not better," Mastrov told Bay Area News Group. On May 18, the bids start rolling in. As many as 12 groups made their pitches, according to reports. Ten days later, Galatioto trimmed the field to four viable bidders, with Ellison and Mastrov as the only two known bidders at the time. It was not until June that it was reported Celtics minority owner Joe Lacob and Mandalay Entertainment CEO Peter Guber were one of the final four. They were discovered on a tour of the facilities, as was Wall Street financier David Bonderman, head of the fourth group, a week later. All bids were due July 6 and all four bids topped $400 million, according to Galatioto. At this point, Ellison and the Lacob/Guber tandem were the two highest bids. While Warriors fans waited for a resolution, Lacob and Guber were behind the scenes finalizing the sale of the team.

Lacob was in Greece at the time. He was supposed to be vacationing with his fiancé, Nicole Curran, but he was down to the final hours before the deadline to finalize the sale. Lacob was on the phone waiting for the official word the deal was done. The pilot of the helicopter, on his last trip before his union was going on strike, pressured Lacob to get on board but he refused to get off the phone until he got the thumbs-up. Finally, he did. He beat Ellison. "We were going by helicopter to Delphi in Greece," Lacob said, "which is famous for the Oracle. The Oracle of Delphi. To which I then said, ‘We're off to see the Oracle.' The irony, right?" The Warriors officially announced the sale was complete to Lacob and Guber but the drama was not over. Ellison put out a statement that left Warriors fans a bit miffed. "Although I was the highest bidder, Chris Cohan decided to sell to someone else," Ellison said in a statement released by Oracle. "In my experience, this is a bit unusual." According to insiders, Ellison's bid was higher but Galatioto said Ellison's binding bid was late and the Warriors had already informed Lacob's group that they won the bid. Galatioto said it would have been unethical to back out on Lacob's group because Ellison's late bid was slightly higher. The other side of the story? Cohan never wanted to sell to Ellison and used the Oracle billionaire's presence in the process to ramp up the bids. "It was an auction process, so who knows what really went on," Lacob said after being awarded the team. "We did what we felt was right. We've been in it all the way. I'm incredibly proud of the fact that we stayed out of the news. We were not under the radar with respect to Chris Cohan. We did our due diligence. I think we wanted it more than the other guys and I think we are more knowledgeable about basketball than all these others guys. And if I didn't think so we wouldn't have done this." After 15 years of frustration and drama, the Golden State Warriors were finally under new ownership. -- Excerpted by permission from 100 Things Warriors Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Danny Leroux. Copyright (c) 2017. Published by Triumph Books . All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher. Available for purchase from the publisher , Amazon , Barnes & Noble and iTunes . Follow Danny Leroux on Twitter @DannyLeroux . Danny LeRoux discusses 100 THINGS WARRIORS FANS SHOULD KNOW & DO BEFORE THEY DIE (w/ Marcus Thompson II) EAST BAY BOOKSELLERS welcomes Danny LeRoux to the store to discuss his new book, 100 Things Warriors Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die on Wednesday, November 1st, at 7pm. He will be in conversation with Marcus Thompson II . Most Golden State Warriors fans have attended a game at Oracle Arena, marveled at Stephen Curry's effortless shots, and remember where they were when the team won the 2015 NBA championship. But only real fans watched all 73 wins in the 2015-16 season, know where the Warriors played when they first moved to California, or can name whom the Warriors swept in the 1975 Finals. 100 Things Warriors Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die is the ultimate resource guide for true fans of Warriors basketball. Whether you're a die-hard fan from the Run TMC days or a new supporter of Curry, Klay Thompson, Draymond Green, and Kevin Durant, this book contains everything Warriors fans should know, see, and do in their lifetime. Danny Leroux has covered the Warriors for RealGM since 2009 and hosts the "Locked on Warriors" and "RealGM Radio" podcasts. He also writes about the Warriors for The Athleti c and is the NBA salary cap expert for The Sporting News . He has a law degree from UC Hastings and a BA in Economics and Political Science from UCLA. This is his first book. Marcus Thompson II is a sports columnist for the Mercury News and East Bay Times . He has covered the Golden State Warriors exclusively as beat writer for ten seasons. He is the author of Golden: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry . Young Avengers: How Did Hulkling Grow Up So Fast? Today, we look at the way that Marvel has explained how Hulkling, who was conceived during the Kree/Skrull War storyline, is somehow already a teenager. This is "Provide Some Answers," which is a feature where long unresolved plot points are eventually resolved. Just recently, I talked about how there still is no explanation for how two members of the Young Avengers, Wiccan and Speed, are teenagers when their mother, Scarlet Witch, sure did not give birth to them over a decade ago. However, there actually IS an explanation for the same problem with one of their teammates, Wiccan's husband, Hulkling. WHO IS HULKLING? Introduced in 2005, the Young Avengers were a team of young superheroes who each supposedly had some connection to an established Avenger and thus, when the Avengers were "disassembled," a protocol was put out to find the next generation of Avengers, a protocol started by Iron Lad, who was Kang the Conqueror as a teenager, trying to outrun his destiny to become a supervillain. One of the members was Teddy Altman, who appeared to just be a teen version of the Hulk. However, he revealed that he technically did not actually have the Hulk's super-strength. This was because, as revealed in Young Avengers #4 (by Allan Heindberg, Jimmy Cheung, John Dell, Drew Geraci and Justin Ponsor), Hulkling was actually a shapeshifter who just gave the IMPRESSION that he would "Hulk out". That was in keeping with the original hook of the Young Avengers, where none of the first four members were actually who they said they were (Asgardian was actually the magician, Wiccan, Hulkling was a shapeshifter, Patriot was using Mutant Growth Hormone to give himself powers he claimed came from the Super-Soldier Serum and Iron Lad was, of course, Kang). However, that was his new status quo. for a few issues. WHO ARE HULKLING'S PARENTS? In Young Avengers #9 (by Heinberg, Cheung, Dave Meikis, Dell and Ponsor), Hulkling's whole life was thrown out of whack when he was attacked by the Super-Skrull, who claimed that Hulkling was a Skrull. They went to Hulkling's home and it was revealed that his mother WAS, in fact, a Skrull! However, the Super-Skrull quickly reveals that Teddy's "mother" was not his biological mother. This was revealed AFTER the Super-Skrull then accidentally kills Teddy's mom! In the next issue (by Heinberg, Cheung, Rob Stull, Meikis, Dexter Vines and Ponsor), the Super-Skrull gives Teddy the lowdown on his heritage, that he is the son of the Skrull princess Anelle. The Skrull warrior is evasive on who Hulkling's father is, though, but the reason is made clear very soon when a group of Kree warriors attack and it is revealed in Young Avengers #11 (by Heinberg, Cheung, John Livesay, Jay Leisten, Meikis, Matt Ryan, Jaime Mendoza and Ponsor) that Hulkling's father was the Kree legend, Mar-Vell, who was known on Earth as the superhero, Captain Marvel (this occurred during the Kree/Skrull War, when Mar-Vell was a captive of the Skrulls along with Scarlet Witch and Quicksilver). Okay, so wait, Hulkling was conceived during the Kree/Skrull War? Marvel continuity is obviously a bit complex, but there's no way that the current continuity allowed for the Kree/Skrull War to have taken place so long ago that a baby conceived during it would already be a teenager, right? So what was the deal? HOW IS HULKLKING A TEENAGER ALREADY? Like the whole Wiccan/Speed problem, the answer for years was to just avoid answering it and just pretend that it wasn't a huge issue. Hulkling, at least, didn't have the added confusion of souls being mixed into the mess like the Speed/Wiccan situation, but it was still a tough thing to understand, since the Kree/Skrull War just couldn't have been THAT long ago in Marvel history. Finally, though, the answer was revealed in Lords of Empyre: Emperor Hulkling #1 (by Chip Zdarsky, Anthony Oliveira, Manuel Garcia, Cam Smith and Triona Farrell). In a flashback, we see the destruction of the Skrull homeworld by Galactus. Among the people who were killed in that attack was Anelle herself and before she dies, she reflects back on her lost child and she reveals that in order to properly protect her baby (who, due to its mixed Skrull/Kree heritage, was quite a big deal), she had one of her handmaidens take him and hide (the handmaiden took on the human identity of Teddy Altman's mother) and as an added piece of protection, they actually traveled to Earth in the PAST through time travel technology I had no idea the Skrulls had. So there ya go, Teddy is a teenager already because he traveled to Earth in the past as a baby. Not a bad solution at all! Hulkling's dual heritage was later used in Empyre as the basis for placing him as the king of basically both the Skrulls and the Kree and, in effect, the emperor of the universe, which was the end result of that storyline (which also involved Hulkling marrying his longtime boyfriend and teammate, Wiccan). This sure beats having to put a three-year old on the throne, which is what they would have had to do if there were no time travel shenanigans involved. You do have to wonder why the Skrulls didn't use their time travel technology to, you know, avoid being killed by Galactus when the homeworld was destroyed. Or perhaps we'll see some more Skrulls pop up as time travelers in the future? Ranking The Top 20 Draft Picks By Former Green Bay Packers G.M. Ted Thompson. Former Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson was terrific when it came to the NFL Draft. Former Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson died Wednesday. A cause of death wasn’t given, but the 68-year-old Thompson revealed in 2019 that he had been diagnosed with an autonomic disorder. The Packers went 125-82-1 and won Super Bowl XLV during Thompson’s 13 years as G.M. And a major reason was Thompson had more success in the NFL Draft than most of his peers. “He would bury guys on the draft board that he really, really liked and he knew when draft day came, they would be two or three rounds higher than where they sat all spring long,” said current Packers G.M Brian Gutekunst, who worked under Thompson. “For those of us that had been around for a while, that was always our goal to figure out which one of those players were there. “I think, great story from me, I think it was the first time I really pegged it was Jordy Nelson. And we kept watching tape and kept talking about how good this player was and he never would move him and he never would move him. That’s when I was all of a sudden, I was like, ‘OK, I got it.’ ” Thompson certainly had ‘it’ when it came to the draft. Here are Thompson’s top-10 picks. When compiling the list, several factors were taken into consideration. In addition to a player’s productivity, I also weighed where he was taken in the draft. So for example, if two players had similar careers in Green Bay, the player drafted later ranks higher. WWE Raw Results: Winners, News And Notes After Eva Marie’s Debut. Kyrie Irving, James Harden Are Out For Game 5, But Brooklyn Nets Are (Surprisingly) Still Favored To Win NBA Championship. A New Tennis GOAT? How Novak Djokovic Stacks Up Against Nadal And Federer After French Open Classic. 1. Aaron Rodgers (QB, R1, 2005) — Thompson’s very first pick was his best. Rodgers has won two MVP’s and is the frontrunner to win a third this season . Rodgers led Green Bay to a Super Bowl title during the 2010 season and his Packers are still alive this season. Rodgers holds several team records and possesses the highest career quarterback rating in NFL history (103.9). 2. Clay Matthews (OLB, R1, 2009) — Thompson gave up three picks in the 2009 draft (he also received a fifth rounder back) for the 26 th pick in Round 1. Thompson then took Matthews, who set the franchise record with 83.5 sacks. Matthews was a six-time Pro Bowler in Green Bay and was named the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year by the Pro Football Writers Association in 2010. In addition, Matthews forced a fumble on the first play of the fourth quarter in Super Bowl XLV that was vital in Green Bay winning the game. 3. David Bakhtiari (OT, R4, 2013) — Bakhtiari has ranked among the top left tackles in football the past five seasons. Bakhtiari has been named to three Pro Bowls and was named first-team all-Pro twice. If Bakhtiari can recover from a torn ACL he suffered last month, and regain his past form, he’ll have a chance to reach the Pro Football Hall of Fame one day. 4. Davante Adams (WR, R2, 2014) — In just seven seasons, Adams already ranks fourth in team history in receptions (546), fourth in receiving touchdowns (62) and eighth in receiving yards (6,568). Adams is still just 28, and if he stays healthy, he could shatter most of Green Bay’s receiving records before he’s done. 5. Josh Sitton (OG, R4, 2008) — Sitton was one of football’s top guards from 2009-15, when he went to four Pro Bowls and was named first- team all-Pro in 2014. Sitton was also named second-team all-Decade by Pro Football Focus for the 2010s. The fiery, ultra-competitive Sitton went 37 games between 2013-’15 without allowing a sack and was versatile enough to play either guard spot. 6. Jordy Nelson (WR, R2, 2008) — Nelson ranks third in team history in receptions (550), second in touchdowns (69) and fifth in yards (7,848). Nelson was named to the Pro Bowl in 2014 and was the NFL’s Comeback Player of the Year in 2016. 7. Nick Collins (S, R2, 2005) — Collins, a little-known player from tiny Bethune-Cookman, was the second player Thompson ever drafted. After three somewhat non-descript seasons, Collins played as well as any safety in football from 2008-’10. In that time, he reached three Pro Bowls and made one of the biggest plays of Super Bowl XLV with a 37-yard interception return for a touchdown. Collins suffered a herniated disk in his neck in 2011 and never played again. 8. Mason Crosby (K, R7, 2007) — Crosby is the Packers’ all-time leading scorer by a wide margin with 1,682 career points. He’s made 81.8 % of his career field goals, including 95.0% in last two years. He’s also made 97.6% of his extra points. 9. Greg Jennings (WR, R2, 2006) — Ranks 10th in Packers history in career receptions (425), ninth in receiving yards (6,537) and seventh in receiving touchdowns (53). Had three consecutive 1,000-yard receiving seasons from 2008-10, tied for NFC lead in touchdowns in 2010 (12) and played in two Pro Bowls. His two touchdown receptions in Super Bowl XLV rank among the biggest plays in team history. 10. Bryan Bulaga (OT, R1, 2010) — Tremendous 10-year starter who ranked among the NFL’s elite right tackles when healthy. Bulaga battled injuries early in his career and missed 27 games in his first four seasons. But he seemed to get better with age and shined as both a pass and run blocker. Ultimate Warrior's Life Was A Mess Before Death. A family member of the Ultimate Warrior reveals shocking details about the late wrestler's life before he passed away in 2014. When The Ultimate Warrior died in 2014, it was probably the most eerie deaths in pro wrestling. In the days leading up to his passing, Warrior had made peace with the WWE and many of his former colleagues after years of estrangement, and had cut an unforgettable speech on Monday Night Raw. With many fans of the belief that he knew his days were numbered, he died one day later after succumbing to a heart attack. And while it seemed that Warrior had gotten closure for many things in his colorful and often controversial life, a new report suggests that he wasn’t at all happy, and not at all financially stable in his final days. Worse, the report also alleges that his wife, Dana, was on the verge of leaving him. A report from Wrestling News cited a comment on The Ultimate Warrior’s official Facebook page, with the man claiming to be the late WWE Hall of Famer’s brother, Jay Hellwig. Referring to his brother by his original nickname of Jim, Jay claimed that he had long been trying to talk about Warrior’s issues, only to see his comments deleted or blocked. But based on his conversations with his brother shortly before his death, Jay Hellwig said that Warrior was “out of money” and miserable, and at a point where Dana and their two daughters were allegedly about to leave him. In what can be referred to at some heavy-handed accusations against Dana Warrior, Jay Hellwig repeatedly referred to his brother’s widow as “fake,” accusing her of being a gold-digger from the time he first met her when she was 22 and fresh out of college. He alleged that Dana called her mother-in-law “1,015 times a day” for the first two days after Warrior’s death, hounding her for what may have been the money she was to inherit from her late husband. Below are Jay’s further comments on Dana Warrior, edited for clarity, as he accuses her of being a hypocrite through her appearances as a WWE ambassador, and alleges that Warrior wanted to make peace with the WWE so that he could preserve his marriage. “And now to see her stand up like she has something to say that’s worth listening too [sic], it’s pathetic. Like I said, Jim dying was the best thing ever happened to her. Why do you think he went back to WWE? So his wife wouldn’t leave him.” In conclusion, Jay Hellwig acknowledged that The Ultimate Warrior was no saint and was, as he sees it, a “controlling, self-centered narcissist.” At the end of the day, however, they were still brothers. As we mentioned above, it's quite a thing to talk about your brother's marital and financial problems, and call his wife a gold-digger. The fact that Jay Hellwig made those claims three years after Warrior's death also makes his words worth taking with a grain of salt. It will be interesting to hear Dana Warrior's side of the story, though she has yet to issue any comment as of this writing.