Silicon Valley venture capitalist takes credit for the Golden State Warriors’ record-smashing season

Steph Curry is a force of nature for the Warriors, but it’s taken more than just his natural talent to build the team to where it is, argues its owner Joe Lacob.

Lacob is a partner at Silicon Valley venture capital firm, Kleiner Perkins.

“It’s not just Steph Curry,” he told The New York Times. “It’s architecting a team, a style of play, the way they all play together. It’s all extremely thought through.”

In a profile for the magazine, Lacob seems to take credit for turning around the team he bought in 2010. The $450 million deal, at the time, sounded excessive. The Warriors, after all, hadn’t won a championship since 1975.

Yet, Lacob promised another win would come after five years, and he was right.

“The great, great venture capitalists who built company after company, that’s not an accident,” he said. “And none of this is an accident, either.”

Lacob isn’t the only venture capitalist behind the Warriors. Social+Capital partner Chamath Palihapitiya, Redpoint Ventures’ John Walecka, Sequoia Capital’s Mark Stevens, Benchmark Capital’s Bob Kagle, Juvo Capital’s Harry Tsao, YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley, and Zappos cofounder Nick Swinmurn are all on the executive board.

Still, to suggest the incredible season is thanks largely to the VCs who built the business behind it? That may not sit too well with all the fans, who have been witnessing some incredible talent on the court.

Currently, the Golden State Warriors are on pace for the best season in NBA history, even better than the 1996 Chicago Bulls season with Michael Jordan.

Land of BasketballHere’s how the Warriors’ season currently stacks up.

And Curry, just one of the teams’ few stars, is having one of the best seasons personally in NBA history.

The Warriors are now worth around $2 billion, more than four times what Lacob and his investor group paid to buy the franchise.

“We’ve crushed them on the basketball court, and we’re going to for years because of the way we’ve built this team,” Lacob said.

You can read the full profile here >>