Looking back at how Joe Lacob ‘took' Warriors away from Larry Ellison

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Joe Lacob and Peter Guber agreed to buy the Warriors from Chris Cohan on July 15, 2010. They shocked the world because it was assumed that Oracle co-founder, Larry Ellison, would gain control of the team.

Since we are exactly 10 years removed from the franchise-altering event, it's a good time to remind everybody how Lacob and Guber pulled it off.

To do so, we turn to a comment the late former NBA commissioner David Stern made in the summer of 2018.

“Larry could’ve made the purchase, but he didn’t," Stern told Ethan Strauss of The Athletic. "He skipped a beat and Joe moves right in and took the team away from him.”

Wild stuff indeed.

Lacob and Guber's investment group paid $450 million, which wasn't as much as Ellison's offer.

"Although I was the highest bidder, Chris Cohan decided to sell to someone else," Ellison said 10 years ago. "In my experience this is a bit unusual. Nonetheless, I wish the Warriors and their fans nothing but success under their new ownership."

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Speaking of success, the Warriors reached the NBA Finals five straight years from 2015 to 2019, winning three championships in the process. Additionally, the franchise relocated to the brand-new Chase Center in San Francisco.

[RELATED: What Myers told wife as Dubs fans booed Lacob at Oracle]

You combine all of that and you understand why Forbes in February valued the Warriors at $4.3 billion. But for Lacob, it's always about what lies ahead.

“You have to be an optimist, you have to work harder than anyone else and you have to be looking to the future all the time," he told Strauss in July 2018. "You can’t rest on your laurels.

"If we’re going to rest on our laurels, all right, we might as well go sit on the beach and call it a day.”

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