By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

The Warriors made it official this morning on behalf of majority owner Chris Cohan:

FOR SALE.

Cohan has hired a franchise-sale specialist, Galatioto Sports Partners, to manage the disposal of the team he ran into the ground during 16 seasons of ownership — 15 of those playoff-free.

It seems fairly obvious that Cohan is bringing in GSP to attempt to drive up the price from the $320 million value upon which Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison — the odds-on favorite to wind up as the next Warriors owner — based his early bid. According to Tim Kawakami, who has been all over this story for the better part of a year now, there are five or six other groups that have been waiting until now to get involved in the bidding.

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

Word comes from this morning’s shootaround (via Jaymee Sire’s Tweet) that the Warriors are keeping forward Anthony Tolliver and making room by cutting loose guard Speedy Claxton.

The move is both expected to some extent — someone prediced correctly almost a week ago that the W’s would keep Tolliver — and yet also surprising, in that Claxton represented one of the Warriors’ largest expiring contracts at $5.2 million.

Honestly, I thought it would be either Chris Hunter or Devean George who got the kiss off to allow the Warriors to retain Tolliver, who had already served out two 10-day contracts and had to be given a deal for the remainder of the year or let go.

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

When is Chris Cohan going to sell the Warriors?

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that question after I started covering the team, I might have earned enough cash to buy Cohan out by myself.

The idea of Golden State changing hands has been on the front burner again since reports surfaced in July that Cohan was seriously looking to jettison his 80 percent stake in the Warriors, and the flame was turned up Monday when Yahoo! Sports said there is a new group of bidders interested in the team. According to Adrian Wojnarowski, a “well-moneyed and politically connected” group wants to pay off Cohan and move the W’s to a privately funded arena in downtown San Francisco.

Unfortunately for those fans who feel — and I can’t say that I disagree with this viewpoint — that Cohan’s tenure is the root cause for why the franchise has been mired in an endless cavalcade of losing seasons, disgruntled stars, unemployed coaches and disaffected season-ticket holders, there is no Mikhail Prokhorov in the wings, set to swoop in on a tidal wave of rubles.

The people who are looking to buy from Cohan — a list which includes Oracle’s Larry Ellison — are willing to spend hundreds of millions, but rightly not willing to overpay for the privilege of owning a team that won 29 games last season and has a loose cannon with an untradeable contract willing to sink the ship if he’s not moved out.

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