No professional sports organization has turned around its fortunes as much as the Golden State Warriors in recent years. Accustomed to being a bottom feeder for other Western Conference teams, the Warriors are now the toast of the NBA.
Winners of 13 consecutive heading into Wednesday night’s matchup with the Houston Rockets, Golden State boasts the best record in the NBA at 18-2. It also unveiled updated plans for a waterfront arena in San Francisco.
This ever-evolving arena plan has gone through some changes over time, as you can see by models released to the public in August compared to those introduced on Wednesday (h/t Bay Area Sports Guy).
Changes are expected at this stage in the process, but these new models seem to get into more detail about the arena project.
This is also a major change-up from previous versions, which looked a bit too much like a toilet for our taste.
As Bay Area News Group Warriors beat writer Diamond Leung pointed out, these changes were in part due to a social media firestorm created by the previous model.
Here’s the new overhead view.
According to the Warriors, the new arena will be privately financed and built on private land. It’s slated to open in time for the 2018-2019 season and will be on the San Francisco waterfront.
This is big news for not just professional sports in the Bay Area, as a new indoor arena in San Francisco can also play host to the best musicians the world has to offer. Surprisingly enough, the city doesn’t have a viable location for such events right now.
The Warriors also indicated that they haven’t thought about changing the team’s name from Golden State to San Francisco, though that’s likely something that will come up the closer we get to a relocation from Oakland.
Photo: NBA.com