Golden State Warriors open to name change
The Warriors moved to Oracle Arena in 1971 after playing in San Francisco for 11 years.(Garrett Ellwood/Getty Images)
The Golden State Warriors want help from fans on deciding if they should change their name after the team purchased land in San Francisco for use for a new arena, reports Ramona Shelburne of ESPN.com.
The franchise has used the "Warriors" name since 1946 and were known as the San Francisco Warriors from 1962 to 1971. The team will keep its "Warriors" moniker but will consider dropping Golden State for San Francisco.
The team plays in the 19,000 seat Oracle Arena in Oakland, which was opened in 1966 and is the oldest arena in the NBA.
"We're very curious what our fans think of that," Warriors president and CEO Rick Welts said. "I couldn't imagine making that decision in the very near future, but we definitely want to see what our fans prefer."
"The first assignment we gave the architects was to make sure that every seat in the new building is as close or closer than the comparable seat at Oracle. We're doing that by actually making the building smaller. We're going from 19,000 seats to 18,000 seats."
The team plans to moved into a new arena before the 2018-19 season.
