One of you for supporting the warriors foundation, for supporting the chamber. Welcome to the new chase center. Congratulations to rodney fong, the new executive director. I am looking forward to the future and the work to do to make San Francisco an incredible place just like this Amazing Center you are enjoying here this morning. Thank you all so much. [applause. ] thank you very much, mayor breed, we celebrate the opening of chase center. I invite you to welcome to the stage the San Francisco chamber of commerce board chair and chief revenue officer, john gingrich. Get ready. Thank you all for being here today. Nice to see a lot of Friendly Faces in the crowd. I serve as board chair for the San Francisco chamber of commerce. I do want to say thank you to all of the sponsors and especially my former colleagues. Thank you for being the presenting sponsor today. The San Francisco chamber is excited to watch the Business Community grow throughout mission bay and here with the retail, restaurants, public plaza and office space. Also the chase center, this amazing venue which is going to create thousands of jobs and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and Economic Growth for San Francisco. Happy to have this here. I spent a number of years working with the warriors to see this come to fruition. It is amazing. I am happy we are here welcoming everyone to chase center. You also probably know the Economic Growth will be fueled not only by the warriors, our Basketball Team here, but through top recording artists. Some of the acts coming up include janette jackson, elton john and the San Francisco symphony and metallica on friday. I hope you experience the first concert here as well. I would like to recognize the Wonderful Partnership over the years between the Golden State Warriors and chamber. It dates back to the early days of the team looking to build an arena in San Francisco and it is hitting a new high with our welcome together and our event today as we welcome the warriors to San Francisco. Thank you, warriors, for being a great sponsor and partner over the years and we look forward to many more years to come. I am delighted to welcome the next panel. These folks need no introduction. Please welcome joe, rick, president and coo of the warriors, bob meyers, general manager of the warriors, c. E. O. And the moderator bob fitzgerald, the play by play announcer of the Golden State Warriors. Welcome, guys. [applause. ] if you are going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair. How many people are morning people . Do we have any morning people . 25 years in the nba we are nighttime people. These are amazing. I was thinking just sitting here the building got built. How many people lived here longer than 15 years . Raise your hand. Did you honestly think privately financed in San Francisco for 1. 6 billion, the ultimate arena in the world would be built right here . Anybody believe that . We are here. Lets start with joe on that. The ribboncutting yesterday. This is a sieve vick asset civic asset. This is the camp fire for 2019, a Gathering Place for sports and entertainment. Can you believe it is here in believe me your thoughts that friday night metallica kicks it off . It is surreal, to be honest. Yesterday was quite the day, thanks to rick and kim and all of the people that made this place happen. It is amazing that it went off as well as it did given how hard of a process this has been to get done. It is here. It is real, and we are just incredibly proud as a team and organization for it to be done. I hope you enjoy it as much as we already enjoy it. I dont view it as done. There are a few more things to do. Rick, you talked where the warriors fit as community citizen. We had great presentations today on what impact this will have for the bay area. Walking around i see art everywhere within the whole concourses and outside, restaurants activated over the next year, a park, ferry service, so much where this will be a new destination spot for San Francisco. Yesterday was a great day. We christened a couple of new San Francisco land be marks that will take the place on the set here in the future. We started with presenting the art installation as part of the huge commitment to public art here. For those who didnt come in that way, i want you to walk around the whole three plus acres before you leave today and really see the whole depth of the art presentation around this place. I texted joe a couple mornings ago. I was here really early. Something that summed it up. Rick, you are always here. A little cot back here. I happened to walk into the building and two parents and their kid were riding by on a bicycle. Just as they passed me, this kid yelled out to his parents, i cant believe how many days in my life i am going to spend in that building. Wow. Right . That is what these are. These are places for basketball games, concerts. Stevie wonder was there last night. Ultimately they are places to create memories and influence our lives. I wouldnt be sitting up here today if i didnt go to the games at the old come seumwith coliseum with my dad. If i asked all of you where and who did you see for your first concert, nine out of 10 could answer that question because it is part of your life that goes on forever. That is what we are in the business of doing, creating memories. This place is going to be a very special place for that i will attribute to the morning and lack of coffee. The warriors we had nice applause. This is the greatest five year run in the history of the nba, most wins ever. 63 739. Five straight trips to the finals, three championships and a guy who actually went to the coliseum as a kid is the president of basketball operations, bob meyers, the next chapter of the warriors, eight new players the practice facilities right here on site. Give us the basketball perspective and the excitement of the new roster and new goal to keep it going. It is interesting to hear you. I have to remind myself what everyone has accomplished. I do it every morning when i brush my teeth because i had 20 other years that werent as great as the last five. Joe trained me so look ahead. I dont know if i get to look back. We are moving forward. We won the championship. I remember the joe moment we won in cleveland, i guess that was 2017, and we have a party and i kind of went in. It is the one night where you feel like you can pause and enjoy it. Joe is sitting there at the table. He says sit down. What do you think about the draft . What are we doing in a week . Can we just not for tonight study any film tonight. Yes, i am proud of the last five years as everyone should be that supports our team. Heading to this building i think it is appropriate that we are bringing a lot of new players into a fantastic new building. It was a time. I loved oracle. I think you probably felt the same way. We have our favorite old pair of tennis shoes or sweater. Eventually you have to give that up. It doesnt mean it didnt serve you well. There is a time for a new sweater or shoes. This is a pretty damn good one here. You will be introduced to a lot of new players. I dont know how it fits. That is the joy of it all. We took a puzzle and now we will put it together. We have great cornerstones. We are adding russell and a lot of youth. We went from second or third oldest to the second or third youngest team. It is all going to happen here. I am so excited as a basketball fan. When people ask about chase center the thing that comes to my mind is i cant wait to watch a basketball game here. I just cant wait. The associations with rackets we wear the badge proudly on our jerseys, it made the wo warriors global. How does chase center enhance that and add to that association . There is no doubt the association with the warriors held records. We look at a couple different dimensions. We set out on the goal three years ago to become a household name like we have in japan. We felt there were a couple things to do. We had to connect with consumers and find ways to do that. When you look at the history, there is a lot of sports in how we do that. To raise our Brand Recognition and awareness which was zero before the warriors. It has helped inputting ourselves on the map to start the journey with consumers. We strongly believe in hospitality and building relationships with businesses and the partners that we work with. This provides a great platform. We believe our success is success of the partners and together we win. It is aligned with empowerment plant forge. Last but not least is our employees, our people. When we started we had skeptics. We had to convert our people. Our people are the ones who will take us on the jennie of putting our a long journey of putting ourselves on the map. I cant tell you how much of a change it was when we announced the partnership with the warriors. We suddenly had believers and people wanting to be part of the journey. For us this partnership and association has been tremendously successful on many different fronts. When you think about chase we feel like this is just another step in that mission. We feel like this venue may get remembered or called upon as a sports and entertainment arena. We think of this as a symbol of innovation and optimism. I think those two things are things that the warriors and Founding Partners share in common. We are extremely proud about the association we have. Superexcited about the venue. Like bob, i can not wait to fill this thing up. I see throwing down a threepointer. Bring it on. We have seating arranged. Joe has never attempt with skeptics. This guy bought the team and pointed in front of 20,000 people that is a lonely championship banner we want another one. Everyone said lets have a winning record. Lets build a new building and make it stateoftheart and set the standard for entertainment venue anywhere in the world. People said come on. Now the next thing is you are saying supports and entertainment company. I hear that with 40 or 50 basketball games but 200 events. People dont realize the warriors are running everything from the converts, concessions, parking, sponsorships. What does sports and entertainment mean for the company and the team . You have to have something to strive for. You cant it is on your laurels, bob. I have to go back to the office now. laughter you know what is really interesting about this effort and opening this building is what a lot of you dont entirely understand. In oakland, we were tenants. We rented the building. Most of the employees you ran into were not hours. We didnt have a lot of control. There was only one kitchen. It is a very, very facility, great place for a Basketball Team with a lot of great history. This is a whole new thing for us. Rick has done an amazing job. Bob has done an amazing job, too, so far. Rick has done an equally amazing job. The fact not only getting the building built while we were building a Business Organization up, doing well on the court but getting the place built and hiring the people. We 500 employees. We run all of this. This is a whole new this. This is a challenge to make this operate smoothly. I was worried. Last night i was like i wonder what it will sound like, the entrance and exit. Friday should be the ultimate challenge meltta metallyca and e symphony. We have to transform to your question as an organization completely. This is a whole new thing not just a Basketball Team. We are Sports Entertainment operation. We have to run the things going on, restaurants outside, ingress, egress, so many things we have to do. If we can do that Going Forward we can do more. We can maybe become a bigger organization to do more things. Now, rick, with the warriors there are two football teams and two baseball teams one basketball name. The golden state name is in the entire area. You were involved in the Community Coming together for this. You think of the entire bay area. Where the warriors fit in the community and the community as septs and resources it took for this building with the kid righting buyin the bike the touchstone of memories for everybody in the bay area for years and years, give me a thought how people pulled together from all different communities knowing this is the new spot. The warriors are representing the entire bay area. That is what i said all last year. Our whole organization did. We were leaving a of course, not leaving a city. Oakland is an integral part who we are and will remain that way in the future. One of the things i am most proud of iskaiser permanente. All of our offices are here as of now. We moved everybody here from downtown oakland headquarters which was our practice facility. We have this amazing facilities to repurpose. With kaiser we are taking those basketball courts that had to be reserved for players. We will teach more kids to play basketball and taking the business offices and repurposing those for the not for profits the war warriors sut for space where they are focused on different aspects trying to improve educational and career outlooks for kids. It is powerful. We have one if the in the east bay. The other foment now is firmly planted here. This always will be the bay area team. [applause. ] very well said. Before you had joe breathing down your neck, you were a player agent, and you know in terms of different perceptions, different cities have and the warriors have changed that perception in this building now adds to it. When you deem with colleague deal with colleagues around the league and you see the practice facility overlooking the bay and see the amount of every asset that could be there for our players within the basketball operations campus right here. How does that enhance where the warriors it is within the nba . Speaking of my prior life as an agent, you get a sense from the players standpoint what organizations speak to them and places they would like to go, and i remember as an agent i was talking to a client. I said golden state wants to work out and the guy looked at me and said what is that . I said the warriors are in california. He said yeah, yeah, i have to work out for them . I said it is a high pick. This is 10, 15 years ago. It is amazing now to see what we have become and really testament to joe and people like rick that spearhead this thing. When you are in the position i am in with intense pressure from an owner like joe you want the tools to succeed. Pressure is fine. Everybody that chooses this job. Joe, pressure is to embraced. If you are afraid of it you should probably do a different job, buts when you are out there in the world of trying to recruit four or five or 10 of the best people at what they do, you better come with something very good. You better come with good ownership, good coach, pay these guys. You better provide a great place to go to work. Even if you do that it is hard. With this arena, i feel like we are now able to check all of the boxes. If we lose a player it is not because we are de efficient in a area. Sometimes they go another way. If we dont want to lose any ties. I think a place like that you win every tie. I dont care how cynical. Players are young with great options. Take any player in the league walking in the locker room that you may or may not have seen. They will say wow, this is prettpretty good. When you can provide a place to work where they can get excited to go. Those excited to go to your job knew what that feels like. You perform better. Thank you to everybody that built this place. It is unbelievable. The construction workers. I dont know how many thousands it is going to help our Basketball Team to win more wherever the banners are up there. More of those. I want to add one thing. You have done a great job, really. Great job, however, we can keep going on the next question. I want to say one thing thiss is the San Francisco chamber of commerce, is it not . We must remember we do have a goal here. We have a new goal. That is to bring a championship to San Francisco in this building. [applause. ] why basketball . I see in rick welch the architect of the dream team the first professionals in the olympics. That spawned others the 7 billion people in the world we watched the most talented 450 individuals. It is a team sport where they say great athletes do for themselves. Really greatness is doing for others. What is it about basketball . You enhanced the nba in addition to the partnership of the warriors. Sports in what we do. Iin japan weep we own champions. You know, we love the association with organizations like this and the nba because there is a crossover between the values when you think about it from a business standpoint and sports standpoint. You can have the best players in the world, best employees and talent in the world. If they dont come together as a team, you will get beat. If they are not innovating on the court and we are trying to innovate in business, you are going to get beat by somebody else. If you are not putting in the extra hours, you are not going to be successful. For us there is so much, so much between the businesses that we are in and then that connection point with the fans. There is that passion, emotion that sports brings. That is when we feel like we can connect with people in a very authentic and meaningful way. We believe sports is the way to do that. We seek out opportunities within sports to find that connection. We are very fortunate to be able to take that globally. Joe, the final word you said in addition. That was the final word. It is your building. I will let you finish. With two with two 00 events 0 events. You wanted to hear feedback for any event here. I would like to give joe the opportunity to give his cell phone to anybody. If you have any issues starting on friday, this is the guy. He said he wants to hear about everything in the building. I think given the bay area starting friday you will hear a lot of feedback. You will get exactly what you were hoping for. How many years