Warriors to Keep Golden State Name Despite 2019 Move to San Francisco

The Golden State Warriors are moving from Oakland to San Francisco for the 2019-20 season when their new arena, the Chase Center, opens. But the team won't change its name.

"Let's make it official," Warriors president and COO Rick Welts said Wednesday during an appearance on KNBR's the Murph & Mac Show, confirming the team won't become the San Francisco Warriors.

A name change would have been nothing new for the Warriors, who started as the Philadelphia Warriors (1946-1962) before moving West, when they were the San Francisco Warriors from 1962 to 1971. They then took the Golden State name, which they've maintained through the present.

With the latest relocation, however, don't be surprised if the team dons some throwback San Francisco Warriors jerseys. 

The new Chase Center in Mission Bay, meanwhile, will house the entirety of the team's operations.

As Al Saracevic of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote in January, "The Warriors will have two practice courts underneath the front entrance, and the team's office headquarters will also be housed in the arena. It's all wedged into an already crowded area, surrounded by office buildings at the intersection of Third and 16th Streets. Like AT&T Park some 20 years ago, Chase Center is rising in the city's newest neighborhood."

And the Warriors believe their new building will be an instrumental part of their future.

"It's the absolute foundation for our success for—I would argue—decades to come, because it ensures that we're going to be competitive financially with any other team in the league," Welts said in December, per Sam Amick of USA Today. "Even under this new collective bargaining agreement, the numbers are getting kind of eye-popping, if they weren't already, in terms of what it's going to take financially to field a championship-caliber team. And I think our view is that it ensures this future for as far into the future as we can see."