Warriors' Mission Bay arena opening set back to 2019

The Mission Bay Alliance lawsuit against the Warriors has officially set the opening of the team's arena back one year, team president and Chief Operating Officer Rick Welts said Friday.

Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News first reported the announcement.

"We're officially announcing that the arena will open in 2019 rather than in 2018 in light of the litigation that the Mission Bay Alliance recently filed," Welts said.

This is the first true victory for the Mission Bay Alliance and represents a possible harbinger for things to come vis-a-via the court case, which was filed and will take place in Sacramento Superior Court. Considering the Warriors' initial response after reviewing the suit was to delay the opening of the stadium for a year, the Mission Bay Alliance likely feels they have a strong case to delay the arena even longer. With their strong team of attorneys that specializes in California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) and sports law, the Mission Bay Alliance is well-positioned to drag this case out for a long time.

Sam Singer, the official spokesman of the Mission Bay Alliance, said the case wouldn't be ruled upon until November 2016 at the earliest.

"We believe ... the Mission Bay Alliance's two lawsuits (one against the Warriors and multiple city agencies; one against UCSF) and growing public opposition ... will lead the Warriors to even more delays and ultimately cause the Warriors to depart the Mission Bay neighborhood," Singer said in a press release.

For their part, the Warriors were confident that they would come out victorious in the end, as they've done so many times this season and throughout the undertaking of moving to Mission Bay.

"We bought into this process three years ago," Welts said. "This is part of the process. Anybody has the right to sue. So we accept that. We're going to win [the case]."