Golden Entertainment is betting that stepping away from public markets will pay off with something valuable in today’s gaming environment: time. Days after the Las Vegas-based operator finalized a $1.16 billion triple-net master lease deal involving real estate investment trust Vici Properties Inc., company Executive Vice President and COO Blake Sartini II said the transaction marks a strategic reset designed to eliminate the constraints of quarterly earnings cycles and refocus leadership on long-term execution. The simplest explanation, he said, is that returning Golden Entertainment to its roots as a privately-operated entity was the best way to serve its customers, many of whom reside in Southern Nevada. “Family ownership, to us, really means real faces with real accountability,” Sartini II told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.…