The 50% of Warriors fans who always beg the front office to trade away our best players for a legit PF like Brand or Boozer should pay attention when we play the Suns tonight.  Phoenix thought adding a Hall Of Fame center to a run n' gun offense like ours would take them to the next level.  Now nobody's happy in Arizona and Terry Porter is getting more grief than any coach in the sport.  Or a better example: Brand to the Sixers.  He was supposed to put that young offense-heavy team over the top but now they can't wait to get rid of him and go back to running up and down the court.

Those of you who think that this team is one Carlos Boozer away from the Championship should think again.  Whenever you geniuses try to get us a big banger power forward, I read it as code for:

Trade all our best run n' gun players away so we can play basketball like everyone else. 

If you think this road leads the Warriors to a championship you've got the wrong team.  Few to none of our current squad would shine in a slowed down offense.  How does Biedrins use his particular strengths on a half court team?  Monta?  Jax?  You think you're sick of iso plays and 3 point madness now?  The logical conclusion of that strategy is to blow up this entire team and start over, building around some big side of beef like Boozer or Brand.  No thanks. 

Let's develop these youngsters and see what happens.  Sure, some of them will be poached and the Bay will continue to be at the bottom of the list for new players.  But only a team whose front office is all on the same page could remake their roster and their entire playing philosophy without tragic consequences.  Any attempts by Cohan and Rowell to do so would be what we in the Shakespeare world call a "problem play" (meaning you can't tell if it's supposed to be a comedy or a tragedy).

Massively entertained by the back and forth ranting over whether Nelson knows anything at all about basketball.  Just like the arguments we have over certain players from time to time.  The thing is, when we get on players about their deficiencies, we usually offer an alternative (if not Crawford then Marbury, for example).

I just read 78 comments on an anti-Nelson post and only one replacement (Avery) was mentioned.  So come on, then!  If we're so fed up with Don Nelson, who should his replacement be?  Names:

Keith Smart: Knows the system (what system?), generally respected and well-liked.  No head coaching bona fides.  Too close to the same old?

Flip Saunders:  A well-liked coach whose offensive systems are now completely exposed.  Hey, bonus points--he's already allergic to defense!

Avery Johnson: A superhero.  Former Warrior.  Got done wrong by the only owner we hate more than our own.  Unfortunately, he's pretty serious, passionate, committed, and believes in defense.  Hmm.  Definitely not a good fit for this squad.

Ettore Messina?  Eddie Jordan?  Sam Mitchell?  PJ Carlesimo? Okay, okay.  I'll be the straight man.  You guys do all the PJ punchlines.

Somebody new?  Who?  Your thoughts.  And go ahead and throw in your dream wishes for a new owner and front office executive as well.  What the hell, it's Christmas.

This won't be the most popular post on the site, but I thought I'd share a few of the things that have kept me a die-hard Warriors fan for over twenty years.

The Warriors do not play to win, they play to wow.  Now I know that many of you wish we had the San Antonio Spurs here--a terrific professional mistake-free franchise that plays hoops the way my father and grandfather remember.  But instead we have the Harlem Globetrotters.  Nellieball is exciting because it features super-athletic, extremely fast, flashy players who can think on their feet and excel at fast breaks.  Even in Nelson's interregnum in the 90's the Warriors remained one of the most exciting franchises to watch because they didn't lose their style.

Here's where you say: Style doesn't win games!  I agree.  But here's where we may differ:  Winning games has never been the top priority of the Golden State Warriors.  Putting on a great show and putting paying customers in the seats is what any pro sports team is about.  We are not winning wars at all costs here.  This is entertainment.  And in a world of thirty teams each trying to differentiate themselves and keep the home fans excited, the Warriors do a better job than almost any franchise of any sport.

Yes, we keep losing and hardly ever see the playoffs.  That's fine.  The playoffs are for the likes of Jerry Sloan and Kobe Bryant, ultra-competitors I'd never want to get trapped in an elevator with.  I was a soccer player up till high school.  Then the super competitive monsters kept popping veins in their necks at our lack of fire and missed assignments and I just quit.  With a**holes like that around I wasn't enjoying myself any more.

Now what makes the Warriors special is that other teams are eager to play us.  They have a very good chance of winning, it's true, but more to the point they get a license to ill when they come to Oakland.  Everyone, including the psychotically competitive, love showing up and having a run n' gun streetball fiesta every few weeks.  And we, the lucky fans, get to invite the greatest hoops players from all over the world to Oaktown to put on the best show in the country.

How else to explain it?  When you have Jax, Mags, Crawford, Monta, and Biedrins as your starting five you're not working toward a trophy, you're working toward a highlight reel--and contrary to common wisdom, which is that winning puts fans in the seats--we have learned that a feel-good highlight reel is what keeps us paying the increasingly expensive tickets.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy the ride.  When another team executes a pretty play and dunks on us I cheer just about as loud as when the Dubs do it.  And when we beat all expectations and break every lily-white heart in Dallas against all odds it just makes the story all the sweeter.  But don't expect this crew to compete against teams designed to win the championship.  And accept that if the NBA only held teams that played basketball "the right way" as Larry Brown likes to sniff, this league would be a hell of a lot more boring.  If you want to cheer on the Warriors for the next twenty years, learn to enjoy what you got.  If you just HAVE to cheer on a winner, because you're an ultra-competitive a**hole yourself, then root for KG, because he is a god among men.

No.  Actually it isn't OT.  It says somewhere in the GSOM Charter (perhaps written after the Free Yi and Free KG Movements, repsectively) that if a player has more than 27 posts written about how they should be a Warrior, then for the purposes of this blog they automatically remain ON-TOPIC, at least until their team beats ours.

I have no love for the town, culture, or geographical region of Miami, but I'm thinking about becoming a fan.  These are not necessarily their starting five, but at some point in some games, the Heat will have on the floor:

Shaun Plastic Fantastic Livingston

Dwyane Flash Wade

Shawn Matrix Marion

Michael Does Inhale Beasley

Jamaal Once An All-Star Magloire

How fun is that?  For me, D-Wade was the brightest spot of the Olympic squad.  They've also got Mario Chalmers, Udonis Haslem, Dorell Wright, James Jones, and Daequan Cook for kicks.  Add in Alonso Mourning in December or January for heart.  What's not to like?  Pat kicked himself upstairs and hired a new untested coach.

Since when did the Miami Heat steal the Warriors' playbook and commence beating us over the heads with it?  Could you imagine how psyched we would be to have this line-up at the Oracle?  I'd trade our entire team for this one straight up.

At the risk of being all the nicknames for bad fans, would you?

We as a Nation of Fandom do hereby Proclaim the Following, erm... Proclamation:

WHEREAS the Western Conference of the NBA is the most competitive league in all professional sports and

WHEREAS the Eastern Conference sucks and

WHEREAS this imbalance has not been addressed by the league itself, it now must reside in the hands of a popular movement and

WHEREAS the Oaktown Warmonsters are among the furthest west geographically of all teams, it follows that they are therefore, on a spherical globe, also among the easternmost.  As such, it wouldn't be any skin off anyone's nose if they traded places with, say, Miami, and made everybody happy.

Preposterous, you say?  Impossible?  Never going to happen?  Where are the Lakes in Los Angeles?  Where the Jazz in Utah?  Where the Knickers in Manhattan?

We would get to at least the second round in the East.  Baron would be a perennial All Star.  The entire benighted Eastern Seaboard would learn the greatness of all-offense-all-the-time.  Love would blossom across the land.

A petition is in order, as the only coherent response to the end of our legendary season.  A team who finishes 13 or 14 games above .500 deserves by every reasonable definition of playoff competition in any sport to attend those playoffs. 

We'll gather half a million signatures and hang them from the Oracle.  We'll charter all of our team flights ACROSS the Pacific eastward so as to bolster our argument.  Or we'll just turn our backs on the entire American deal and join a new Pacific Rim league with the Shanghai Sharks and play all our games in Hawai'i.

SOMETHING MUST BE DONE!!

SIGN THE PETITION!

So watching Al Harrington play in the game against the Kings tonight, I thought:

"Here is the prototypical Don Nelson player.  Long, active, physically gifted.  Shoots the three.  Wiry strength he uses to effect against larger slower players..."

I then wondered what the All-Nellie team would look like.  Unlike the NFL's All-Madden Team, no blockheads will be found here.  Only men with proven records in the prime of their careers, built like the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, and generally between 6' 7" and 6' 9" (Nowitzki being the notable exception).  They are hungry and emotional and creative.  They find the Princeton Offense and the Triangle too constraining.  They can run all night long.  

None of us get votes.  Not the fans, not the coaches.  Only Don Nelson in his infinite wisdom gets to choose the All-Nellie All-Star Team.  If The Don was choosing, who would be on it?

In my estimation, there is no such thing in today's NBA as a perfect Don Nelson player.  Either someone is too short or too heavy or too careless with the ball.  But still, what a team he would make!

I thought to order my selections as most All-Star teams do, by position.  But then I realized how foolish this would be on the All-Nellie Team.  If every player can't play both point and center, then they don't deserve inclusion.

So I just ranked them instead:

1.  Shawn Marion
   
2.  Baron Davis
   
3.  Dirk Nowitzki
   
4.  Josh Howard
   
5.  Steven Jackson
   
6.  Joe Johnson
   
7.  Gerald Wallace
   
8.  Al Harrington
   
9.  Manu Ginobili
   
10. Kevin Durant
    
11. Rajon Rondo
    
12. Leandro Barbosa

(Interesting result of the experiment so far: the least accomplished of the players I listed is Rondo.  Why is he on there?  Because apart from BD, you couldn't trust ANY of the other players to consistently run your offense.  But who else in the league is a Don Nelson point guard?  I figure Nash, Kidd, and Paul have always been too small for him...)