from Marcus Thompson and Hoopshype.com: Marcus Thompson: "If Baron doesn't like you, he makes life hard for you" by HoopsHype / February 1, 2007 Will Baron Davis be in Golden State much longer since Monta Ellis is proving himself ready to take the reigns at the point? What do you think? Marcus Thompson: B. Diddy will finish out his contract, at least. He can opt out before the 2008-09 season. He would have to walk away from $17.8 million, which will be hard to do. But the way he's playing, he could get a big offer and opt out in favor of the long-term securityy. To be honest, I think Baron loves it here. Other than playing in Los Angeles, this is the best possible location. Then you add to it how, with Golden State, he is the franchise, which he wants. Out here, the team lives and dies with him. He may get tired of losing and want to go somewhere else, to a team that is a point guard away. But my money says he stays, and the Warriors may not be ready to hand the keys over to Ellis after next season. Why have some players such as Ellis and Andris Biedrins become successful and appear to be on their way to meeting expectations, when Mike Dunleavy did not? MT: Because they are better than Dunleavy at what they do. The thing about Andris and Ellis, they are great, or potentially great at something. There are parts of their games they can bank on, they can use for consistent production. Ellis is a scorer. He just has a knack for scoring. He's quickness is also electrifying. Biedrins is an excellent finisher and rebounder. Dunleavy, he isn't great at anything. He doesn't have a money skill he can bank on at least one that will make him a consistent producer. He's not a great shooter. He doesn't finish and he's just a pretty good free thrower. He's not a good defender physically, but he is cerebral enough to fit in a team's scheme. He doesn't rebound especially well. He doesn't post up well. He can only penetrate when he has a mismatch. He's a good passer and can handle the rock, but he's not reliable at creating for others. He can bring the ball up and get the ball to an open guy, even if it means threading the needle, but he's not going to "make it happen" consistently. Dunleavy can do a lot of things, some of them he's pretty good at, which makes you expect him to always be able to produce. His versatility and flexibility just seem like traits of a productive, if not dominant player. But Dunleavy doesn't do anything great. He doesn't have a part of his game he can thrive at in any circumstance. He doesn't have something to bank on when times get rough. In fact, if his shot is not falling, it usually means the rest of the game is non-existent. Has Chris Mullin been any better than Garry St. Jean as GM of the Warriors? MT: I would say so. As a matter of fact, it's unquestionable. Mullin has made some great trades landing Baron Davis for practically nothing was his biggest coupe and he's had a solid draft record (Biedrins, Ellis, Diogu). His mistakes have come with his contract signings. He has given a few guys way too much money because he wrongly evaluated them, banking on them to reach their potential instead of paying them for what they've produced. He's made some good trades to make up for a few of those mistakes. In his third season in charge of the Warriors, Mullin is by no means great. But he's getting better, it seems. He made some poor decisions in his first couple of years [signing Foyle and Fisher to excessive free agent contracts; signed Dunleavy to extensions that are too expensive (some might say Murphy, too) and turned over a young, limited roster to a rookie coach from the college ranks]. But he has corrected some of them (he traded the contracts of Fisher, Dunleavy (whom he loved) and Murphy; replaced Mike Montgomery with Don Nelson], which is a good sign of his growth and willingness to be flexible. How surprising was to you that the Warriors brought Don Nelson back? MT: I was very surprised, but that Nelson would want to come back to the Warriors. A coach like that, I was expecting he wants to win a championship. You obviously had access to the Warriors locker room all through Mike Montgomery's tenure with Golden State. What type of relationship the players had with him? Did players respect him? And how different are things with Don Nelson there? MT: Bottom line, they didn't believe in him. He was doomed from the start. An NBA coach has to have respect from his players. Montgomery who not only had no NBA experience, but made his name at a college that doesn't produce "NBA" players had to earn the players' respect. And he wasn't able to do it. I'll be the first to say Montgomery is a likable guy when he wants to be. He was stubborn, condescending and a poor communicator which left veterans upset and youngsters confused. He struggled in late-game management, took too long to nail down a rotation and he showed favoritism. He just never had that locker room to begin with, and before long, it was against him. Who is Baron Davis? I mean, has the guy been fairly portrayed by the media? MT: I think so. Baron is a good guy with an ego, which describes most NBA stars. He's a very personable guy. He has a great personality. Funny, loyal, charismatic, intelligent. The people close to him love him to death. But he can be moody. He plays the me-against-the-world card regularly, and if he doesn't like you, he makes life hard for you. He's savvy enough to know who he needs and who he doesn't. Did you ever envision Gilbert Arenas becoming the superstar he is now? And how could the Warriors possibly throw all that money at Murphy, Richardson and Dunleavy and not pay Arenas? Isn't that just mind-blowing? MT: You could see Arenas was special. Very rarely do you know a player is going to turn out to be one of the best in the league, but you could see he had the tools. If the Warriors could have, they would've have thrown an unseemly amount of money at Arenas. But their hands were tied by a CBA loophole, which has since been changed. They were over the cap. But since Arenas had only been with the team two years, the Larry Bird Exception (which allows a team to pay whatever over the cap to keep their own free agent of three years or more) didn't apply. They could only offer him a one-year deal for the mid-level exception, which was $4.9 million at the time, and sign him to a bigger contract when the Larry Bird exception kicked in. Instead of taking the risk of signing a one-year deal, Arenas took the long term deal from Washington. A lot of beat writers now have blogs in their newspaper website. Do you get paid for that too? MT: We barely get paid for our beat-writing gigs! It's just part of the salary. Baron Davis, Stephen Jackson or Jason Richardson. Who'll be the first one to clash with Don Nelson? MT: I would say neither. But if I had to choose, I would say Stephen Jackson. Baron and Jason are too in awe of Nellie to clash with him. Jason doesn't have the personality to actually clash with a coach. He didn't like or disagreed with both Eric Musselman and Mike Montgomery. Davis, he loves Nellie. How could he not? Nellie is a point guard's coach and he has Baron in the driver's seat. That leaves Jackson. His minutes may be up and down. He may not take Nellie's harsh criticism too well. I don't perceive Jackson having the audacity to challenge Nellie, especially in his predicament. From what I've heard about him, and from what I can tell in my first few talks with him, he isn't a bad guy who is never happy. I wouldn't be surprised if neither clashes with Nellie. How do you think J-Rich feels about his career in the NBA? Does he think he's underappreciated? MT: I know he feels underappreciated. Especially now, because this was supposed to be a breakout year. After he carried the Warriors last season, to no fanfare, people are now saying he's expendable because Mickael Pietrus and Ellis are playing well. Who's been the worst locker room presence on the team since you started covering it for the local paper? MT: Oddly enough, there hasn't been a bad locker room presence, which is boring for me. The problem with the Warriors has been that there's no locker room presence. I would have to say the worse presence since I've been covering the team was Mike Montgomery. He was learning the ropes on the fly, and his mistakes caused the most problems. http://www.hoopshype.com/beat/thompson.html Monty created some problems and was also given some. Too bad. All the Warriors need is some of that can of "Whup-Ass" that Fred Sanford used to have because there's no fire.
Yeah, I think Montgomery definitely caused some problems, but the organization was bad long before him. Totally bad hire for what this team had tried to become (a halfcourt team, probably on the account of Murphy or Dunleavy, but they totally forgot about inside presence/post scoring). So now we try to run but we dump our two best bigs so we can't rebound much. Groan. When will this organization ever get on the same page? I"ll tell when: When Cohan sells the team to some competent owner who has more money and knows what the fans want. The owner will in turn hire the right people to run the biz and make the team. He won't care if guys like Nelson was a fixture in the times we actually made the playoffs, he'd find qualified guys from the get-go who have done a little bit of coaching, scouting, played in the league maybe, and are smart with money like the guys who came up with the moneyball style of general management. I'd probably say right now the team should really look at building around Baron, Jrich, Ellis, Biedrins and find them some immediate center help. But now I worry about small ball denying us that. If we had a coach similar to Muss back, I'd really love that. We need pragmatism and versatility rather than just one-way-of-playing-ball-because-that's-all-they-know.
