April 25, 2002 | I've had this theory about Dallas Mavericks coach Don Nelson ever since he coached the Golden State Warriors a decade ago. I don't know Nelson personally, have never met him, don't know anything about what the guy does away from basketball. But I've been waiting for years to see evidence that this theory is wrong, and I haven't seen it. The theory is: Don Nelson can't deal with talented black players who are notably bigger than he is. When he was with the Warriors, Nelson, who is 6-foot-6, famously and ridiculously feuded with Chris Webber, then a rookie, who is 6-10. The front office sided with Nelson, Webber was traded and the franchise has never been the same, though that bad choice was more a symptom than a cause of the Warriors' management problems. Nelson was soon gone too, off briefly to New York, where he feuded with 7-footer Patrick Ewing. Now it must be said that Nelson, who wanted the selfish Ewing to pass more, was right in that particular feud. But that doesn't disprove my theory. Nelson's teams are notorious for playing well in the regular season and foundering in the playoffs. The justification is always that his team lacks a dominant center. Well, dominant centers tend to be black, and Nelson, widely praised for his skills as a general manager as well as for his coaching ability, never seems able to draft or trade for one. He has coached one dominant center in his career, Bob Lanier, with the Milwaukee Bucks in the early '80s. But Lanier was past his prime then, no longer the force he'd been with the Pistons in the '70s. The Mavs' tallest black player is Michael Finley. He's a good player, a 20-point scorer. And he's 6-7. Do I think Don Nelson is a racist? I don't. After all, he seems to have no particular problem with black players his size and smaller. Maybe it's some sort of subconscious thing. Maybe it's my imagination getting the better of me. I don't know. But I didn't notice the Mavericks going after Dikembe Mutombo when he was available last year, and while I'd love to see Dallas get a great black big man someday and prove my theory wrong, I'm not holding my breath. Do you think there is any truth to this?
90% of the league weren't going after Mutombo, so that's not really a point you're making. I can understand he had a problem with C-Webb, certainly in his early days he wasn't really easy to handle, so that's not a point either. And you said yourself he was right about Ewing, so what's the problem?
Its like mf said, nobody hardly went after Mutumbo, and if Nelson was a racist why did they go after Zo in the off season?
I don't buy that Nelson is subconsciously racist...I just don't think he's a good coach--that's why his teams can always beat the teams they're supposed to beat but not much more.
I think you need more facts than those to prove that Don Nelson is a racist. You even said the criticism about Ewing was right on. Don Nelson is not a racist, I don't know a racist can survive in the NBA with all of the diversity
