A brief recent history of the Golden State Warriors.

1. Don Nelson winning, exciting Basketball.
2. 13 years of Hell.
3. Don Nelson winning, exciting Basketball.

Mr. Cohan, respectfully, screw the salary cap/luxury tax. If you are willing to pay Nellie $5 million to come back, buy him a team. Please. Even if it does cost you some money. (How's that loss of playoff revenue feel, btw?) You have a core of great young players for the future, but you also have three leaders right now and a small window of time to win. Bite the bullet and bring the bucks.

I urge all of you GSoMers and all of the Warrior Nation to make some noise to try to get Mr. Cohan to open his heart and his pocketbook to give Nellie a great going away year (or two) WHILE still planning for the future!

WARNING! I am no expert! This is all just from stuff that I have read. I could be totally wrong!!! And of course this is just one scenario...add yours in the comments!

Our salary cap situation, as I understand it. (Please correct me if I am wrong) The cap will be between $55-57 million this year. The luxury tax kicks in around $72 million?

We do NOT have to worry about the cap to keep Buike, Beans and Monta! All have either Bird rights or, in Buike's case early Bird rights. The same goes for Pietrus, ( I think) if Nellie wants him.

Geoff Lepper recently said our cap number is $46 million.

With only Baron, Jax, Al, Belli, Wright and Kosta signed.


Kawakami says  the maximum any team other than the Warriors can offer Ellis and Biedrins: 5 years, $75.2M. Worst case scenario, both will get at least close to those offers. If that happens, we're screwed. If we get lucky and can keep Monta for less, their combined salary is abest case scenario of about $15 mil.

That takes us to $61 million. Already over the cap! So Cohan is already kissing the bonus for staying below the cap goodbye.

We can also sign our rookies regardless of the cap, figure around $3 million and we are at 64, leaving approximately $8 million to fill out the bench before hitting the tax.

Add Buike (a must!) at around 2.5...66.5

But the only way we can sign bench players if we are over the cap is with the MLE and the Bi-annual exception. Estimated at 5.7 for the MLE and 1.9 for the BE.

Let's recap at this point. The team so far.

1. Baron, Belli (?)
2. Ellis, Buike, Belli
3. Jax, Buike #2 pick
4. Al, Wright, #1 pick
5. Beans, Kosta

66.5 or 5.5 left before the tax. About the same as the MLE. That gives us 11 players...and a crappy bench. We obviously still need a back up PG, a better backup SF than the #2 pick gives us, and backup C.

My solution? Diop and Beno Udrih. They should fit nicely under the MLE and the tax. The problem the is at the backup SF. Though we would still have room to sign a 'cheap' SF with the B.E., there just aren't any out there that I can see. We could get Julius Hodge (h/t Mind of Mullin) from the D-league....Or.... resign Pietrus with his Bird rights. But that might put us over the Luxury Tax < gasp! > by a million or two. At which point why not sign CJ to round out our 15?

1. Baron, Beno, CJ or #2 pick
2. Ellis, Buike, Belli
3. Jax, Buike, Pietrus
4. Al, Wright, #1 pick
5. Beans, Diop, Kosta

"Win Now for Nellie!"

Notes: The keys are Diop and Beno, solid relatively cheap guys who could bloom, or who will be gone in two years. Duhon is a better PG, but will be a couple of million more, Cohan says no! Udreh is an up and comer though and seems solid. (Plus we then have Beno, Belli, Buike and Brandon coming off the bench...the Killer B's!) Nellie would be comfortable with Diop from Dallas, and gets his shotblocker. Either Buike or MP should be 'on' on a given night, Nellie can mix and match them. We can't count on Nellie playing the rooks, but if they bloom, so much the better!

So, Cohan <strong>has</strong> to go over the cap/tax for a year until Baron leaves, (30 year old PG, big salary, will want a big, long term deal, great FA crop coming....sorry, he's gone next year.) Adonal is off the books, and we don't need Al for Nellie's system....see below.

(Note, if I was Mullin...I would break the bank for Calderon as the PG of the future, he should be even more than Duhon, but a FA PG with his potential doesn't come around very often...GET HIM now!)

Nellie gets everything he needs for his last year, with matchup flexibility and at least decent players everywhere. But we DO go over the luxury tax. After Nellies last year, the team under contract becomes a VERY ice base to add a big time Free Agent to!..... (see bottom of post)




Unless we trade Al.

But the only way that works to help the tax situation is to "Jrich him' Trade him to JUST move up in the draft and get another TPE. Back to square one with the Brandon scenario. A rook Nellie probably won't play, we won't get Beasley, lol. And the lynchpin of Nellie's 3 point shooting, big man to spread the floor, philosophy gone. And Brandon starting, after Nellie wouldn't even play him off the bench!. We could try to trade AL for Artest, but why would Sacto do that? Doesn't make sense for them unless they REALLY want the TPE for some reason. So we can't trade Al. The Don would not be happy.

Or be back.

I think this is the real story of the off-season, a little war between Nellie and Cohan to get the team Nellie wants. We can't get a <strong>ton</strong> better, we just don't have the pieces to trade, etc. No championship .....yet. But if Brandon, Buike and Belli come along and we have a bench Nellie can <em>play</em> to rest the starters and do his matchup magic, this is a darn good team. My theory is that if Cohan won't pony up the bucks this year, Don won't be back. Which makes EVERYTHING different and the Warriors a 'build for the future' team.

Which will be the subject of my next entry!

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2009 team under contract

1. Ellis (with two summers and a full season to learn the point.) Beno, CJ or this years #2 pick
2. Buike, Belli, 2009 #2 pick
3. Jax, FA or 2009 #1 draft pick
4. Wright,  this years #1
5. Beans, Diop

With nice cap room to sign a big FA!