He’s got the media’s minds so messed up, they’re all reporting on this basketball coach like he’s orchestrating some diabolical conspiracy.

The cool thing is that he tried criticize Jackson in private, not even in the building. Can you imagine calling out Jackson in the media? There’s no way he pulls that unless Jackson loses the allegiance of the locker room. Until then, he’s got to tread softly.

They have their own defensive metrics and they have different defensive schemes depending on who they are playing. I’ll be the first to say I don’t understand all of the nuances of the defensive schemes they use. For example: when to and not to go into a zone and which type of zone to employ although I’m trying to understand it better.

What I have observed is that when functioning properly, they go for steals, defend positions interchangeably and, rebound at every position. For this to work everyone needs to know his responsibilities and where he should be in every situation. Last year was particularly bad largely due to the fact that rookies have a hard time picking up “normal” NBA defense. Imagine how hard it is to pick up an innovative one. Also, they were missing two of their best players at getting into passing lanes in Baron and Monta.

I’m not going to say that this is a “defense first” team or even a “good defensive team”. The question is can they play “good enough” defense to win games? Strategy, both offensive and defensive, are about winning basketball games and the definition of “winning” is literally outscoring the other team. As long as the Warriors do that, then it is an effective defense in that it prevents the opponent from scoring as many points as your team scores.

I find it hard to argue that he’s making off with ill-gotten gains.

Nelson wins more than he doesn’t and he turns losing franchises into competitive ones. Name 10 coaches that have done that repeatedly? . Larry Brown, Don Nelson and who else? That’s why Nelson earns his money, it’s not “ill-gotten gains”

Additionally, I’d rather watch a Nelson team than a Mike Fratello or Jeff Van Gyndy team because it isn’t fun to watch and the whole point of watching other people play basketball, for me, is to be entertained and interested in what’s going on. Winning, for some reason, is also more entertaining than losing and this is the only system that has won here in the last 20 years.

That has two advantages that I saw:

1. There were a lot of young players that needed to learn all of the offensive schemes. I think he did need to do a lot of teaching on the offensive end as far as ball and player movement. He also needed to do a lot of teaching on the defensive end because the defense he uses has a lot of nuance and requires players to make a lot of correct decisions or it’s a revolving door to the paint (like last year). Then you have to keep reminding them during practices and during games. It might have been a case of too many things to teach and manage for one individual (especially an old man) to effectively handle.

2. Keith Smart is the heir-apparent in that he understands the philosophy and (says he) believes in it. Giving Smart (alleged) complete control of the defensive end, besides letting Nelson focus on offense, gets the players used to having to listen to and “obey” Smart’s voice. Smart stated the part about them getting used to his voice in a KNBR interview. I thought that might be considered bad form, but Smart is also pretty freaking blunt and forthcoming which I’d rather have than generic coach-speak.

1. is just an unsubstantiated observation and theory, #2 is based on what Smart said.

You can bench them. You can certainly bench a "star" of Jackson’s caliber. We’re not talking about Kobe or LeBron here. We’re talking about Jackson. Nellie can absolutely yank Jackson when he plays poorly, which he never does.

If you bench Jackson you might as well quit. If the players had to take sides between Jackson or any coach or front office person, who do you think they’d side with? Just because there is a chain of command, doesn’t mean that the people who are supposedly in charge actually have the power to impose their will. It’s a social power dynamic and Nelson needs Jackson’s support in order to have control of the players.

There were lots of games which were over, and Baron was still in them, even though we all knew he was breaking down. There were blowout losses where Baron was in them at the end of the game.

Fair enough. How many times did this happen? I’m not asking you to cite examples, because I remember thinking the same thing. But I don’t remember thinking it on more than 2 or 3 occasions.

The coach was one major tool to use over his players: playing time. If a guy jacks up a few early threes in the shot clock, you pull him out, and put him back in three minutes later. Players understand that message.

Not with stars in the NBA. You can’t say “I’m the coach and you are going to listen to me”. It may “supposed” to work like that but it does not. The players make more money than the coach and ultimately have more power while under contract. The only time the team has leverage is in the player’s walk year if they don’t want him back. The Warriors didn’t think Baron was opting out and they didn’t want him to. You go to war with Baron Davis and you lose until you can get rid of him. How successful has Mike D. Sr. been at managing Baron? Baron looks like he’s barely trying and still jacking up horrible shots to the tune of 37% FG and 30% 3pt.

What is Mike D. Sr. supposed to do when he owes Baron over $50mil over the next 4 years? Bench him? Mike D. Sr. is the coach and the GM and he can’t do anything. That’s what kind of power the coach has.

I think you have the causality reversed here. The press didn’t do this when Nellie was engaged with them – it was only once he became cantankerous and stopped talking to them that they began speculating … because what else are they supposed to do?

As a journalist, sometimes you can’t name your source. Are you saying that they shouldn’t report stories they’re hearing about a basketball team (it’s not life and death here, it’s entertainment!) because they can’t get someone to go on the record?

I don’t know what else to say other than read any of TK’s or Monte Poole’s hatchet jobs and find any substantiation of their biased interpretations. It’s one thing to protect your sources when breaking a big story that’s important for the public to know. This is not what’s happening. This is the media repeatedly railing away on a basketball coach with no substantiation. This isn’t Watergate this is just sportswriters liberally speculating as to one guy’s motives.

I saw a real absence of positive reinforcement for Randolph. Yes, he made rookie mistakes – but he also had games where he played great, and STILL got pulled after 8 minutes and didn’t get put back in.

That lack of real-time flexibility is exactly the problem. Yes, over the course of the season Nellie began to let Randolph play more, but there was a month or two in there were Randolph was playing well, and not getting rewarded for it. That’s when we started to hear those rumors about him wanting to get traded, etc. Hey, it’s great that he (appears to have) changed his mind, that’s fantastic. But didn’t the Webber situation teach us that you can’t always recover from steps like that?

Randolph says now that Nelson handled correctly and thanks him for it, I have no idea how that isn’t enough for everybody. Did Webber ever say Nelson was right? Recover from it? That and the Ewing situation is how he learned that the power dynamic had shifted that severely and that the players had more power than even an establishged coach.

It’s pretty strange that you are advocating for being a hardcore disciplinarian to a very good veteran in Jackson or benching your franchise player in Baron Davis for his shot selection but then you turn around and criticize Nelson for benching an out-of-control, turnover-prone rookie with an attitude problem even after the player has admitted that was the best thing for him.