FanPost

The Monta Ellis Trade (Recap)

Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

Golden State Warriors fans boo owner Joe Lacob during Chris Mullin jersey retirement (via NBA Indiaa)

All the non-Warrior fans, Warrior ‘fans’ and those who even label themselves as bandwagon fans don’t realize what it took for us to turn around and become a playoff team. Surprisingly some of our own might soon forget too. Other than the fact that the Lakers imploded, Kevin Love broke his hand twice, and Houston’s facial hair grew 100 times more, these Warriors didn’t just wake up out of no where, it took a little patience to get where we are now, and breaking it down makes it even more of an eye opener.

Monta Ellis, Ekpe Udoh & Kwame Brown for Andrew Bogut and Stephen Jackson: The warriors were on the verge of being a .500 win percentage team with a surge led by Monta Ellis and David Lee, Curry at the time was in and out due to his ankle injury bug. At this point Warrior fans figure we gave up on the season as Andrew Bogut wasn’t able to play until the 2012-2013 season, Stephen Jackson didn’t want to play for us, and the fact that we just gave up one of our recent first-round draft picks.

Stephen Jackson for Richard Jefferson and SAS 2012 First-Round Draft Pick: Things still don’t make sense for the Warriors, as Richard Jefferson’s contract is a year longer than SJax’. Also every knew the Spurs’ first round pick was going to be a late 20s pick anyways.

The 2011-2012 season ends in losing fashion going 23-43 for shortened league year, with Curry being sidelined and a whole bunch of D-League players getting called up to fill in team spots. Biedrins is nowhere near past form, Dorell Wright dips in efficiency right away, and Mark Jackson starts to become heavily criticized. The only bright spot is that the Warriors were able to keep their protected first-round draft pick, as they landed 7th in the lottery, which was the number they needed to have it at, or better. This year the pick is protected at 5th or better. Anything that didn’t fit the criteria would have our pick go to the Jazz, which was our traded pick from the Marcus Williams trade awhile back coming from Nets.

The Warriors select Harrison Barnes with the 7th pick in the 2012 NBA Draft: All of a sudden, tanking seemed like an amazing idea. Almost no one had Barnes dropping that low in draft predictions, yet he ended up being that perfect fit/best available combo we needed. Speaking of that…

The Warriors select Festus Ezeli with the 30th pick in the 2012 NBA Draft: The spurs probably would have drafted the same person too. Festus automatically filled in the need to improve our depth in the Big Man Department. Many people criticized us not drafting a guard due to the loss of Monta and the issue with Curry being healthy as we continued to pick up Draymond Green and Ognjen Kuzmic. But that all changes soon.

Dorell Wright for Jarrett Jack (3 team trade involving the Hornets and 76ers): When we first heard of DWright heading out, we only knew about the 76ers giving up the draft rights of Edin Bavcic… then we all found out we were getting our 6th man of this year. Another sensible trade as we had a log jam at small forward, especially with the need to groom Harrison Barnes, but more importantly, insurance for if Curry can’t go on any longer.

Signing Carl Landry: This was unexpected, the dubs had very little money to play with, but they knew the depth chart was short as we gave up most of our role players from last year already. Many say that Jarrett Jack helped convince Carl Landry to sign as they recently played in New Orleans prior to this season. The chemistry shows now. Also keep in mind the dubs had 10+ million to flirt with last year, and packaged 7M with Kwame who was only in for a year.. so this money was really spent on Jack and Landry.

With Kwame possibly leaving us after his contract would expire, the formula looks like this:

Monta Ellis + Ekpe Udoh + Dorell Wright = Andrew Bogut + Harrison Barnes + Jarrett Jack + Carl Landry + Festus Ezeli + Richard Jefferson

Yeah sure the Warriors got lucky with Curry and Bogut turning out to be healthy, but people don’t realize that we had our successful season starting two rookies for most of the league year. That’s saying a lot. Curry is our MVP, DLee is our leader, Klay is our X-factor. But everyone else that has stepped up for the Warriors is all due to our ownership turning things around.

To Joe Lacob and group, thank you for giving us fans something to look forward to from here on out.

This FanPost is a submission from a member of the mighty Golden State of Mind community. While we're all here to throw up that W, these words do not necessarily reflect the views of the GSoM Crew. Still, chances are the preceding post is Unstoppable Baby!