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The Mark Jackson story might never die as long as the Golden State Warriors remain, well, a basketball team. Regardless of what the reason was behind his firing - remains a confluence of factors for me - but Monte Poole of CSN Bay Area theorizes that religion plays a big factor in why he was let go.
Though the Warriors likely were dissatisfied with certain elements of Coach Jackson's job performance, they most assuredly were nervous about the Rev. Jackson's Christianity and the tenets within.
Among the many factors that led to Jackson's firing in May, this one is too logical to dismiss – particularly when considering the franchise's No. 1 goal.
Again, this is a theory. There is no clear evidence behind it. There is, however, considerable circumstantial support.
None of this is actual news. Mark Jackson is a preacher and wasn't afraid to voice his opinions or wear it on his sleeve during and after press conferences. Part of the misunderstanding between the two sides was how management and Jackson didn't see eye to eye on Jackson moving from his hometown in Southern California. Religion probably did play a factor. Bigotry shouldn't be tolerated but it's also fair to note that there were other factors involved. Let's not forget the lack of offensive creativity, preparation, and odd media explosions. It all added up to a tenuous and interesting last season for Jackson.
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As for the medical portion of all of this, there's this from Adam Lauridsen:
Hearing that Ws' front office is not pleased w/ various medical staff misses at end of last year/this off-season. Changes may be coming.
— Fast Break (@GSWFastBreak) September 23, 2014
According to Rusty Simmons of San Francisco Chronicle, Shaun Livingston is likely to miss all of training camp and Festus Ezeli is still struggling to regain full health from his knee injury. Combine that with Harrison Barnes' concussion game against the San Antonio Spurs in 2012-13 postseason along with Andre Iguodala's recovery and subsequent falling off a cliff production and we have a tangible problem here. Apparently, the Golden State Warriors noticed as well.
Not every medical staff can function as excellently as the Phoenix Suns but there has to be some accountability, at least from the portion of a franchise that owns the necessary information to make these decisions.
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Our own Sam Sorkin will have a much longer piece on this but the newly named Toilet Arena is just ridiculous. This is like when Michael Scott talks, and talks, and talks, without realizing what he said was either slightly racist, sexist, and just offensive. This is on a much lesser scale but somehow, all the engineers got together in a room and assuredly took significant time to design this. This being something I'm guessing they had no idea would end up looking like it'd be the base end of a bad Dumb and Dumber scene.