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In the least surprising
move of the NBA off-season, the Golden State Warriors announced the firing
of Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations Chris Mullin. Except
that the team couldn’t even get that right, instead announcing that Mullin
was not being fired but rather that his contract would not be renewed when
it expires this summer. This has been widely known since Mullin was
unceremoniously castrated of all powers in a basketball coup headed by team
President Robert Rowell last summer.
Firing Mullin, the best and
most popular player in the last two decades of Warriors basketball, was not
something Rowell was prepared to admit to. Rowell is a business man and is
concerned about spin over substance, so he had no problem leaving Mullin
twisting in the wind all year instead of gracefully firing Mullin once the
decision was made that Mullin’s services were no longer wanted and allow
Mullin to move on just as the organization had done. Rowell also chose to
try humiliating Mullin by firing Mullin’s top lieutenant, admonishing Mullin
and his supporters for allegedly leaking private information to the press
(leaks that didn’t stop after the admonishment nor after the firing,
indicating that the leaks didn’t come from the Mullin camp, an indication
confirmed by media members), and hypocritically publicly stating Mullin’s
position on Monta Ellis’ punishment and how wrong Rowell felt that Mullin
was on the issue. Rowell was eager to behead the popular prince and to kick
the corpse, but wasn’t willing to parade into the countryside with his
skeletal trophy.
Was the firing of Mullin
deserved? Perhaps. Mullin certainly made his share of mistakes, especially
early in his tenure. Mullin handed out ridiculous contracts to Adonal Foyle,
Derek Fisher, Mike Dunleavy, and Troy Murphy, as well as an oversized
contract to Jason Richardson. Mullin seemed to try to build the franchise
around his golden boy, Dunleavy, and dumped borderline All Star Antawn
Jamison to open playing time for Dunleavy. He handed Dunleavy the
aforementioned contract extension – which was at least twice was any other
team would have offered had Dunleavy been allowed to go to the open market,
and twice fired coaches to try to improve Dunleavy’s chances of success.
Mullin also had what appeared to be some major draft failures, using
consecutive #9 overall draft picks on busts Patrick O’Bryant and Ike Diogu.
But Mullin had some major
successes as well. He was able to make up for most of his early contract
negotiation failures via trade, with the piece de resistance pièce de
résistance being the Dunleavy, Diogu, Murphy and Keith McLeod for Stephen
Jackson, Al Harrington, Sarunas Jasikevicius, and Josh Powell trade in which
the Warriors not only shed salary but came away with much better players.
Mullin also managed to trade Speedy Claxton and stale Dale Davis’ contract
for Baron Davis, who immediately breathed life into the organization. Mullin
drafted Andris Biedrins - now one of the best young centers in the league -
11th overall, Monta Ellis 40th overall, and Anthony Randolph 14th overall.
Diogu and O’Bryant are not NBA rotation players but there wasn’t much to
pick from in those drafts. The five picks after Diogu were one good player
(Andrew Bynum), and four Diogu level busts (Fran Vazquez, Yaroslav Korolev,
Sean May, Rashad McCants). The 2006 draft was one of the worst in modern NBA
history – the players immediately following O’Bryant were Saer Sene, JJ
Redick, and Hilton Armstrong.
Most importantly, Mullin
had made the Warriors matter for the first time in over a decade. The
Warriors went from laughingstock to dangerous team. Not a championship
contender but a team that won more than it lost and wasn’t an easy out if it
reached the playoffs (as it gloriously did in 2007 when the Warriors pulled
the biggest upset in NBA playoff history).
On the whole, it could be
reasonably argued that Mullin should not have been retained. After all, many
mistakes were made and the franchise was not contending for championships
nor on the doorstep of doing so (though they might have been had Mullin been
able to work out the details of a Kevin Garnett trade two summers ago). But
it cannot rationally be argued that Rowell, a business man who has no more
basketball knowledge than many fans, should be put in charge of the
basketball side of the organization.
Rowell cares about winning
only to the extent that it impacts the bottom line. This was hammered home
in a conference call the Warriors put on for season ticket holders recently.
Answering questions were Rowell, newly minted General Manager and Don Nelson
sycophant Larry Riley, and team mouthpiece Bob Fitzgerald. Rowell and Riley
repeatedly spoke of making the playoffs as the end goal. At no point did the
word “championship” spring from either of their mouths. Rowell and Riley
repeatedly used making the playoffs as a barometer of success. The Warriors
made the playoffs once in Mullin’s 5 years so he failed 4 out of five times.
(That the Warriors made the playoffs once in Rowell’s entire decade as a
bigwig with the organization is somehow irrelevant.)
The highest Rowell aspired
to in the entire hour long spin session was the conference finals when he
said, “Our goal is to be in the playoffs in May of 2010, and then our goal
is to continue to be in the playoffs and get better while we’re there. And
then when you get better while you’re there, our goal is to be in the
Western Conference Finals. And then you, obviously, need things to stack up
appropriately. But if you can get to that position, then you’ve got
something and that is what our goal is.”
In fact, Rowell seemed to
not even be aware of the existence of the NBA Finals and the NBA
championship. Rowell stated that, “three years ago we had the eighth-best
record in the league,” and then, “the next year, we finished with the ninth
best record in the league.” It’d be nice if the man in charge of all things
Warriors was aware of the existence of the Eastern Conference and how the
NBA playoffs functioned.
Riley, whose main
qualifications for the GM role appear to be being Nelson’s friend (confirmed
as a qualification by Rowell) and a front office stint with the Grizzlies so
disastrous that the franchise had to move 3000 miles in the aftermath, was
no better. Riley stated, “And believe me, we are very close to being able to
be that team that gets back in the playoffs. … And that’s our objective.
That’s where we’re going with this thing. It is a situation where it’s
difficult to sit and watch a team lose. I’ve been here three years now, so I
guess you can say I’m 1-for-3.”
Off course, Riley wasn’t
too involved in the 1 for 3. He was an assistant coach for the first two
years and an officially powerless puppet of the anti-Mullin coup for part of
the third. How much power does Riley hold? If salaries and organizational
charts mean anything, then the answer is not much. He is the lowest paid
General Manager in the league (the entire league, Rowell, including the
Eastern Conference). He is not only lower on the org charts than Rowell but
also Travis Stanley, the head of marketing. If the organizational charts
have any merit, when there is a disagreement on a potential player personnel
decision the guy with the least say will be the one in charge of putting a
winning team on the floor. But at least the hot dog vendors and the radio
advertising guys will be happy with the trades, draft picks, and free agent
signings!
So what does the future
hold? If the past is prologue then the future holds more years of misery and
losing. During the conference call the Warriors’ three spin amigos harped on
how many close losses the team had, growing the young core, and chasing the
8 seed that they view as the magic elixir. I felt like I had traveled back
in time a decade and was listening to then General Manager Gary St Jean or
Dave Twardzik or PJ Carlesimo talk about young “stars” like Adonal Foyle,
Larry Hughes, and Antawn Jamison; the importance of (washed up) veterans
like John Starks, Mark Price, and Mookie Blaylock to bringing home that
elusive 8 seed; and how if the Warriors just win a few more close games
(while still winning all the close games they won, though this part is never
stated) we’re almost at that 8 seed goal. It’s as if owner and source of all
Warriors evil Chris Cohan had someone develop front office talking points in
1995 and they’ve never been deviated from nor altered.
The young core argument
gets old when you’ve been a fan through a half dozen different young cores.
Sure, I’m a big Biedrins fan, and thus fully expect him to get traded in a
losing move soon. Sure, Randolph shows a lot of promise, but since when do
the Warriors develop that promise into production? The organizational
culture is one of selfishness and losing, and it’ll take a special young
player to overcome that and develop into a stud that brings winning back to
the Bay. Mullin was building a cocoon of winning (not high level winning,
but winning nonetheless) where players like Ellis and Biedrins could develop
and learn what it takes to at least make the playoffs and perhaps win some
games while there. They got to play in games that mattered. Randolph and
whoever the Warriors draft 7th overall this year may not get that chance.
The points about winning
close games are a blatant spin of statistics. The Warriors did lose a lot of
close games, but they lost a lot of all types of games. They were a bad
team. One of the best predictors of team record in sports is based off
points scored and allowed. The Pythagorean Method in sports (the formula
being expected win% = points scored ^ 16.5 / [points scored ^ 16.5 + points
allowed ^ 16.5]) equates points to wins. Some teams win more than their
share of close games and exceed their expected win totals. Some lose more
than their share of close games and don’t match their expected win totals.
The Warriors were expected to win 30 games and won 29, meaning they
underperformed by 1 game due to close game failures (for comparison,
Portland underachieved by 4 games). That still leaves the team about 15 wins
short of the playoffs and 25-35 wins short of being in a position to contend
for a championship. The front office is either delusional or lying when they
tell fans that the team simply needs to get better in close games. They need
to get better in all types of games.
The front office also
showed its lack of insight by talking about needing a bruising rebounder,
needing less improvement defensively than most think, and wanting to
continue Don Nelson’s style of play even after Nellie is gone. While the
team does need to improve rebounding and defense, the offense needs to
improve as well. The Warriors won 35% of their games last year. When playing
against the top 10 rebounding teams in the league, that number only dipped
to 32%. The elite rebounding teams didn’t beat the Warriors much more often
than everyone else did. The type of elite teams that the Warriors struggled
against the most? The elite effective field goal percentage defense teams.
The Warriors won only thrice in 28 games against the top 10 defensive teams
(by this measure) in the league, a putrid 11% winning percentage, and lost
by nearly 12 points per game. The Warriors were about a .500 team against
the rest of the league. As strange as it is, Don Nelson’s team needs to
improve offensively if they want to be a playoff team. They need to improve
defensively and on the boards if they want to go anywhere in the playoffs,
but that’s not Don’s style. The fact that Rowell wants to maintain a style
of play for the long term that he admits has never won anything shows that
Rowell is about the money (it is an entertaining style that brings people to
the arena) and not about the championships. And no, I don’t just mean
Western Conference championships, though Nelson hasn’t even won one of those
in his decades in coaching.
Two short years ago We
Believed. Now, we bereave. Sadly, the Warriors are back where Cohan and
Rowell usually have them. Mullin officially exits the building in June. Hope
beat him out the door. Until the Warriors luck into a superstar or Cohan
sells the team to an owner with a clue, it will be difficult to Believe
again.
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