The Full Nelson
Paradise rediscovered, or Golden State, anyway.
Even if the Warriors never made the playoffs in 11 seasons after Don Nelson left, it wasn’t as if nothing happened:
They renovated their arena and introduced a new mascot named ThunderBolt. They played host to the 2000 All-Star Game although Warriors fans booed owner Chris Cohan when he stuck his head out, even after he’d taken the precaution of walking between his 5-year-old son and Michael Jordan.
The Warriors developed a new star, Latrell Sprewell, although they had to get rid of him after he choked Coach P.J. Carlesimo, the third of their five coaches in 11 seasons.
So it wasn’t a total surprise last summer when their latest general manager, Chris Mullin, fired their fifth and most overmatched coach, Mike Montgomery, and hired ... Nelson?
It was a little surprise. Nelson was 66, even if he wasn’t expected to stay retired after resigning in Dallas in 2005 to get away from owner Mark Cuban.
Of course, even after it occurred to Mullin, there was the matter of Nelson’s years-long court fight with Cohan, who finally had to pay him $1.6 million.
“That was the one thing that had to be worked out with Mully,†Nelson said. “The No. 1 guy is still the owner. It doesn’t matter what the rest of us do, he [Cohan] had to approve it....
“There wasn’t any tension when I left. I was ready to move on. We were having a bad year. I basically got fired, but I didn’t expect to get sued after I got fired. That was kind of a pain in the butt to go through that. That took almost three years.
“We went to arbitration and I won. And thank goodness I kept my mouth shut after I won.â€
In today’s corporate NBA, acknowledging a dispute with the owner wouldn’t qualify as keeping one’s mouth shut. At 66, Nelson remains a rollicking Falstaff figure, now at 250 pounds-plus, even bigger than he used to be.
Like his mentor, Red Auerbach, Nelson lived by a sharp wit, going wherever his inquisitive mind took him.
Nelson was the first three-time coach of the year after reviving the Milwaukee and Golden State franchises. The Warriors were 20-62 when he arrived in 1988, he took them back to the playoffs and shocked Utah in the first round with the 6-foot-5 Mullin playing 7-4 Mark Eaton.
Written off as the Father of Small Ball Who Never Won a Title, Nelson insists he does it because he has never had big players.
Of course, as coach of the U.S. team at the 1994 World Championship, he sometimes put Derrick Coleman at center and left Shaquille O’Neal and Alonzo Mourning on the bench.
The Warriors were a rising power in fall 1994 when second-year forward Chris Webber, who was as New School as Nelson was Old, held out and Nelson traded him. The demoralized team was 14-31 when Nelson resigned.
“Chris Webber was going to be a problem,†Nelson says. “I said [to management], ‘Look, let’s solve the problem. Get rid of me and then he’s got no reason not to come back.’
“And I had another job. I could have gone to San Antonio at the time. My good friend, Gregg Popovich, was the GM. And that would have been a marriage made in heaven.
“And their draft pick was Tim Duncan.â€
A year later Nelson lasted 59 games with the New York Knicks until Patrick Ewing, who didn’t like hints he was getting old, led a revolt that unseated Nelson. In 1997, Nelson was hired by Dallas owner Ross Perot Jr. and began turning the team around with a 19-year-old German named Dirk Nowitzki he got from Milwaukee in a draft-day trade for Robert “Tractor†Traylor.
In the spring of 2000, Cuban bought the team, galvanizing the franchise. Extending his input into personnel, he directed the signing of Dennis Rodman, which finished off their late drive to make the playoffs.
Nelson and Cuban averaged 56 wins over the next three seasons but the battle of wills showed. It almost ended in 2003 when Nelson’s contract ran out, but they reached the Western Conference finals and Cuban gave him a new three-year, $15-million deal.
A year later, as Cuban smoldered at their struggles amid speculation Nelson would happily take his $15 million and go home to Maui, Cuban announced, “I’m not going to let Nellie sit in Hawaii and play golf and get a suntan if I can’t get one.â€
It spiraled down from there until Nelson resigned during the 2004-05 season.
“I actually like Mark a lot,†Nelson says. “I don’t think he likes me, but I like him a lot. He’s been good to me, he’s been good to my family [Nelson’s son, Donnie, remains the Dallas general manager.]
“It was really just me thinking it’s time for me to move on, rather than be in a position where I wasn’t totally happy. I passed up a good team but there’s more important things in life. Happiness is one of them....
“We had a hard negotiation my last contract there and it was just never the same. There are some reasons, but I’ll just keep it to myself.â€
Or not. When Cuban let Steve Nash go before Nelson’s last season, Nelson said later, “A part of me died.†He recently told KNBR, a Bay Area radio station, that the team took Nash’s money “and gave it to Louie Dampier.â€
Louie Dampier was a guard in the 1960s and 1970s. The Mavericks gave center Erick Dampier, who no longer starts for them, a $73-million, seven-year deal.
“The thing about Nellie, wherever, whatever, there is always drama,†Cuban wrote in an e-mail. “He was involved in every step of every deal with every player that summer and approved it and agreed with it.
“If he truly referred to one of our players, one of his former players, in a derogatory manner like that on a radio station as you said, and I refuse to believe that he did, that speaks volumes.â€
The Warriors began putting together a Nelson-style team years ago. Unhappily, it collapsed under Montgomery who was so leery of confronting point guard Baron Davis, he let him shoot enough three-pointers to rank sixth in the league in attempts while making 31.5% which wasn’t in the top 85.
Despite losing all those shots, Davis was jubilant at Nelson’s hiring.
“I just knew great things were ahead for me, just knowing he had coached great point guards like Tim Hardaway,†Davis said. “He brought Steve Nash back to prominence.
“I knew I had a great chance. If I could just come prepared, I could learn a lot. Eleven hundred wins [Nelson is No. 2 on the all-time list at 1,190] is a lot of wins in this league....
“A lot of people have forgotten about me or kind of written me off but I believe in myself. I know there are 20 people in this room who believe in me, the things I can do, the things I’m capable of.â€
People have forgotten about all of them, but the Warriors just averaged 115 points in the exhibition season. Eleven years later, they can put out their candles. Somebody just turned the lights back on.
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Coaching ranks
Don Nelson is second on the all-time list for most career coaching victories in the NBA (* active).
*--* Lenny Wilkens 1,332 Don Nelson* 1,190 Pat Riley* 1,151 Larry Brown 1,010 Jerry Sloan* 984
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Source: Associated Press
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