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Stephen Jackson playing chess, Golden State Warriors playing checkers
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Keeping to the code. (AP/Jeff Chiu)
Prior to last week, the focus of the Golden State Warriors’ offseason focus had largely been limited to four players: Anthony Randolph, Stephen Curry, Monta Ellis, and Amare Stoudemire.
Stephen Jackson, the Warriors’ captain and arguably their best player, was all but invisible. That all changed last Friday, when Jackson reportedly announced that he is seeking a trade.
Having signed a three-year, $28 million contract extension with Golden State less than a year ago, Jackson’s trade request is a quick one, even by Warriors standards. The fact that he received an extension at all is incredible, given that there were two years remaining on his current deal at the time.
Stephen Jackson may be crazy, but he isn’t stupid.
The Warriors were the only team foolish enough to hand out such a contract to a non-superstar, and he took full advantage. Given the current economic state of the NBA, Jackson would have had no chance at a similar deal had he elected to test free agent market after this season.
It now appears that Jackson played the Warriors the entire time, armed with a simple plan: get paid first, find a way off the team later.
Not only was Captain Jack clever enough to ignore outgoing general manager Chris Mullin and deal instead with an embarrassingly inexperienced, in-over-his-head team president Robert Rowell, he also worked out the contract on his own, saving himself millions of dollars that would have otherwise gone to an agent.
Eager to show off his new prize, Rowell worked with Jackson last summer to rehab his public persona, which was painfully in need of repair. And now that his image has been polished and his bank account made healthier, Jackson is ready to leave the Warriors’ nest and head back out into the world of NBA playoff contention.
The market for Jackson figures to be limited due to his contract, but at 31 he's still young enough that a win-now team might be willing to take him on. The Warriors on the other hand, are perpetually stuck in win-never mode, which is precisely why Jackson wants to relocate.
Extending Jackson didn’t make sense at the time for Golden State, and it looks even worse now. Rowell vetoed a Mullin-negotiated contract extension for Baron Davis last summer, then turned around and personally signed Jackson.
Given the makeup of the team and the emotional fragility of Davis and Jackson, the Warriors needed to either keep both players or let go of each of them. Keeping one or the other was never a sound strategy.
If the team had held off on re-signing Jackson, he’d be heading into the final year of his contract, and the Warriors would be holding all the cards. With free agency looming, Jackson would be forced into his best behavior, and his reasonable salary would have made him an appealing trade target.
But with $35 million now owed to Jackson over the next four seasons, the Warriors are likely to receive cap relief and little else should they decide to deal him. Compounding the problem is the fact that trading Jackson would limit Don Nelson to a mere nine swingmen, crippling the coach’s ability to tinker with individual matchups.
Golden State should have known better than to extend Jackson in the first place, and now they’re paying the price for it.
Any business savvy possessed by Robert Rowell hasn't extended to on-court transactions, and owner Chris Cohan is now living proof that a fool and his money are soon parted.
If the Warriors and Rowell truly bought into Jackson’s happy camper makeover once his contract was finalized, then they have no one to blame but themselves.
After all, the veteran’s “Captain Jack” nickname is appropriate in more ways than one.
If Rowell were to call out his team’s captain for cheating the franchise and attempting to jump ship, you’d half expect Jackson to shrug, shoot Rowell a smirk and offer a one-word explanation: “Pirate.”
The Oakland Sports Examiner: New columns every Tuesday & Thursday.
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