Nellie will start making his case directly to fans ... on Warriors weekly radio show

January 30, 8:55 AMGolden State Warriors ExaminerMatt Steinmetz

Previous Next

26 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the Golden State Warriors Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Don Nelson is taking to the airwaves

Warriors coach Don Nelson has made it clear he thinks he’s getting a raw deal from the Bay Area media in general and columnists and bloggers in particular.

One way Nelson is trying to combat that is by taking his message right to the people _ or something like that. Nelson told KNBR’s Ralph Barbieri and Tom Tolbert that he will soon begin a half-hour call-in show for Warriors fans as part of the Warriors Radio Roundtable program.

It looks like Nelson’s first interaction with fans on that show will be on Feb. 11. The good news, as far as Nelson is concerned, is that he’ll get to talk to fans without a filter. The bad news is they might not like what he has to say about their squad.

On his weekly show on Thursday, Nelson painted a sobering picture for anyone who was listening. Among other things, Nelson said the team is likely in for even more struggles now that Monta Ellis has returned.

Link here …

♦ On whether the Warriors can go forward as is or whether changes are needed:

“We don’t know yet. That’s what we’re trying to determine, where we’re going to be in the future, who’s going to play well together, who’s going to stay, who’s going to go. Those kinds of things we’re trying to determine now. It’s hard to do that because Monta (Ellis) is back but he ain’t Monta yet.

“We’re going to take a step back before we go forward with Monta. We know that. Nobody else knows it but we know it as a staff. It just doesn’t happen. The guy’s got to learn how to play with the new guys. They’ve got to learn how to play with him. Who is he? Where are we going? A whole bunch of questions that have to be answered.

“So we’re going to probably take a step backwards not forwards for a while. The whole thing this year is where are we going? Are there going to be changes? Of course there are going to be changes, we’ve won 14 games. So, let’s decide what changes are good and  what changes are not good.”

♦ On incorporating Monta Ellis:

“He’s going to definitely struggle and have good games and bad games. The team will take a step back before it goes forward because we’ve got a new player who is going to be playing 25 to 35 minutes and there’s a whole lot of adjustments that need to be made with him.

“We have to learn how to play with him. Actually, we were playing very well without him. Now we have to make an adjustment and it’s not an easy adjustment. I’m very heavy at two-guard and so somebody’s going to have their minutes cut because guess what? Monta is going to play 25 to 35. And there’s just not enough minutes to make everybody happy."

♦ On whether management was OK with it when he said early that Warriors were going to have bad year:

“I don’t know. I don’t know about that. I didn’t ask them. I told them early we’re going to have a hard year, that we weren’t very good and a whole bunch of things are going to happen this year.

“I informed them of that; I don’t know if they believed me or not. I think everybody is on board; nobody is complaining. Nobody has come to me and say do this or do that. I think everybody understands I was right. Thank God I said it early because I knew what was going to happen. I said it in training camp: that I didn’t think we were very good. And we’re not very good. And we’re going to go through that this year.”

♦ On the blowout loss at Dallas on Wednesday:

“We sucked. We had a good game plan, we couldn’t carry it out for whatever reason. Nothing was going right. They were pretty good; we were pretty bad. We got our ass beat.”

♦ On his upcoming show:

“I’m going to be doing a show so I can talk to the fans again. I think that’s coming. I used to spend an hour a week talking to the fans and I want to get back to doing that so nothing gets misconstrued.

“That’s why I like talking to you guys (Ralph and Tom) because people can know the tone of my voice, what I’m saying and somebody can’t bend it. You know what I mean?"

♦ On minutes in the backcourt:

“There’s a big problem. We’ve got a big backup there. I like (Marco Belinelli), I like (Anthony) Morrow, I like (Jamal) Crawford. Guess what? There’s not room for everybody. So somebody's going to get their minutes cut and somebody's going to be unhappy. … Monta’s got to play. He’s our $10 million guy. Pretty simple.”

♦ On the loss at the buzzer to Cleveland a week ago:

“We got a new guy in the mix and we’re going to struggle. Monta was on the floor and guarding the ball missed an assignment or didn’t know he was supposed to cover that pass.

“So there was an error made and it cost us a game. But that’s OK. Whether Monta he’s not going to forget it again. Just a thing that happens; a great player beat us; we were waiting for the play; we had the play covered. But a mistake was made.”