Sooner or later, Don Nelson assumes personnel control of the teams he coaches. It will probably never be clear exactly when he took over this Warriors team, but it’s happened.
But is this a bad thing? As much as I like Mullin, his record as a GM was mixed at best, and the teams he put together never made the playoffs until Nellie started coaching them (and until Nellie encouraged him to make the crucial Jackson and Harrington for Murphleavy trade.) As much grief as Robert Rowell gets, all he really did was transfer power from Mullin to Nelson.
And say what you want about the idiosyncrasies of Nellie the coach, Nellie the GM has a very sound record. His draft history is among the best there is, especially relative to his draft position, his trades as a whole are respectable and he has rarely given up on a player who has then gone on to do anything in the league. After taking over personnel and coaching duties of the Bucks and Mavericks he left them in much better shape than when he took over. He also resurrected some other team he coached in the late 80′s and early 90′s as well (before destroying them, of course.)
Nellie is now responsible for the direction of this team. The off-season moves were not made without his input, nor was the Jamal Crawford trade. And everyone knows he is going to play who he wants when he wants.
As good of a coach as Nellie is, there’s no way he or any coach could win with a roster that’s ten-deep with Stephen Jackson, Monta Ellis, Jamal Crawford, Andris Biedrins, Corey Maggette, Kelenna Azubuike, Ronny Turiaf, CJ Watson, Brandan Wright & Anthony Morrow. That’s a 36-win team if everything breaks right. It’s also a roster with some solid veterans that could help a contender and some good young players and prospects, especially if you add Anthony Randolph. The problem is, it’s a team of redundant players that don’t fit together or compliment each other; the whole is less than the sum of its parts.
It’s up to Nellie the GM to take this broken mess and make it whole. Again.
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