Don Nelson to be fired

[Arok325]

Good riddance.  Nelson was a bum.  Kept a cooler of beers on the bench for himself.  Before post-game media conferences he would shotgun two beers because he couldn't talk to the media sober.  There's a reason none of the players he coached ever respected him.

The only reason the Warriors upset the Mavs that one year in the playoffs was because of Baron Davis.  Once he bolted for a paycheck with the Clippers they've been downhill ever since.  The point being that the Warriors have not benefited from Nelson's presence and now that they've amassed a collection of nice young talent it's time for them to head in another direction.  Goodbye Nelson.  You will not be missed.

[Kwhit10]

He had the oddest rotations.  Well there goes by those random fantasy free agent pick ups that turn into people who play 30 minutes a game.

Hopefully Brandan Wright gets his time.

[nickagneta]

And say what you will, but the man has an undeniable eye for talent.

Do you think any other GM in NBA history has drafted 11 future All-Stars?  Do you think any other GM in NBA history has drafted a future All-Star in 6 straight drafts, as Don Nelson did for the Warriors from 1988-93?

Marques Johnson (3rd, 1977)
Sidney Moncrief (5th, 1979)
Mitch Richmond (5th, 1988)
Tim Hardaway (14th, 1989)
Tyrone Hill (11th, 1990)
Chris Gatling (16th, 1991)
Latrell Sprewell (24th, 1992)
Chris Webber (1st, 1993)
Dirk Nowitzki (9th, 1998)
Josh Howard (29th, 2003)
Stephen Curry (7th, 2009) (I'm being presumptous here. Or am I?)

via Golden State of Mind.

8 of those 11 picks are lottery picks which tells you 2 things

1. It's a lot easier to find future All-Stars when picking in the lottery

2. Despite drafting all these future All-Stars, his teams still managed to end up back in the lottery which might say very little about his coaching and GM abilities other than drafting high in the first round.

[greg_kite]

He was a good coach of crappy teams.  He could make the games entertaining and high scoring.  But could never win against the good teams because he never had, or seemed to want, a good big guy. 

How he got away with playing small forwards as power forwards and power forwards as centers for as long as he did is beyond me.

What I find strange though is he finally would have had two big guys that would fit his system perfectly (Lee and Biedrins) and then they let him go.

Hopefully the Warriors can start rebuilding in the right direction now.

[wdleehi]

He was a great GM for finding players to fit his system.



But as a coach, his system was a regular season winning formula that failed in the playoffs.