Don Nelson insisted again on Thursday, like he's been insisting since the start of training camp, that he's excited by his young Warriors team and that he is having fun coaching it.But that's not the way it looks. Nelson has grown increasingly short with the media in the past year or so and his pregame press conferences are littered with one-word answers and uncomfortable silences.
One day after the Warriors lost to the Rockets 108-107, a radio host on the team's flagship station opened his program by saying it sure seemed like Nelson's heart wasn't in it anymore.
The long and short of it was that coaching just wasn't doing it for Nellie, now 69 years old.
"You know, we have some issues we're dealing with, but yeah, coaching a kid like (Stephen) Curry is a lot of fun for me," Nelson countered. "And to watch him develop and get better and better. (Anthony) Randolph, the same thing. ... Yeah, I'm very excited about our young guys. I'm having fun. Yes, I'm having fun.
"I've never looked like I'm enjoying myself during a game, if that's what you mean?"
Actually, it isn't. What we're really talking about here is the parts about being an NBA coach that don't necessarily involve coaching – the travel, the grind, the dealing with the media, etc.
"No, I don't care much for this anymore," Nelson said, referring to dealing with the media. "I've been beat up so bad by being honest with the press, I'm going to be the (Patriots coach Bill) Belichick of the NBA. I'd rather talk on the radio where people can actually hear my words than get it misconstrued somehow. It looks different in print sometimes when you say something. The way you say it sometimes you can't identify it in print. I'm more careful. Yes, I'm more careful."
Once upon a time, and even at the beginning of his second stint with the Warriors a few years back, one of Nelson's strengths was dealing with writers, etc. He would engage in banter, share a personal anecdote or two and even go off the record to better explain some of the things he was doing.
Those days seem gone."It's really sad," said Nelson. "I don't like doing it but I've been forced to do it, so what can I tell you?"
How about: Why? What happened? What changed? Are people writing untruths or have there been inaccuracies when it comes to Nelson and the Warriors?
"Slanted ... slanted," Nelson said. "It's not that it's not true or inaccurate, it's slanted or taken out of context sometimes, so it looks worse in print or different in print than it was actually meant to be."
So all you can do is believe Nelson when he says he's having fun. Even though it looks like he isn't.
More Steinmetz on Twitter: @matt_steinmetz
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Down with Kawakami!
yea kawakami needs to get fired
My guess is Nellie can be taken at his word that feeling he had to suspend Skipper Jack two games hurt him, not just Skipper Jack. So, no, I don`t think his loving EVERthing this season. I also think he probably believes Skipper Jack is sort of right, though going about trying to make his point in ways Nellie wishes he wouldn`t. Folks would hate it if he DIDN`T want to win a championship, too. But Golden State probably isn`t going to get a XXX-Mas gift of Ed Curry waives from the Knicks, and if they did, Curry is no McAdoo, he might well turn out to be just a lump of coal. Cleveland is right not to consider giving up a once good big, like former all star El Zyd, for a small, like Jackson. even with a couple other players, maybe Ron Turiaf and another, thown in might not be enough. The Warrior guards don`t have to stay small, Maggette and Jackson are older swing men, but can still play guard. But they don`t have the bigs, beyond Biedrins as a starter, and they injured skinny big, Randolph, as a reserve, to allow their wing forwards to play wing guard. Nellie won championships as an athlete, but the pleasure isn`t an option for his Warriors. Which is sad for Warrior fans, as well. They haven`t won a championship since the fluke win in `74-`75 (though some teams haven`t won in even longer).
I wonder if last year with the furor about him leaving a game 2 seconds to go, and all the inflammatory articles by Tim K. pushed him over the edge into tired cynicism. I recall he did a sit down interview with some paper in the boondocks to voice his complaints. It's a shame, really. It must be hard as a columnist not to get sucked in to the negativity of the chattering masses, and decide that preaching to the choir is much more fun than reality. Tim K. has certainly gone that route.
Matt, you are really one of the few writers in the Bay Area who gives Nellie a fair shake. Even on Fanhouse, Ziller throws in digs in the simplest of stories. Kawakami is the worst in the Bay area. He wrote a column last year assassinating Nellie's character and it stayed up on the Mercury News site for months as the lead item. But there are others nationally. Ric Bucher is a Nellie assassin. Charlie Rosen another. I don't know what is the background on these stories. I wish these guys would come out and say what it is, because obviously in some ways it is personal. Nellie has had one bad year since he turned Dallas around, last year, and you would think he is the scum of the earth from reading some of these writers. I since probably some of this stems from arrogance when Nellie was rolling high and the guys he irritated are determined to drive him to hell. What is so awful about this to me, and I teach journalism, is that in sports there really are no facts other than the scores. 90% of the sources are anonymous people who are pushing some angle for their own interests. Reporters make no distinction between reporting and commenting. And worst of all, most of these sportswriters have zero background to qualify them to say anything about any part of the game. They are just fans and the badge that they are sportswriters is their cynicism. I don't blame him for not wanting to talk to them. I wouldn't talk to them either. As I have watched this with Nellie I have found myself being more and more sympathetic to Bobby Knight's dealings with reporters. You are a person of some integrity, but you work in a field where your colleagues feel they have the right to trash someone for every slight or insult. The truth is they don't. As the great Dr. Thompson said, "the scum also rises" and it is all over an awful lot of big shot reporters.