By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

Your daily guided tour through the national and local media coverage of the always-entertaining Golden State Warriors.

BLOGOSPHERE
Talking Points/San Jose Mercury News (Tim Kawakami): Setting the stage for Thursday’s potential showdown between Jeff Fried, Monta Ellis’ agent, and Warriors brass.
Perhaps the NBA can hold a special “non-expansion dispersal” draft next summer to help the Warriors out after they sell off everything of value.

Inside The Warriors/Contra Costa Times (Marcus Thompson II): This was from Monday, before Tim’s post, but now serves to amplify the depths of Ellis’ frustration.
Plus: Wrapup from the Cavaliers game.

Fast Break/San Jose Mercury News (Adam Lauridsen): Taking Ellis to task for not being willing to fill the void left behind by Stephen Jackson’s departure.
I don’t share his optimism, but Adam likes what he saw from the Jackson-less Warriors against Cleveland on Tuesday.

The Baseline/The Sporting News (Bethlehem Shoals): Because I’m a sucker for a good “Chinatown” reference.

Warriorsworld.net/Examiner.com (Ray Yocke): “Of course, the Jackson deal is only the first chapter in a four-part series for the Warriors. Next up is a Monta Ellis trade, followed by Nelson abandoning the team mid-season, whereupon the remaining survivors will be left to clean up Chernobyl yet again.”

Golden State Warriors/San Francisco Chronicle (Rusty Simmons): Line of the day: “The Warriors have no chance on the defensive end.” Too true.
Also: Vladimir Radmanovic’s mama didn’t raise no dummy. “”I look at this as a good opportunity. I think I can do a lot of the things (Nelson) wants from a player.” The only thing missing was, “Now I can go get my numbers and another fat contract.”

Warriorsworld.net (Rasheed Malek): Q-and-A with Bill Duffy, the agent for not Anthony Randolph and Andris Biedrins, among a host of others around the league.

WEB MEDIA
ESPN.com (Ric Bucher): Robert Rowell: “We’ve got a little hiccup here, but I don’t think we’re taking a step back.” Ummmmmmmmm, OK, Bobby.

PRINT MEDIA
San Francisco Chronicle (Ray Ratto): Here’s a fact bound to bring down the hopes of Warriors fans (what hopes there still are, anyways): “These are the end times, and the rebuild that started a year ago June ends when the team is sold, in a year, or two, or three. Now it might be sold to a brilliant, non-meddlesome, well-appointed billionaire with a heart of gold and an ego of zinc, or it might be sold to a consortium of egomaniacal dopes who all think their year of freshman basketball in prep school trained them properly to be the next Mitch Kupchak.
“In other words, there is no such thing as, ‘It can’t get any worse.’ It can. There’s always some level of worse that simply hasn’t been imagined yet. After all, how many of you watched the Lane Kiffin thing and said, ‘It can’t get any worse’ and discovered that within a year, you’d be so spectacularly wrong?”

San Francisco Chronicle (Rusty Simmons): Larry Riley tries to tamp down speculation about the Jeff Fried meeting by pointing out that he met with the agents for Anthony Randolph and Stephen Curry earlier this season.
A few salient points Larry omitted:
A) Again, Randolph’s agent is Bill Duffy, who lives in the East Bay and is always at Warrior home games to see members of his large stable of clients.
B) Both Randolph and Curry were well-known to have been unhappy with either the way they were treated last year (Randolph) or getting stuck in Oakland in the first place (Curry).
C) You never hear about a player who’s happy in a situation is having a November meeting between their agent and the team. If it’s so common, why isn’t Rob Pelinka (Corey Maggette’s agent) living in Riley’s office right now?

Contra Costa Times (Marcus Thompson II): All eyes on Monta.
Plus: Raja Bell, it’s not that we hardly knew ye. We didn’t knew ye at all.

Dime: More Smack-down time for the Warriors, with the added fun of an Outkast headline. “Corey Maggette was the other guy besides Vlad who guarded LeBron regularly, and he approached the assignment with as much enthusiasm as one of the ‘Flavor of Love’ girls going in to kiss Flavor Flav. One time Maggette got slightly brushed by Big Z on a screen, and when LeBron (31 pts, 12 asts) turned the corner and got a half-step on him, Bad Porn just gave up and watched LBJ go in for a dunk.”

Akron Beacon Journal (George M. Thomas): LeBron James offers Stephen Curry advice. (Shockingly, it wasn’t “get an agent who will force a trade here.”)