There’s been a lot of chatter in the wake of Monte Poole’s evisceration of the Warriors’ two leading front-office lights — team president Robert Rowell and coach Don Nelson — about the Warriors cutting Nelson loose before the end of his contract, which has another $12M and two years to run, thanks to an extension agreed upon in October.

I don’t see it, for a variety of reasons:

** The allure of topping Lenny Wilkens’ all-time NBA coaching victories total is too much for Nelson and the marketing-obsessed W’s to pass up.

** Rowell didn’t ascend to his pinnacle of power by kissing off the majority of $12M on a guy who’s smoking cigars and watching for the green flash at the end of another Maui sunset.

** To fire Nelson would be for Rowell to admit making a mistake in choosing him over Chris Mullin. In four years covering this team, I’ve never even heard of that happening, let alone seen it displayed for all the ticket-going public to see.

** If Nelson moves from the bench to a corner office and replaces Mullin as the EVP in charge of basketball operations, what coach in their right mind is going to believe that they’ll be allowed to do their job without interfence from Nelson?

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

OAKLAND — Not much upstages LeBron James these days, but the Warriors managed it Thursday, announcing on their Web site that Monta Ellis will return Friday against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

After one moped accident, two surgeries, hundreds of hours of rehab, six practices and one critical meeting to discuss the six-year, $66 million contract that he placed in jeopardy, Ellis is set to step back onto the floor at Oracle Arena.

Warriors coach Don Nelson said on KNBR that Ellis will start Friday — presumably alongside Jamal Crawford — at the point and expects him to log somewhere between 20 and 30 minutes.

“I was very concerned that he would maybe never be the same player again, because it was a very severe ankle (injury) — he severed two tendons in his ankle, and they had to surgically repair them and put pins in them and a whole bunch of stuff — and I was thinking he may never be the same again, but I can assure you that he will be,” Nelson said. “I’m watching him in practice and he’s coming back way faster than I thought. . . . I think he’ll be the same Monta we’ve grown to love and enjoy watching.”

Ellis only began practicing in 5-on-5 drills nine days ago, but has long felt that his ankle was 100 percent physically and that it was merely a matter of getting into basketball shape. In a sign of his anxiousness, he famously yelled, “Let me play!” after dunking at the Warriors’ shootaround Wednesday morning.

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

OAKLAND — Warriors guard Monta Ellis participated Tuesday in his first 5-on-5 drills of the season, mostly of the half-court variety. And with the team announcing that Marco Belinelli would miss 10 days, at a minimum, because of his badly sprained right ankle, the idea of seeing Ellis get on the court must be growing that much more alluring.

Ellis played on the White team (the reserves), in a small ball lineup alongside C.J. Watson, Marcus Williams (back from the flu), Jermareo Davidson and Rob Kurz. Ellis still wasn’t going 100 percent — this was the portion of practice where the Warriors work on individual sets, so it was a clear step down from the level of effort in a full-court scrimmage — but it is the closest he’s come to full-speed work since tearing up his left ankle in an August moped accident.

Ellis guarded Corey Maggette at the 3, and his mid-range jumper looked as smooth as ever as he dropped it in from 18 feet over Jamal Crawford and Anthony Morrow.

On the occasions when the teams would sprint downcourt (which would happen after the defense came up with a stop and a defensive board), Ellis often remained in the middle of the pack. But there were flashes of the player who was one of the two biggest reasons behind Golden State’s 48 wins last season. . .

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

As the rift between the Warriors coach Don Nelson and rookie forward Anthony Randolph continues to widen unabated, with the teenager effectively serving an unofficial and open-ended suspension, it’s funny to think about who might have salvaged this relationship:

Chris Mullin.

Randolph was a Mullin pick; Nelson wanted Jason Thompson but came around eventually to Mullin’s way of thinking, which was to take a potential superstar if one was available at No. 14 — and Randolph fit that bill.

It stands to figure that Mullin would be the guy best equipped to keep Randolph’s emotions in check when he would get yanked by Nelson’s short leash. After all, Mullin was the guy who served as Monta Ellis’ biggest champion during a rookie season in which coach Mike Montgomery derided his talents and kept him mostly glued to the bench until Baron Davis shut it down in March.

But Mullin has been persona non grata for a while now, unseen at practice or even at shootarounds, where he used to be a constant presence. He’s been on the road scouting college games, which should give him some great insights (on the Warriors’ dime) when he goes to work for another NBA team next season, but that’s a whole other problem.

Much has been made of the shot Randolph delivered to fellow rookie forward Rob Kurz in practice last weekend; the obvious inference to be drawn from Stephen Jackson’s reaction is that Randolph deliberately nailed Kurz.

I don’t think he would have wanted to cause serious injury, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Randolph, having reached the height of his frustration, lined up Kurz’s chin and clocked him as a stand-in for Nelson.

Nelson has been almost unremittingly critical of Randolph this season. The coach’s biggest compliment — that Randolph had passed Brandan Wright on the team’s depth chart way back in preseason — turned out to be totally false, just a motivational tool to light a fire under Wright.

On the other hand, Nelson has been effusive in his praise of Kurz from Day 1, all but pouting when Kurz was cut on Mullin’s order and then campaigning hard to get him back once Ellis was placed on the suspended list.

I’m not saying definitively that that’s what happened. But I can certainly see Kurz being the epitome of everything that’s going wrong for Randolph — at least in Randolph’s eyes — and Randolph snapping after three months…

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

It’s looking more and more like the Warriors are going to, once again, end up disintegrating into a cloud of debris.

If, as ESPN’s Chris Broussard says, coach Don Nelson told rookie forward Anthony Randolph to have his agent explore potential trades, then things have come unglued to a point that would probably be unprecedented in franchise history . . . if only this franchise wasn’t the Warriors.

Is Broussard’s report accurate? I don’t know. Can I see Nelson saying something like that to Randolph? Absolutely. Without question. When Nellie gets down on a player — consistently down, not just for a two-week stretch of juggling the rotation or somesuch — it’s pretty much impossible to dig yourself out of that hole.

I had an interesting conversation recently with a Nelson confidant about the Warriors’ pick in this year’s draft. This person said that Nelson’s much-hyped interest in Jason Thompson — so well-hyped that it seemed it could only be a smokescreen — was very, very real. In fact, Nelson had to be talked down from Thompson and into Randolph by Chris Mullin and others in the days leading up to the draft.

In retrospect, I can see why Nelson was so much more interested in Thompson, who was taken by the Kings with the No. 12 selection. Thompson doesn’t have the 3-point range that Al Harrington offered, but he has a decent enough mid-range jumper and was ready to go after four years at Rider — meaning that having Thompson on board would have made it that much easier to trade Harrington before the season began.

It also helps to explain why Nelson — again, assuming Broussard’s reporting is correct — can so cavalierly toss aside the No. 14 pick in Randolph.

That being said, it’s one thing for the coach to decide he has no use for a player. But when that coach makes it so patently obvious to all other clubs, how you possibly get decent value? Nelson’s unbridled disdain for Marcus Williams has made it such that the Warriors can’t even sell him off for 50 cents on the dollar.

Given that fact, why shop Randolph now? Why not give him some playing time and showcase him this month before trying to dump him? Why not wait until the summer, let him put up some big numbers in Vegas and build back some stock? It just makes no sense.

I’ve said it…