With only 12 players in camp holding guaranteed contracts — Kosta Perovic, we hardly knew ye — the Warriors’ roster competition is more wide-open than it’s been in years.

There are 11 players who are locks, including Kelenna Azubuike, Andris Biedrins, Al Harrington, Stephen Jackson, Corey Maggette, Anthony Randolph, Ronny Turiaf, Marcus Williams and Brandan Wright. Monta Ellis is also on that list, unless the Warriors take the radical step of trying to void his contract over his Quadrophenia homage. I thought Marco Belinelli might not make it, but I’ll take Nelson — who looked truly surprised when I brought this up — at his word when he said the team will be picking up his third-year option. No point in doing that if the guy isn’t 100 percent safe for this season.

Rookie Richard Hendrix is the other fully guaranteed player. He’s on a three-year deal (for purposes of retaining Bird rights if he is a diamond in the rough), but only this first season is guaranteed. At a cost of $442,114, I wouldn’t say he’s assured of a spot; remember, the Warriors ate significantly more (nearly $700,000) to rid themselves of Andre Owens and keep Matt Barnes two years ago.

That means we’re looking at eight players fighting for four roster spots before the season begins on Oct. 29. Here’s one observer’s tote board as of Sunday morning:

DeMarcus Nelson: 20-1. Great kid, solid defender, struggles with his shot. If you’re 7 feet tall, like Biedrins, you can get by with that skill set. Not if you’re 6-4, like Nelson.

Rob Kurz: 15-1. Dropped from 30-1 with Nelson’s recent lavishing of praise. Nellie’s right: Kurz’s game is not always the most elegant thing, but apparently it is effective, a la Barnes. He did drain the game-winning 3-pointer in Thursday’s evening scrimmage, a fact I thought would be the highlight of his stay as a Warrior. We’ll see if Nelson’s comments were just a job reference, or a harbinger of something else.

Dion Dowell: 10-1. Has a $50,000 partial guarantee, but is that enough of a reason to keep another 6-7 swingman?

Justin Williams: 8-1. Provides some heft and shot-blocking behind Biedrins and Turiaf, but third-string centers never play much under Nelson, who will probably use Al Harrington there for those minutes instead. It might come down to an individual battle against Richard Hendrix for one spot.

Anthony Morrow: 6-1. It’s tough to get a read here. With his range and accuracy,…

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

OAKLAND — For once, there were no surprises when Don Nelson revealed his starting five for the Warriors’ exhibition opener Sunday in New Orleans.

C.J. Watson, who was named the starter in place of injured Monta Ellis almost from the opening of camp, will take the floor alongside Stephen Jackson, Corey Maggette, Al Harrington and Andris Biedrins.

Two things you won’t see (or, more accurately, wouldn’t see, if the game were being televised) in the Big Easy:

** Rookie forward Richard Hendrix, who will sit out with a strained left thigh.

** Jackson at point guard. Although Nelson said Thursday that he will have Jackson run the offense in some preseason games, it probably won’t happen until the China trip. That’s probably for the best, given that Jackson has only had a handful of practices at the position.

Marcus Williams sprained an ankle in Saturday’s workout when he stepped on someone’s foot while trying to close out defensively on his man, but he said that he still hopes to play today. If he can’t go, that would open the door for either Watson or Dan Dickau to make a major statement, since they’ll be the only two healthy point guards.

Belinelli in no immediate danger

Speaking of point guard, last season, one impetus behind the Marco Belinelli hype was the idea that the Italian would perhaps someday be able to play the point. So with practically everyone on the team outside of Ronny Turiaf and Andris Biedrins being tried out at the 1 — and with Jackson, Maggette and Kelenna Azubuike all sucking up minutes at the 2 — will Belinelli see some time there this season?

The short answer: No.

“We looked at it this summer,” Nelson said, “and we didn’t see that there’s much of a chance there for that to happen.”

On the positive side, it looks like Belinelli won’t suffer the same fate as Patrick O’Bryant, who spent last year as a lame-duck benchwarmer after his third-year option was declined by the team. The team has until Oct. 31 to complete what are usual pro forma moves and pick up the options for Belinelli and Brandan Wright, plus the fourth-year option for Marcus Williams.

“I don’t think that’s much of a situation to look at,” Nelson said of Belinelli’s deal. “I hadn’t even thought about it until you mentioned it.”

Rob Kurz, rebounding machine

In a continuation of his apparent quest to individually praise each of the 19…

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

OAKLAND — Warriors coach Don Nelson used his maximum allotment of 12 practices over the first six days of training camp. But even that back-breaking workload still hasn’t been enough to get one of the NBA’s youngest rosters up to speed.

“We’re going slow. I’m dragging my feet. I want to put more in, but I think my young players are swamped right now,” Nelson said after Thursday’s morning practice. “We did put another (offensive) set in today, but we’ll probably go into the season without everything in. Ninety percent of our camp has been defense, and I think they all know their jobs defensively. It’s just that they don’t all do it all the time.”

Unfortunately for the Warriors, time is running out to change the situation. Teams can only have six days’ worth of double-days, so Golden State will go to just one practice a day from here on out. And they’ll be on a week-long road trip to China later on this month to stage a pair of preseason games against Milwaukee.

“I love China,” Nelson said. “But you don’t want to go to China during preseason, if you can help it. You want to stay here and tend to business. It just takes a chunk of the training camp away. . . .

“Now, a year ago, when I had a veteran team, and after five days of training camp, I had everything in, it would have been enjoyable. But this young team, they need to be right here in two-a-days as long as they can.”

Captain Stephen Jackson thinks “it’ll be a great experience” to visit China, but would rather stop about 40 percent of the way there for the rest of training camp.

“I think everybody would love be in Hawaii right now, like we were last year,” Jackson said. “The more practice the better, because we’ve got a lot of guys that are trying to get used to the game, get used to the defensive schemes. If you look at practice yesterday, if the referees were calling three seconds in the lane, we would have been at the free-throw line a million times.”

Taking a peek
It’s been hard to come by independent analysis of the Warriors so far, since the team’s evening scrimmage sessions have been closed to the media. But reporters were welcomed to Thursday’s run, and here’s some quick hits on guys who stood out, be…

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

OAKLAND — As the Warriors continue casting about for a suitable replacement for Baron Davis, they decided to bring in someone who’s already been there and done that: Six-year veteran Dan Dickau was signed Wednesday night in time for the team’s evening practice.

This will be Dickau’s second stint with the Warriors, although he has never played a game for the franchise. He was acquired by Golden State executive vice president Chris Mullin from Portland as part of the package for Nick Van Exel in July 2004, then shipped off to Dallas along with Erick Dampier later that summer.

“He’s a veteran point guard; they’re hard to find,” Warriors coach Don Nelson said. “He doesn’t turn the ball over. He knows what he’s doing. He’s right at the age now where he should be at the peak of his game.”

Dickau, a 30-year-old who averaged a career-high 13.2 points per game with the New Orleans Hornets in 2004-05 after replacing an injured (and eventually traded) Davis, will provide competition to youngsters C.J. Watson and Marcus Williams.

“He’s a heady player. I think he’s got some skills that can fit into what we’re doing,” Mullin said. “That stint he had in New Orleans, that would probably work anywhere. . . . He’s got to be thinking, ‘I can do this (again). I’ve just got to get to the right place.’ If this is where that turns out to be, that’d be good for everybody. Do I feel like that’s an automatic? No. But that’s why he’s here.”

Dickau wasn’t supposed to be in North America at this point. In mid-August, he signed to play for Italian club Air Avellino this season, but Dickau’s agent, Mark Bartlestein, said the situation did not work out for the player’s family, so they quickly made plans to return. Avellino and Dickau agreed to void his two-year deal earlier this week, but the Warriors were awaiting receipt of the final paperwork before signing the 6-0, 190-pounder.

Several NBA teams were interested in Dickau, who averaged 5.3 points and 2.6 assists in 15.5 minutes per game last season for the Los Angeles Clippers, backing up Brevin Knight and Sam Cassell. But Dickau’s familiarity with Nelson — Dickau played for him in Dallas early in the 2004-05 season before joining the Hornets via trade — and the need to quickly come to a decision with training camps opening made Golden State the…