By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

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

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San Francisco Chronicle (Rusty Simmons): Not much different than his earlier blog post immediately after the Ellis-Nelson confrontation. Apparently, Ellis didn’t get his ankles taped at the hotel, and therefore missed the start of practice, drawing Nelson’s ire. Or some such thing.

Contra Costa Times (Marcus Thompson II): More from the RSC. The money quote for me is the last one, where Nelson tries to absolve himself of all blame: “If you want to be any good, you’ve got to have good chemistry. … The coach can help when the players are willing.”

New York Post (Peter Vecsey): Mostly, it’s a column about Byron Scott’s ouster in New Orleans, but it includes this hilarious quote from Al Harrington: “Had I stayed with the Warriors any longer I felt for sure (Nelson) would have ended my NBA career.” Yikes.

(A Byron Scott aside: Did you see Baron Davis’ Tweet about the coach he battled with repeatedly before finally getting traded to Golden State? “B. Scott got fired… Sad to see that happen! Good Coach!” Talk about your BS for B.S.)

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

My take hasn’t changed from what I wrote several weeks ago on the subject of Stephen Jackson’s extension with the Warriors, which after weeks in the works was finally signed Monday.

In terms of pure production, Jackson deserves to be the highest-paid player on this team (or perhaps second-highest, if Monta Ellis had kept himself healthy). It’s almost an insult that he’s slated to pull down the fifth-highest salary this season behind Ellis, Al Harrington, Andris Biedrins and Corey Maggette.

But by extending Jackson now, the Warriors are tossing aside their previously iron-clad rules of dealing with a player only when the team has used up all of its possible leverage. I’ll be fascinated to hear the explanation for this exception, if any is forthcoming on the matter.

One interesting note: Jackson told me a couple weeks back that he wasn’t asking for the max, but the reported numbers — three years for $28 million — don’t reflect any money left on the table. The most the Warriors are allowed to give Jackson under the Collective Bargaining Agreement is $27.8 million — $8.45 million in 2010-11, $9.26 million in 2011-12 and $10.06 million in 2012-13.

Outside of the reasoning for why the Warriors would break with their own philosophy, here’s the biggest question: How will the signing impact the Warriors in the summer of 2010, when a whole raft of top-notch free agents is scheduled to flood the market?

There is no real hope that a player with the stature of LeBron James will be willing to come to Oakland when the lights of New York are beckoning to him. But having maneuverability in that timeframe — when teams will potentially be looking to offload players in order to make a run at UFAs such as Paul Pierce, Jason Richardson, Josh Howard, Dirk Nowitzki, Tayshaun Prince, Yao Ming, Kobe Bryant, Michael Redd, Amare Stoudemire, Tony Parker, Chris Bosh or Caron Butler — would afford a franchise the opportunity to recast its core, if that was deemed necessary.

With Jackson in the fold, the Warriors are set to spend $51.5 million in 2010-11 for an eight-man core of Jackson, Ellis, Biedrins, Maggette, Kelenna Azubuike, Ronny Turiaf, Brandan Wright and Anthony Randolph.

Based on the trend line of the last few years, my guesstimate of the 2010-11 cap number would be roughly $64 million. (That’s assuming the league’s revenue total continues to ramp up, which is probably on…