Upon further review, I have to say I’m revising my opinion; Monta Ellis CAN be an All-Star. But to get there, he can’t have Trady McGrady lose. He has to have McGrady win.

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

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

BLOGOSPHERE

Inside The Warriors/Contra Costa Times (Marcus Thompson II): Marcus has some thoughts on Anthony Randolph’s limited playing time: “Since the Warriors really can’t match up with the Lakers in the size category, Nelson presumably wanted to create an advantage on offense by going with either Maggette, who can score on the drive, or Radmanovic, who stretches the floor with his outside shot.”

Also included in the entry was this little nugget: “Randolph declined to comment. I think he was the first player dressed and out (he’s from Los Angeles, so he probably had people waiting for him).”

That makes perfect sense, all except for the fact that players have people waiting for them all the time and almost never rush to evacuate the locker room. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if Randolph was pissed off, and mightily, at not getting more of a chance last night. We’ll see if Bill Duffy reaches out to the media in the upcoming days.

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

Gilbert Arenas can’t talk enough for the NBA’s liking. I’m betting that Stephen Jackson is talking way too much.

Arenas was fined $25,000 Tuesday by the league in response to avoiding two weeks of interview requests. (And when he did finally speak Wednesday, it wasn’t to say much.)

After a second consecutive day of musings and ruminations without much heed to ramifications, can Jackson’s second league fine of the season be that far off?

Twenty-four hours after renouncing his captaincy, Jackson took the opportunity Wednesday to expand the circle of blame for his L.A. meltdown, lumping the teammates who didn’t ride to his rescue in with coach Don Nelson.

(We’re not even going to delve into the ridiculous notion floated by Jackson, that he’s as good as Kobe Bryant.)

“Nobody reacted but me so the team didn’t have a reaction,” Jackson said of his five-fouls-in-10-minutes Friday. “It was only me standing up for myself. I don’t think anybody else stood up for me. But if the shoe was on the other foot, I would have stood up for somebody on my team. And they didn’t do the same for me.”

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PRINT MEDIA

Contra Costa Times (Marcus Thompson II): Stephen Jackson breaks his silence. “I’ve got no choice but to go out there,” Jackson said. “I’m just going to do my job. I don’t want to be fake. I’m just going to go and play basketball and handle my business.”

We’ll see how that turns out.

San Francisco Chronicle (Ray Ratto): Chris Cohan will sell someday. But not just yet.

San Francisco Chronicle (Rusty Simmons): A brief summary.

WEB MEDIA

ESPN.com (Marc Stein): A distinct lack of good news on the trade front: “… no deal appears close in an economy where teams are overwhelmingly reluctant to take on players in their 30s possessing long-term contracts.”

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

And so begins the great Stephen Jackson exodus from Warrior land.

How else to interpret the scene Friday night at the Forum during the first quarter of the Warriors’ 110-91 win over the Lakers, where Jackson allowed his physical battles with Kobe Bryant to turn into a five-foul, one-technical, banished-to-the-locker-room-by-the-coach, all-in-the-space-of-nine-minutes meltdown?

I’ve joked to a few people in the weeks since Jackson’s trade demand that no one’s going to be able to tell if he’s tanking it. After all, this is a guy who hoists up 3-pointers with 18 seconds left on the shot clock three or four times a game — and that’s when he’s playing at the TOP of his game.

But after last night . . . well, that’s certainly one way to make it clear you don’t want to be around.

The Warriors face a dilemma heading into tonight’s outdoor exhibition game against the Phoenix Suns: What to do in response to Jackson’s actions?

Simply ignoring the outburst runs the risk of giving Jackson carte blanche to run roughshod over the Warriors. It’s one thing to pout your way out of a meaningless exhibition game in a long-abandoned former NBA arena. It’s quite another to do that on Oct. 28 against Houston when the regular season begins.

Jilted fans who feel Jackson has stabbed them in the back with the very pen he used to ink his three-year, $28 million extension would love to see him suspended, but that would almost certainly turn this into an open war that makes the Al Harrington break-up look like an amicable divorce and rivals the insanity that was Stephon Marbury’s final season in New York.

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