By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

The Warriors made it official this morning on behalf of majority owner Chris Cohan:

FOR SALE.

Cohan has hired a franchise-sale specialist, Galatioto Sports Partners, to manage the disposal of the team he ran into the ground during 16 seasons of ownership — 15 of those playoff-free.

It seems fairly obvious that Cohan is bringing in GSP to attempt to drive up the price from the $320 million value upon which Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison — the odds-on favorite to wind up as the next Warriors owner — based his early bid. According to Tim Kawakami, who has been all over this story for the better part of a year now, there are five or six other groups that have been waiting until now to get involved in the bidding.

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

I’m not sure if Anthony Randolph rents or owns his in-season home here in the Bay Area, so I don’t know which piece of advice to give him. It’s either:

a) Call your landlord and find out what you need to do to ensure to get your security deposit back.

or

b) Call a good real-estate agent and get started on staging that sucker, because with this market, it could take months to sell.

Whatever is the case, it appears obvious from general manager Larry Riley’s comments Saturday night that Randolph is on the block and that the Warriors expect to give up the second-year forward in the near future.

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Not much to add this morning, so it’s straight to the linkage:

BLOGOSPHERE

Golden State Warriors/San Francisco Chronicle (Rusty Simmons): Don Nelson goes on the offensive in The Jackson Affair, spinning in the masterly manner of C.J. Cregg: “How sad can a guy be making $36 million over four years? To this day, I really don’t know why (Jackson) wants out. We’re trying to win here, and he can be a big part of that.”

Also, after reading Nelson’s quote about how, “I don’t fall out of love with people. I understand that people get divorced and everything else, but, if you have affection for people, I think it lasts a lifetime,” I have to admit, all I could think of was Jake Gyllenhaal in “Brokeback Mountain.”

Inside The Warriors/Contra Costa Times (Marcus Thompson II): Q: Is it worth worrying about Stephen Curry’s early shooting woes? A: Maybe.

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

When is Chris Cohan going to sell the Warriors?

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me that question after I started covering the team, I might have earned enough cash to buy Cohan out by myself.

The idea of Golden State changing hands has been on the front burner again since reports surfaced in July that Cohan was seriously looking to jettison his 80 percent stake in the Warriors, and the flame was turned up Monday when Yahoo! Sports said there is a new group of bidders interested in the team. According to Adrian Wojnarowski, a “well-moneyed and politically connected” group wants to pay off Cohan and move the W’s to a privately funded arena in downtown San Francisco.

Unfortunately for those fans who feel — and I can’t say that I disagree with this viewpoint — that Cohan’s tenure is the root cause for why the franchise has been mired in an endless cavalcade of losing seasons, disgruntled stars, unemployed coaches and disaffected season-ticket holders, there is no Mikhail Prokhorov in the wings, set to swoop in on a tidal wave of rubles.

The people who are looking to buy from Cohan — a list which includes Oracle’s Larry Ellison — are willing to spend hundreds of millions, but rightly not willing to overpay for the privilege of owning a team that won 29 games last season and has a loose cannon with an untradeable contract willing to sink the ship if he’s not moved out.

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

With everything hanging out in the open, insubordination flapping in the breeze as Stephen Jackson is accused of cursing out Don Nelson — thus helping to precipitate his two-game suspension — this seems like the right time to ask:

Is Captain Jack the Warriors’ new Latrell Sprewell?

Let’s see: Both of them were big wings (although Jackson does clearly have the size advantage) who liked to play physical defense. Both were the emotional leaders of their respective versions of the GSWs. Both lived to take the big shot and loved to fire 3-pointers — even though their success rate probably didn’t

And now, they’ve both been suspended by Nelson.

(Some of this stuff was already covered in the live game thread, so if you read that entry already, I apologize in advance for the repetition.)

Nelson either misspoke, misremembered or just flat-out misled reporters Saturday when he claimed that he had never suspended a player before Jackson. During his first Warriors’ go-round, he met with Sprewell after the latter ditched practice (not for the first time) in January 1995 and immediately after that meeting, the team announced a one-game suspension.

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