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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