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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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

Word comes from this morning’s shootaround (via Jaymee Sire’s Tweet) that the Warriors are keeping forward Anthony Tolliver and making room by cutting loose guard Speedy Claxton.

The move is both expected to some extent — someone prediced correctly almost a week ago that the W’s would keep Tolliver — and yet also surprising, in that Claxton represented one of the Warriors’ largest expiring contracts at $5.2 million.

Honestly, I thought it would be either Chris Hunter or Devean George who got the kiss off to allow the Warriors to retain Tolliver, who had already served out two 10-day contracts and had to be given a deal for the remainder of the year or let go.

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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.

PRINT MEDIA

Contra Costa Times (Marcus Thompson II): Eons from now, when they sing songs of the Warriors’ greatness in Valhalla, the Ballad of Raja Bell will ring forth and be heard.

(Of course, that’s not going to help Golden State in the here and now, as Bell is still set to undergo wrist surgery that probably, knowing this club’s luck, will cost him the rest of his season.)
Also: Ronny Turiaf’s bad knee would be in great shape if only the NBA were played on a straight line, kind of like this game.

San Francisco Chronicle (Rusty Simmons): Everybody feels good about losing because they’re close losses. We’ll see how long that lasts.

WEB MEDIA

NBA.com (Couper Moorhead): Kevin Garnett tries his hand at creating his own Yogism: “Nellieball is something different. It’s always been effective when it worked.”

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

I know it’s way late, but I did want to collate the collective analysis of the end of the Stephen Jackson Era in Oakland and have it in one handy place.

I never did get a chance to write any lengthy analysis, but I think, from listening to all of Larry Riley’s comments on Monday, that Jackson finally broke the Warriors’ back with his quotes after the Brandon Jennings Explosion™ on Saturday.

It was a bad enough look when Jack praised himself for not getting T’d up during the Clippers’ road beatdown of the Warriors, which made it clear that he cared not one iota for what happened to the team on the floor.

But in the aftermath of the Bucks’ 129-125 win, Jackson let loose with both barrels.

First up was coach Don Nelson’s decision at the end of the game to call a play that involved Anthony Morrow, Corey Maggette and Monta Ellis all as options as the Warriors looked to tie the score. It wasn’t flat-out insubordinate, but it was sure coming close: “All I know is that I’m one of the best scorers on the team, and I was taking the ball out. That’s all I know. My job was to pass the ball inbounds. When you’re in the huddle at the end of the game, you pay attention to what you’re supposed to do. You don’t want to be the one who messes up. My job was to get the ball inbounds, and I did a great job.”

Then came what was, IMHO, the final straw — throwing his teammates under the bus for Jennings’ double-nickel performance: “Nobody has ever given me 55 points, and I didn’t get 55 points scored on me,” Jackson said. “Somebody has got to man up and take that 55, and I’m not going to take it. I wasn’t guarding him.”

That quote had to be especially galling because the Warriors have spent the better part of the last two years preaching about rotations and second and third efforts and all those team principles that Nelson and Keith Smart feel a team needs to become a good defensive unit. And Jackson, knowing all of that, just hung the young kids out to dry.

To me, that was the breaking point.

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By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

Larry Riley seemed to be going for laughs when he told various groups of media Monday that Don Nelson was so quirky, he might just play one of his new acquisitions, Raja Bell and Vladimir Radmanovic, 35 minutes on Tuesday against Cleveland.

It’s becoming more clear he wasn’t joking.

The team announced late Monday afternoon that C.J. Watson has contracted the H1N1 virus — commonly called the “swine flu” — and will miss the final two games on the team’s current road trip.

Watson posted the news that he was a suspected H1N1 sufferer on his Twitter feed, and included a picture of himself with the face mask he has to wear in public settings. He stayed behind in Milwaukee as the team flew ahead.

It’s a good thing Bell and Radmanovic were expected to join the team in Cleveland on Monday night and should be available Tuesday. The Warriors will need those two just to make the league-mandated minimum of eight players in uniform, although the San Francisco Chronicle is reporting that Devean George — who’s been out all year with a knee injury — is being flown in as well.