Warriorrsien HC fanin näkemys tradesta
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Now that the champagne bottles are all empty, and all the guests have gone home, the Golden State Warriors and their fans can now go back to living their normal lives. As is the case every year, Warriors fans worked themselves into a frenzy over which player their team might acquire before the trade deadline, all based on some hot rumor they received from their mailman who knows someone who knows someone's cousin. But today is different from every other post-deadline Friday: there's no hangover. Warriors fans woke up Friday morning and the hottie was still in their bed. This wasn't just some dream we had about a 6-foot bowling ball of a point guard who would dunk over his own mother if she was guarding the lane. No, this really happened. The Warriors made a franchise-altering trade in February, and for once, we're not the ones who took it on the chin.
Baron Davis is a Golden State Warrior. Reading that in print is just as strange as hearing it on TV. Baron Davis is good. Really good. The kind of player other teams use to beat the Warriors on a regular basis. And now he's coming to Oakland, for the low, low cost of Speedy Claxton and Dale Davis. In the 17 years I've been a sports fan, this is by far the best trade I've seen one of my teams make. Billy Beane and Brian Sabean have yet to pull off a deal this good. Even if Baron's chronic knee and back injuries keep him from ever playing a game for Golden State, what have the Warriors given up? A decent point guard and a geriatric center who had 2 months left on his contract. And in return, the Warriors get a 25-year-old who's proven to be one of the best players in the league. This trade made the Warriors relevant again, and there's no price tag you can put on that.
I initially wanted to write this column Thursday night immediately following the trade, but it would have lacked any kind of content. In my head, I had my opening sentence all planned out: "We've got Baron Davis, we've got Baron Davis! And you ain't got none! Cause you on da welfare!" It works better if you sing it to yourself, like I did, but it wouldn't have done the trade justice. Acquiring Davis is terrific for the franchise for several reasons. First of all, it gives the team a legitimate superstar, something the Warriors haven't had since Latrell Sprewell told P.J. Carlesimo where to put his mustard back in 1997. And while he does have an injury history, my philosophy is that it's always better to worry about the superstar you have than the superstar you don't have. In fact, were it not for his injuries, Davis wouldn't have been available in the first place.
The second reason Baron's arrival is so meaningful is that he actually wants to play for the Warriors. Most players who force their way off of bad teams are happy to be going anywhere, and you don't have to look any further than Vince Carter for proof. But Davis isn't just happy to be out of New Orleans; he's actually wanted to play for the Warriors his entire career. Before the 1999 draft, Davis was fearful of being picked by the (then) Charlotte Hornets or L.A. Clippers, and begged for the Warriors to trade up in order to grab him. When asked by a local paper what message he'd like to send along to Warriors G.M. Garry St. Jean, Baron said simply, "Get it done". Of course, asking St. Jean to "get it done" would be like asking your dog to talk, and so Baron ended up a Hornet. But 5 seasons later, the California kid who bears a slight resemblance to a walrus has come home.
Baron's arrival in Golden State provides a level of relief for Warriors fans that cannot be understated. Since 1996, the team has employed an endless number of point guards, hoping to find a prince if they simply kissed enough frogs. Over a 10-year span, only the brief Gilbert Arenas experiment stands out among the wreckage; there was B.J., Bimbo, Mookie, Vonteego, Speedy, Pooky, Chewy, Cookie, and Dopey. If he had a stupid name and no game, you can bet we tried him out. The Warriors are nearly as bad at selecting point guards as I am at web design. There are a lot of ways to describe the Warriors' previous management, but this is the simplest: they didn't know what they were doing. Each G.M. who passed through inherited a losing team, and passed on a new losing team to his successor, none the wiser about how to fix the situation. Other than the actual acquisition of Davis, my favorite part of this week is that there will be no press conference featuring a noticably frustrated St. Jean, his face growing redder every time he explains why the Warriors sat on their thumbs during yet another busy trading season.
The man who took over for St. Jean didn't look like he was going to be much better. A lot of people, including myself, thought Chris Mullin was pretty dumb when he handed out 6-year contracts to Derek Fisher, Adonal Foyle, Jason Richardson, and Troy Murphy in the offseason. Yeah- dumb like a fox. Not only did Mullin land an All-Star in Davis for practically nothing, he also acquired 2 young forwards from Denver for Eduardo Najera and Dallas' 1st round pick in 2089. In one day, Chris Mullin transformed the Golden State Warriors from stat-padders for the opposition into the cockiest last-place team in the league. He's turned Antawn Jamison into Baron Davis, a trade no one would have thought possible. And much like Rod Thorne and Isiah Thomas, Mullin has staked his future and reputation to a point guard whose former team gave up on him; my guess is the Baron trade will put Mullin closer to Thorne's class than Isiah's. Chris Mullin limped into the trade deadline, looking to all the world like a real-life version of Verbal Kint. Thursday afternoon, he walked out of the Warriors' downtown offices as Keyser Soze.
It's no secret that teams whose best players are point guards don't win titles. Michael Jordan, Hakeem Olajuwon, Shaquille O'Neal, and Tim Duncan have won the last 13 NBA championships, and not one of them played point. But the Warriors don't need a championship right now, and their fans definitely don't need one. Currently stuck in a 12-year playoff drought, Bay Area basketball fans will settle for just a drink at the postseason fountain. The 8th seed and a 4-game sweep out of the playoffs sounds mighty good right now to Warriors fans. Well, this team is good enough to make the playoffs next season. With Baron Davis, J-Rich, Murphy, and Dunleavy in tow, and a likely top-5 draft pick on the way, the Warriors are in terrific position to win more games than they lose in 2005-06. These are baby steps for a normal franchise, but they're still lofty goals in Golden State.
Having spent the past decade mastering the art of losing a one-sided trade, the Warriors decided to finally see how the other side lives. And oh, is it sweet. The Tim Hardaway trade has finally been put to rest, and a stocky, headstrong point guard built in Tim Bug's image has come to fill his shoes. On the night of the trade deadline, Charles Barkley pointed out that all good teams need a pit bull, someone who fights for respect and will not let their team lose. For the great teams, their pit bull is also their best player. The Warriors have lost a lot of respect over the years, but they finally have their pit bull. And fortunately for Warriors fans, he's also their best player.
