Nelson agrees to contract with Warriors--finally!

The Golden State Warriors and head coach Don Nelson have reached a new contractual agreement, it was announced today by Warriors’ President Robert Rowell. Per team policy, terms of the agreement were not announced. This ended a seemingly never-ending talk of what Nelson was going to do after guiding the team to a huge upset of the #1 seeded Dallas Mavericks in the first round of the 2006 NBA Playoffs.

This is a great thing for Golden St., who has often been the red-headed stepchild of the West coast. Nelson has brought prestige to the franchise, and with being in the top 10 in wins for coaches and taking 18 teams to playoffs, he will bring the players in that are needed to take the Warriors to the top--if he can stay long enough. One of the big knocks on Nelson is that he is a Larry-Brown nomad of coaching, much in due part that he likes to run his team his way--he has proven that he can--and when those higher up try to buck him, you can almost hear the unzipping of the luggage.

Last season, Golden State ranked second in the NBA in points per game (106.5 ppg) and led the NBA in fast-break points per game (19.2 ppg), while also ranking first in steals per game (9.15 spg) and points off turnovers (21.2 ppg). Following a mid-season, eight-player trade with Indiana, Nelson’s squad posted a 23-20 record that included a 16-5 mark over the final 21 games of the season – the only 21 games following the trade in which all of his rotation players were healthy. That 16-5 record, which was the best record in the NBA from March 5 through the end of the season, was highlighted by a 9-1 record over the final 10 games of the campaign. Over those final 10 games, Nelson’s “small-ball” lineup, which featured no starter over 6-9 in height, averaged 117.4 points per game.

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Nelson agrees to contract with Warriors--finally!

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