The Works: Don Nelson Remembered; Donnie Walsh's Knicks Regret

Filed under: Kings, Knicks, Magic, Warriors, NBA Fans, NBA Coaches, The Works

Today in The Works: Donnie Walsh regrets betting the farm on LeBron; teams find a way to squeeze themselves into the ticket-scalping game; and love is a game of one-on-one.

But first, on what Don Nelson has given basketball and the Warriors.

R.I.P. Nellieball

Most sad about the end of the Don Nelson era in Oakland, as reported by FanHouse's Sam Amick last night, is that Nellie had become a parody of himself over the last two years. This final campaign, in which Corey Maggette played most of his minutes as a power forward -- Corey Maggette! -- wasn't even Nellieball. It was the version of Nellieball a sentient blender would come up with. Just an absolute mess.

That's not Nellie. Well, OK, he's a mess. He wears stretch turtlenecks, walks his dog on the roof of Warriors' headquarters and drinks cheap beer the second he leaves the floor, without fail. He's a mess. But for so long Nellieball was a beautiful mess, a chaotic order that left conservative viewers shaking their heads and bleating about the fundamentals, while fans of a more aesthetic basketball gaped in awe.

Man, Nellie had some really weird ideas. He didn't invent the idea of the giant shooter. Well, he kind-of did: in Nellie's virgin year at Golden State, in 1988-89, he had a fourth-year 7'6 Sudanese center named Manute Bol take 91 3-point attempts. Bol became the first 7-footer in the three-point era to take so many as 25 threes in a season. In Dallas, with Dirk Nowitzki and then Raef LaFrentz and Wang Zhizhi, Nelson became addicted to the idea. And while it worked for Dirk and created a new strain of the "perimeter big man" genome (word to Andrea Bargnani), it's an idea that hasn't been widely adopted.

 

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