Ah, Nellie: The Beery Frankness of Golden State’s Coach

Some newspaper sports reporters seem particularly well-suited to blogging; Dave D’Allessandro is my usual example, since he seems to be writing more in his actual voice at his blog than he is in his (still very good) daily Nets coverage. (In his weirdly rambly Sports Illustrated blog, the great Joe Posnanski seems almost to like it too much) But, while he seems like an excellent reporter in the excellent-reporter sense, I feel like Tim Kawakami deserves special credit for building a recent post pretty much entirely out of a transcribed interview with Warriors coach Don Nelson (above, right). It might seem lazy, but when you’ve got material like this, not much commentary is needed. To wit, then:

-Q: Maybe you™ll be good, not this season but next season?

-NELSON: Hopefully. I can™t predict the future. But when you start the rebuilding process, then you would hope that™s when it would happen”next year we would start certainly get better. Or maybe even this year we would start to get better.

-Q: Is ownership and management on-board with your thinking?

-NELSON: Absolutely.

-Q: They™re OK with a non-playoff year?

-NELSON: They would probably want me to be more positive. But I kind of like to say it the way it is. That™s the way I see it. And we™re going to get better. But I think there are too many obstacles to have that as a goal this year.

I think really to get better and try to win games and bring our team is really to way to go at this point, and not really worry about (the playoffs).

-Q: You said the 30-game mark would be your measuring stick. You™re at 17 now. What changed [the timeline]?

-NELSON: 30 games was when we were going to try and win games and bring the younger guys slower. When Al got injured, that kind of changed. Nobody asked me about that. I think we can look now at where we are¦ I said what I said. So.

I was going to try to follow Kawakami’s lead and keep the framing stuff brief and minimal, but I feel obligated to add that whatever Nelson is paying David Mamet to write his postgame pressers, it’s absolutely worth it.