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>Yeah, the issue was that he didn't want to play center >anymore, he wanted to play power forward, and spent the >entirety of his first off-season complaining about it. So we >traded the power forward, Billy Owens, for a center, Rony >Seikaly, who was literally the best center we were going to be >able to get. But then Webber freaked out and sulked because >Billy Owens was his best friend. Webber sat out the beginning >of the next season because they traded the guy who he went >clubbing with after the games. Webber was still young at the >time, but that was completely immature.
Precisely, and if you read Pop's comments, Webber was actually whining *immediately* about being a center or playing big at all. He wanted to be like Magic or Penny, which would beg the question in any sane person's mind why they would have traded Penny for him. Then when they acquiesce by acquiring a center, he cries about Owens' departure (whom they honestly should never have traded for in the first place).
>It was sad about Googs, because he beasted before and after he >played for the Dubs, but he was just an awful fit on the team. >And he got froze out by the players who were pissed about how >everything was unfolding.
Yeah he had his best years in Minnesota. I never really looked into the issues in Golden State much and just chalked them up to a very, very sick culture in Oakland at the time. They were the most dysfunctional organization at that moment, a feat in a league that included teams like Sacramento and the L.A. Clippers. There were probably some bigger messes in the cocaine-fueled NBA and the early days when every team was a missed paycheck from folding.
>Donyell Marshall only became good AFTER he left the Warriors. >He turned into a solid role player/third option after signing >with Utah when he finally became a free agent. He really >wasn't even that when he was on the Warriors. At best he was >the third/sometimes fourth best player on REALLY bad Warriors >teams. Certainly wasn't what you'd hope for the fourth overall >pick in his respective draft.
He spent six or seven seasons there, no? I thought he had a couple good ones but I know he produced more with Utah. At any rate, what I am trying to get at here was that their initial mistake of sinking so much into Webber set into motion a series of moves that were just to save face and cut losses. On their face they seemed OK but needed to be spectacular to buoy a rapdily sinking ship. So I look at the organization as a whole and also Webber's petulance as the big fuck-ups rather than the trade of Webber for Googs itself.
] >I don't have a problem with the Carter/Jamison thing. But the >other picks never turned into anything at all.
True. I forget what Orlando got with their picks. Not much if I remember correctly.
>The Warriors organization in the mid-'90s/early '00s was >completely rotten at its core. Completely and totally >incompetent. But if you look for the seed for where everything >went wrong, it all goes back to that Webber trade. That's >where it all first started going wrong. And it REALLY didn't >have to be that way.
I think that is a common interpretation but I think it starting going wrong well before then. At a minimum the acquisition of Webber was a harbinger of doom, and I think trading Mitch Richmond for Billy Owens started the descent in motion at a time when the team really should have been gearing up to contend. And you will know MY JACKET IS GOLD when I lay my vengeance upon thee.
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