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| Monday, July 29 Updated: July 30, 5:10 PM ET Warriors need more than Mussel' to turn it around By Ray Ratto ESPN.com |
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The ninth man out of the Quecreek Mine looked at his rescuers, looked back behind him and said, "There's one more guy down there." And the next thing you know, up popped Eric Musselman. Six months from now, it would have meant six more weeks of winter. Today, on the other hand ...
By and large, his hiring impressed several people who frankly tired of the popular sport of kicking the Warriors while they are down, spread-legged and with their heads stuck in the storm drain. He was hailed for being a fresh face, for not being Brian Winters of all people, and for giving good press conference. He was also criticized for being a fresh face, for not being Rick Barry of all people, and for taking the job in the first place. And if you understand that, you understand the Warriors far too well. You are also very, very alone. Which brings us back to Musselman, The Man Who Won Over Chris Cohan. He seems eager, aggressive, intense and ready to tackle the job. He has a philosophy, the backing of management and a broad and inspiring vision for reversing nearly a decade of hilarious neglect. The man, in short, is crazy. Stark staring bughouse. A trapeze artist with no net, no helmet and no insurance. And on the very off chance that he actually succeeds, a freaking genius. But just so we understand what it takes to be a genius in this instance, let us paint a brief picture of the Warriors he confronts:
You see, Eric Musselman has been compared to Jon Gruden, but Gruden took on a team in Oakland that was sick and tired of losing, and was ready to do something about it. We don't know if Musselman has been afforded the same courtesy, and until we learn the answer to that, we would do well to doubt his power to raise the dead.
You see, what ails the Warriors is an entirely internal matter. Even at their best, the Warriors are a weak defensive team and an even weaker shooting team -- in short, the dreaded combination of teams that can't score or stop the other team from scoring. At their even better than best, they are a 30-win team in a conference where even 60 wins guarantees you nothing. And while Warrior fans think 30 wins would represent a triumph of Promethean breadth and reason enough to match Musselman with Phil Jackson in the new season of Celebrity Deathmatch, 30 wins still doesn't pay. In fact, we don't know how many wins would sufficiently impress the players to keep them believing in Musselman. He may be new to a media corps or fan base hungry for anything that doesn't smack of the tired old Warrior-ism, but we're not the ones he needs to impress. The Warriors have bottomed out, and the only way for Musselman to lower expectations is to be seized by the players, duct-taped, thrown in his car trunk and taken to the Burning Man Festival in Nevada. But the players require more than just "This doesn't suck as much as last year did."' They require a reason to believe that they can be the next Sacramento Kings, up from the tiled floor and circling the Lakers semi-menacingly. And that measure won't be found in a win total, but in the way they play, night in and night out. The Warriors have essentially quit around the holiday season each of the past three years, and have lost by some horrendous margins in that time. So let's see Musselman tackle that before we believe he is something more than another night watchman standing in front of the abandoned building. Let's see him convince the players that he is the answer to the question, "Why bother?" If he does that, crawling out of that flooded mine will seem like red wine and Yahtzee by comparison. Even Brian Winters and Rick Barry will have to stand up and represent. Ray Ratto is a columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and a regular contributor to ESPN.com |
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