The Warriors Enjoy Moving Chairs on the Titanic

Word out of the Bay Area tonight that Chris Mullin, the onetime golden child of owner Chris Cohan and a franchise great, has been aced out by team president Robert Rowell.

It's hard to see the quality of this move. On the plus side, Mullin did draft Monta Ellis, Andris Biedrins and Anthony Randolph, and it's not like the Warriors lack for talent. On the bad side, he did make the unconscionable decision to pay huge money for Corey Maggette, has no control over the barely caring Don Nelson, and blown first round picks on Patrick O'Bryant and Ike Diogu; there clearly are worse guys having this gig in the Association, and he should probably get another shot at it at some point, preferably with an owner that isn't, well, a toxic piece of sludge.

As for the Warriors, I'm not going to slam them for going with a blank slate. As the Rockets and Thunder have shown, you don't need to be an ex-player to be good at this job -- hell, as Kevin McHale, Isiah Thomas and Michael Jordan have shown, it might be a detriment.

But the bigger problem is that Rowell has been there for years, and anyone who (a) willingly spends his life around Cohan, and (b) manages to impress him enough over the years to bury the knife in a reasonable hire is inherently suspect. And even if you can get over the presence of Cohan, so long as the W's are running Nellie on the bench, they'll be, at most, an entertaining sideshow. (Assuming, of course, that Ellis can safely avoid off-season mopeds this year... and that Nellie still gives a damn. Neither is a great bet.)