new coach for Bay Area team!

Keith Smart is named new head coach of the Golden State Warriors...

If not for those pesky 49ers and their new offensive coordinator being all over the news yesterday, the Warriors and the formal announcement of their new head coach would have taken the headlines. But let's face it: the 49ers are in the midst of their regular season schedule and the Warriors are still in their off-season.

I've read people's critical opinions of the Don Nelson regime, but who else has so much as led the Warriors to the playoffs aside from his two tenures as coach? After the team's lone championship season in 1975, I can't even recall any team success until Nelson signed on, and in between his two stints, the fortunes of the team were quite abysmal. So let's keep in mind that finding winning coaches hasn't been an easy task for the Warriors.

Speaking of which, how wonderful would it be to be Don Nelson right now? He's getting paid 6.2 million dollars for the last year of his contract, and he gets to spend that last year retired to the shores of Maui! And he holds the record as the NBA's all-time winningest coach. Used to be that the six-million dollar man was someone who was almost killed in a horrific aircraft accident and built up again by an exorbitant amount of money as some sort of 'bionic man,' and now the six-dollar man is someone who is paid that much money to do nothing but sip mai-tai's on the beach... how times have changed.

Back to Keith Smart. I've seen him standing near and sitting on the Warriors bench for years now, as an assistant coach for the team. Similar to how I mentioned in a previous blog entry that Mike Johnson was being groomed as a successor to the position of offensive coordinator (or so I've read, and if so, for a much, much shorter time when the change was made), Keith Smart has been more pointedly groomed to be the next head coach for the Warriors. It's kind of neat to see that it has actually come to fruition. It makes sense too, considering that the Warriors have new ownership (pending league approval, which is almost certain) this year. New ownership, an overhauled roster, and now a new leader... lots of excitement and anticipation for Warriors fans!

Isn't it fun to have sports around to take our minds off of the real problems of our times? Go Warriors!