Easy, Nellie, easy baby. It's early yet.
Tuesday night, the Warriors came from behind in the Oracle to beat the Portland Trailblazers relatively easily, 108-96. But in the post-game news conference coach Don Nelson was acting like the Warriors had just blown the season.
Head hanging, shirt open several buttons at the collar, hair disheveled, the seemingly overly overwrought Nelson moaned that "there were so many things wrong" with the team's performance in the first half, "I just couldn't fix them all." He seemed exasperated and depressed, drained of the manic energy he brought with him from the retirement shores of Hawai'i. At one point, Nellie landed an especially barbed jab, lamenting that the effort "looked like the team from last year." Ow-ch.
An equally subdued Baron Davis confirmed Nelson's wrath. "Yeah, coach was pretty hard on us at halftime."
Serenity now coach, serenity now.
Yo, coach, it's the pre-frickin' season! And the Warriors are knifing their way through it like Mike Dunleavy slicing through traffic in the lane en route to a monster two-handed reverse tomahawk jam over Ben Wallace.