For Warriors, Andrew Bogut-Monta Ellis trade was a really big deal
OAKLAND - The Warriors swung the trade that would reinvent their franchise on March 13, 2012, and nearly everyone involved was swiftly penalized.
General manager Larry Riley, instrumental in putting together the deal that sent guard Monta Ellis and big men Ekpe Udoh and Kwame Brown to the Milwaukee Bucks in return for center Andrew Bogut and veteran swingman Stephen Jackson, would lose his position six weeks later, reassigned as director of scouting. The team, which had a passable record of 17-21 when the trade was announced, won at Sacramento that night, then finished the strike-shortened season by losing 22 of its final 27 games.
Owner Joe Lacob would get his ration of abuse a week later.
Lacob felt he had delivered a 7-foot gift to Warriors fans, but those fans booed him in full throat at a ceremony to retire Chris Mullin’s jersey on March 20. After a round of catcalls, someone in the crowd at Oracle Arena shouted “We want Monta!” and the arena erupted in cheers.
Lacob slumped visibly and emitted a grunt of weary frustration.
Garry St. Jean, the former Warriors GM and coach, was sitting on the floor that night, right next to long-time coach Don Nelson.
“Nellie couldn’t hear real well, and he said, ‘What are they saying? What the hell’s going on here?’?” St. Jean recalled. “I looked at Nellie and I said, ‘Fans are booing like hell.’ He said, ‘That’s awful. I think I’m gonna stand up and speak.’ Well, Rick Barry beat him to it.”
Indeed, Barry’s feisty, comical lecture to the Oakland fans is what people remember most from that episode. Of course, they remember the trade, too, the Warriors shipping out the electrifying but flawed Ellis and welcoming Bogut, the talented but chronically injured center.
Yet it’s easy to forget, now that Golden State has become arguably the best, the most exciting and most likable team in the NBA, how many aspects of the team’s ascent are tied to the trade. The emergence of Stephen Curry as a league MVP candidate, the development of Klay Thompson into a well-rounded All-Star, the Warriors’ embrace of defense - they’re all dominoes that began toppling March 13, 2012.
A chance meeting
The roots of the trade were planted not in Oakland or Milwaukee, but in Seattle. Riley and assistant GM Bob Myers, who would be promoted to general manager after that season, were scouting a game at the University of Washington. It was late January or early February (Riley can’t pinpoint the game), and they happened to bump into Milwaukee general manager John Hammond and his assistant GM, Jeff Weltman.
The Bucks were rumored to be shopping Bogut, the former No. 1 overall draft pick, and Hammond confirmed that night that the center might be available.
As always, the conversation started with Curry.
“Sure. Everybody wanted Steph Curry,” Riley said by phone from his home in Phoenix. “Almost every phone call I got once Steph emerged on the scene involved Steph Curry. There was no question, that was their starting point. … I was accused of being in a position where I was gonna trade Steph Curry for Amar’e Stoudemire back when we drafted him (in 2009), which wasn’t true. I was never in favor of trading Steph Curry.”
The marksman himself may not be entirely convinced of that.
“I don’t know how true it was, but (then-coach Mark Jackson) actually said if I didn’t get hurt, I might have been in that trade. ‘Oh, OK,’?” Curry said at a recent practice, flashing a wry smile.
Negotiations proceeded slowly after that chance meeting in the Northwest, Riley speaking off and on with Hammond, Myers doing the same with Weltman, and the two Warriors executives sharing notes. Lacob is an active owner, and Riley kept him apprised at every step. The talks accelerated over the three weeks leading up to the March 15 trade deadline, but it all happened incrementally.
Finally, on March 12, with both sides having agreed in principle, the Warriors gathered for a final meeting - Riley, Myers, Joe Lacob, assistant GMs Travis Schlenk and Kirk Lacob, and executive board member Jerry West, the team’s consulting wise man. This was not necessarily an easy decision, especially for Joe Lacob.
“There was debate about it,” West said by phone. “He was a very popular player, Monta, and a very fine player.”
Ellis was the Warriors’ leading scorer and the heart of the team. But he was difficult. He publicly questioned the decision to draft Curry, tore a ligament in his ankle when he crashed his moped (an activity prohibited by his contract) and was sued for sexual harassment by a team employee.
The Warriors pulled the trigger on the swap the next day, two days before the deadline.
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