Chris Webber told ESPN.com on Monday night that he will arrive in Oakland on Tuesday to officially re-join the Golden State Warriors and play again for Don Nelson.
“I’ll be there tomorrow,” Webber said via e-mail. “It’s a done deal.”
Webber has signed for a pro-rated share of the league’s $1.2 million veteran minimum, which computes to just under $570,000 if he stays with Golden State to the end of the regular season. But he won’t hook up with his new teammates before Thursday at the earliest.
Although the club is scheduled to formally announce the signing Tuesday after the 34-year-old completes a physical, Golden State plays road games in Houston and New Orleans on Tuesday and Wednesday. The soonest Webber might play would be Friday’s home game against the Charlotte Bobcats — which is also a homecoming for longtime Warriors guard Jason Richardson — but Nelson could elect to give Webber more time to get acclimated. The Warriors have five days off for practices after the Charlotte game.
When asked to elaborate on a reunion that’s arguably even more unlikely than the brief stint Penny Hardaway completed with Shaquille O’Neal’s Miami Heat earlier this season, Webber said he would speak at length about his decision later this week.
But this brief proclamation to confirm that he’s returning to the team and city where he began his NBA career in 1993 — and where he lasted only one season because of a fast-crumbling relationship with Nelson — will be sufficiently stunning to longtime Warriors fans who believe that the breakdown of the initial Webber-Nelson partnership plunged Golden State into more than a decade of despair.
Before Nelson’s own surprising and triumphant return to Oakland last season, which resulted in an immediate trip to the playoffs and a historic first-round upset of the 67-win Dallas Mavericks, Golden State hadn’t reached the postseason since going 50-32 in 1993-94. That was Webber’s first and only season as a Warrior, but the honeymoon was one of the shortest ever seen in the league. Some six months after winning NBA Rookie of the Year honors, Webber forced a trade to Washington to get away from Nelson, who was ousted as Warriors coach and general manager soon after.
But Nelson has been warmly welcomed back to the Bay Area by the Warriors’ rabid fans in spite of the initial perception that he chased off one of the most talented players in franchise history. Nelson has fronted Golden State’s unlikely push to bring him back and has maintained that he and Webber reconciled years ago, when he chose Webber to replace the injured O’Neal — over Dirk Nowitzki from Nelson’s Mavericks — as the West’s starting center for the 2002 All-Star Game in Philadelphia.
Although there is widespread skepticism regarding Webber’s ability to keep up with Nelson’s run-and-gunners — given the mobility issues that have hampered the 34-year-old since a serious knee injury in the 2003 playoffs and subsequent microfracture surgery — Nelson insists that the Warriors need Webber’s passing and midrange game to get them unstuck when the game slows down or their countless 3-pointers aren’t dropping.
Nelson and Warriors vice president of basketball operations Chris Mullin — one of Webber’s teammates during his solitary season in Golden State — have likewise expressed confidence that the 67-year-old coach and Webber are ready for this seemingly hard-to-fathom reunion after numerous conversations in recent days.
“I’m afraid if we don’t get him here [that] our team is not strong enough to be a playoff team,” Nelson said. “That’s my biggest fear. I think if he comes it can benefit our team, it can benefit his and my relationship, it can benefit players on this team. I think he has a chance to make some of our players better and make our team better. Really that’s all that’s important. I’ll get along with anybody who can help our team.”
Jason Kidd has come to grips with two realities. One, the New Jersey Nets aren’t very good. Two, that their only chance of improving is to deal him. “I’m not mad at anybody,” he said Monday afternoon by phone. “Sometimes, when you ride a wave, you get to the end and that’s all there is. That’s where we are.”
Kidd confirmed that his agent, Jeff Schwartz, has talked to Nets’ management about moving him by the Feb. 21 trade deadline, but he categorized the conversation as a continuation of something that started last All-Star break, when the Nets nearly dealt him to the Lakers for a package of players that included Lamar Odom and Kwame Brown. The sticking point was that Nets president Rod Thorn wanted Andrew Bynum and the Lakers refused.
While initial reports had Kidd, 34, insisting on being sent to a contender, he said Monday that he realizes there are no guarantees in any scenario. At this point, he simply wants to play for a team that can compete every night and utilize his talents.
“It used to be if I got a triple-double, that was an automatic win,” he said. “That’s just not the case now. We tried to make this work. We’ve found out it doesn’t. It’s time for us all to move on.”
Schwartz, in exploring current options for his client with other NBA teams, has been told that with Vince Carter signing a new four-year $61.8 million contract and Richard Jefferson having three years and $42 million left on his six-year deal, Kidd is the only moveable major asset New Jersey has.
There are a variety of teams who would be interested in acquiring Kidd — Dallas and Denver already have reached out in the last week, a source said — but it’s a matter of what the Nets would insist upon in return. If draft picks are involved, weighing true value is infinitely easier after the May draft lottery, when the selection order is set and teams have a better idea of which players plan to declare their draft eligibility.
Credit: ESPN
