FanHouse ChrisMullin

Chris Mullin, whose last day as vice president of basketball operations for the Warriors was on June 30, is going to work again. Someone out there is likely to hire him, either as a VP, a general manager, a director of player personnel or some such position where his basketball expertise will come into play.

But don't be surprised if it doesn't happen for a little while. These days Mullin has the look of a man who is truly relishing his time away from the game and the stresses that come with a front office job.

"Things are going very good," Mullin said after a morning of pickup basketball in the East Bay. "Very good. Things are going a lot better than they were going three months ago, that's for sure."

The Warriors finally got around Tuesday to doing something they probably should have done back in October.

They announced that executive vice president of basketball operations Chris Mullin wouldn't be returning for 2009-10, and that Larry Riley would be the Warriors' new general manager.

The reality of the situation is that most in the Bay Area and around the league -- Mullin included – knew he was a goner back during the preseason. That's when team president Robert Rowell (pictured, right) made it clear to the media that he and Mullin had had a fundamental disagreement over how to handle Monta Ellis' moped accident.

The writing was on the wall. It was sloppy, oddly colored, and held no defense from the elements, but it was still clear as day. And now the punctuation mark has been cemented.

Chris Mullin is out as the Warriors' General Manager.

Technically, Mullin wasn't ousted. His contract wasn't renewed. Which is a lot like when your high school girlfriend didn't actually dump you, just kind of let things end when you both went to different colleges. Only with millions and millions of dollars and the ability to tell Anthony Randolph what to do.

As teams get eliminated from the 2009 NBA playoff picture, Fork 'Em figures out what went wrong.

Stuff definitely went wrong for the Golden State Warriors this year. The only real question is whether the trouble started when Baron Davis left or immediately afterward.

There will be an eternal debate in the Bay Area about whether or not the Warriors should have kept Davis, or at least made a better effort to keep him. Instead, Davis signed with the L.A. Clippers in July, and the Warriors' 2008-09 was irreparably altered.

As the story goes, Baron Davis worked out a three-year, $39 million extension with Golden State general manager Chris Mullin in June 2008. The deal would have prevented Davis from opting out of his $18 million salary for 2008-09, bringing a four-year total salary to $57 million for the All-Star point guard, a nearly perfect fit in Don Nelson's wailing offense.

But team president Robert Rowell vetoed the deal at the last minute, which caused Davis to opt out. The Warriors, shocked, threw money at Elton Brand (nope) and then Gilbert Arenas. The offer to Gil, a player coming off an injury that had claimed 18 months of service? Five years for $103 million. Arenas and Davis are friends. Soon after Golden State made the offer to Gil, the friends spoke. Monte Poole of the San Jose Mercury News has the post-dated dispatch.

How bad are things in Oakland? ESPN's Chris Broussard was on the teevee this morning reporting that Chris Mullin (the GM) and Don Nelson (the coach) aren't speaking, and that Nellie is trying to trade Mully's players out from under him.

All out war has been brewing in Golden State since June, when (potentially at Nellie's behest) team president Robert Rowell vetoed Mullin's three-year, $39 million contract offer to Baron Davis, who had been prepared to sign. But apparently now the hold of the floundering franchise is at stake. Broussard reports that Nellie told Anthony Randolph's agent to try to find a trade opportunity -- Randolph has played only 12 minutes in the last three games, despite a bunch of Golden State injuries. A Randolph-Raymond Felton swap has been rumored but denied from the Warriors end.

Atma from Golden State of Mind sides with Nellie and pins many of Golden State's shortcomings on Mullin's shoulders. And it's true: Mullin has made some bad choices in the draft and free agency. But look at the two supreme bright spots on the team, Monta Ellis and Andris Biedrins. That's Mullin's work. An undersized two-guard without a deep stroke and a 7-footer with no J? You think Nellie wants anything to do with that? Nelson, at this point, is Larry Brown on hallucinogens: fickle, domineering and insane.

Coming into the season, Stephen Jackson had an ideal contract from his employer's perspective: not only was it affordable (he's making just $7.1 million), it also conveniently expired just in time for the summer of 2010. Jackson made some noise this summer about wanting an extension, but at the end of the day he had no leverage.

Why should the Warriors jeopardize their future cap space by giving a 30-year-old (former) head case an extension? General manager Chris Mullin knew it'd be a mistake ... which is why Jackson went behind Mullin's back to negotiate with team president Robert Rowell.

Today, the Warriors announced that Jackson received his extension, and as Janny Hu of the San Francisco Chronicle points out, the team's press release notably features quotes from Rowell without a single mention of Mullin. (Heck, for all we know, Mullin may have learned about the extension from that very press release.) The team didn't officially reveal the terms of the extension, but it's believed to be for three years and $28 million, keeping him under contract through 2013 while granting him the highest annual raise allowed under NBA rules. He'll be 35 years old in the final year of his contract.

The Robert Rowell-Chris Mullin skirmish in Golden State has seemed to be preparing for wholesale war for months now, and today Marcus Thompson III brings news Rowell (an implement of team ownership) has canned Mullin's top aide, assistant GM Pete D'Alessandro. Even worse, the Warriors replaced D'Alessandro with an ally of coach Don Nelson, assistant coach and former Grizz executive Larry Riley.

Nelson, by taking an extension with the team despite all the signs Mullin was being pushed out, has already aligned himself with ownership. It's an interesting turn of events, for sure: Nelson and owner Chris Cohan reportedly hate each other's guts, stemming from Nelson's first stint in Oakland in the early '90s (the Webber era) and resulting lawsuits when Nelson asserted he hadn't been fully paid. Mullin, a longtime confidante of Nellie beginning in Mullin's playing days with the W's, had to lobby Nelson to take over the aimless team two years ago. That hasn't exactly gone as planned.

Thompson suggests some reasons behind Rowell's move, but misses what to me is the easy explanation: the Warriors are trying to get Mullin to quit. They have already neutered him in the Baron Davis, Monta Ellis and Stephen Jackson situations ... heck, even with Nellie's extension! Now they are "killing his family," so to speak. Is it money? Is it PR? I don't know ... but it seems clear Rowell and Cohan (however involved he is at this point) would prefer Mullin to excuse himself from the table rather than be excused.

Geoff Lepper (formerly of the Contra Costa Times) reports on 48minutes.net that the deal Don Nelson is close to signing will keep the coach at the head of Golden State through 2010-11. Lepper pegs the price at $12 million total, which is a touch more than Nellie's current $5.1 million annual salary.

As we intimated Saturday, Golden State's in a really weird position with regards to the decision-making team. Nelson has long been considered the sort of coach who makes personnel demands; most consider Nellie to be the driving force which led to the big swap with Indiana which netted Stephen Jackson and Al Harrington. Also, Nelson has been close to current GM Chris Mullin ... who is almost assuredly on his way out of the franchise. But Nelson is staying, one year after he made a big fuss with a near hold-out? It makes no sense.

Who knows, maybe the market has sunk Nellie's Maui real estate holdings? Maybe he and one-time arch-nemesis Chris Cohan (the team's owner) went nuts on some peyote scotch and had a tremendous poker night? Maybe Mullin and Nelson aren't as close as they once seemed, and Nelson realizes he can have full control without the responsibilities if Mullin is deposed?

We can't really spell it out any more clearly: Chris Mullin is a dead man walking in Oakland, California. Robert Rowell, the No. 2 to locally despised owner Chris Cohan, has already pushed Mullin aside on two major, major decisions (vetoing a fair Baron Davis extension and punishing Monta Ellis harshly). For a few weeks, reports had trickled out that Stephen Jackson (30 years old, one of the worst shooting percentages in the league) was working on a contract extension ... with Rowell.

Now Don Nelson has gotten in on the bonzana, reports ESPN.com's Marc Stein. This is truly weird on a few levels. Nelson waited a month after the end of the 2007-08 season before telling the Warriors he'd make good on the last year of his contract. This all happened before the Davis maneuver, however; some guessed Nellie and Davis could no longer co-exist, but when Nelson announced he'd be back, Davis was still in Golden State's plans.

Further, Nelson's connection to the Warriors front office is Mullin -- Nelson and Cohan had hard feelings stemming from Nellie's first tenure in the '90s, and Mullin (a close friend of Nelson's) bridged the personal gap to make things work. It seems extraordinarily odd that Nelson would now circumvent Mullin's authority to get a new deal, especially considering Mullin's not going to be around much longer. (Of course, Nellie's behavior rarely fits into the constricting mold of normalcy.)

But this much is clear: never mind that "general manager" title on Mullin's door. Important basketball decision, which is to say every basketball decision not involving Patrick O'Bryant, C.J. Watson or Matt Barnes, goes through the owner's office. Polish up that resumé, Mullin.