FanHouse Don Nelson

There used to be more than a few people who would refer to Stephen Jackson as the Warriors' best player. We know differently now.

Jackson wasn't the Warriors' best player the past couple of seasons. It was Monta Ellis. And even if it wasn't (and it was), it for sure is now. For the past week or so, Ellis has been staging his own little renaissance, and everyone's trying to figure out why.

Not coincidentally, the Warriors are playing their best basketball of the season, semi-righting themselves from a disastrous start. Ellis' impressive stretch -- which includes scoring 34, 37 and 42 points in each of the past three games -- comes in the wake of two noteworthy Golden State departures: Jackson and coach Don Nelson.

Home Delivery is your morning roundup of last night's action in the NBA from a fantasy perspective.

Michael Redd returned to action last night after missing the past nine games. Redd played just 11 minutes, scoring four points on 1-of-3 shooting from the floor and 1-of-6 from the free-throw line. Brandon Jennings wasn't much better shooting 6-of-21 from the floor and turning the ball over five times in 31 minutes. The most promising performance came from, you guessed it, Ersan Ilyasova -- 20 points, 8-of-13 from the floor, one three-pointer, four rebounds and four steals. Check and mate.

The Spurs out-rebounded the Bucks 46-29 and shot 51.3-percent from the floor. Tim Duncan was the leader of this joint with 24 points and 14 rebounds. Matt Bonner, yes that Matt Bonner, came alive for the first time in a few weeks with 23 points on 6-of-8 shooting from beyond the arc. Typical performance. He was on and off the waiver wires last season thanks to his three-point shooting. It's up to you, but I don't think he has standard league value.

Golden State coach Don Nelson has been diagnosed with pneumonia and did not accompany the Warriors on their upcoming road trip, which includes games at Dallas on Tuesday and at San Antonio on Wednesday.

Assistant coach Keith Smart will coach the team in Nelson's stead.

The Warriors have been hit hard by injury and illness this season, and needed assistant coaches Russ Turner and Rico Hines to participate in practice on Monday just to give the team eight healthy bodies.

Warriors coach Don Nelson doesn't give a lot up to the media these days. He's acknowledged losing interest in the daily give-and-take with the team's beat writers and looks to end his postgame press conferences as quickly as he can.

Nelson has said, though, that he likes doing radio because it's a way to speak directly to the fans. To that end, Nelson had one of his most open exchanges on Thursday while speaking on his weekly radio show on KNBR.

Tim Kawakami of the San Jose Mercury News reports that the agent for Monta Ellis will meet with Warriors management Thursday, with the entree allegedly an Ellis desire to be traded away. Just like Al Harrington and Stephen Jackson. In fact, with this latest news, I'm beginning to think something wacky is going on in Oakland!

It's all become a little more ridiculous every single day for Golden State. Kawakami reports that when Ellis attempted to do a leadership schpiel to the team following an embarrassing 28-point home loss to the Clippers, coach Don Nelson (the apparent source of Monta's consternation) told the guard to "be quiet." The pair had an altercation in front of the media a week later. Fun times.

Adding salt to all this, Raja Bell, acquired in Monday's Jackson trade, has decided to go ahead with wrist surgery he had been delaying as a Bobcat. He would essentially prefer months in a cast to suiting up for this tragic franchise. How perfectly illustrative.

SACRAMENTO -- Sacramento Kings coach Paul Westphal and Warriors coach Don Nelson might not know it, but they find themselves in similar situations. Both are experienced coaches trying to guide young teams, each with a few veterans sprinkled in.

The expectations for both teams are low, with few believing either team will sniff the NBA's postseason. Both teams have intriguing rookie point guards (Tyreke Evans/Stephen Curry), talented but flawed shooting guards (Kevin Martin/Monta Ellis) and promising second-year power forwards (Jason Thompson/Anthony Randolph).

But stop right there. That's where the comparison ends.

Angry agents ripping team execs and coaches isn't a new phenomenon, but Mark Stevens -- the rep for disgruntled Warrior Stephen Jackson -- might have painted a masterpiece in ripping Golden State coach Don Nelson in a discussion with ESPN.com's Chris Broussard. Stevens dredged up just about every demon in Nelson's basketball past, reaching back to Nellie's Bucks tenure in 1970s.

The whole tirade -- which is definitely worth a full read -- comes from what Stevens called "disgust with the quality" of Nelson's coaching. FanHouse's Matt Steinmetz watched the impetus for Stevens's tirade, a 120-107 blow-out loss at Sacramento. It was ugly, and Stevens is telling the truth: Nelson indeed looked like he didn't want to be there.

SACRAMENTO -- It's not so much the Warriors' 1-4 start that's the problem. It's the teams they've lost to and the manner in which they've been defeated.

Nobody expected the Warriors to be among the Western Conference elite. But they shouldn't be a team that can't compete with the L.A. Clippers and Sacramento Kings. But they can't. Not now.

What a miserable weekend it was for the Warriors. And you could tell by taking one stroll through the locker room after their 120-107 loss to the Kings on Sunday that there's more to this tough start than just a tough start.

PHOENIX -- The Warriors played basketball like five individuals wearing the same uniform on Friday, instead of like an NBA team that was anywhere near capable of playing as a cohesive unit. As a result, they were run off the floor by a Suns team that shared the ball to get easy baskets, led by a 20-assist performance from Steve Nash.

Besides the fact that Nash had more assists than the entire Warriors team did, there was something else that was interesting about this one, and that was the way that Don Nelson chose to use - or not use -- one of his most athletic players in Anthony Randolph.

OAKLAND, Calif. -- Stephen Jackson was at it again on Wednesday, speaking his mind and bringing down the verbal hammer.

This time the nails were Kobe Bryant and his teammates.

One day after he gave up his Warriors' captaincy and took shots at his coach and his organization's front office, Jackson went in another direction. Asked to elaborate on what happened Friday night against the Lakers and Kobe Bryant -- which led to his two-game suspension -- that's exactly what Jackson did.

"Basically, to beat a dead horse, (Bryant) was just playing dirty," Jackson said. "He was getting favoritism out there. I'm not saying the refs were cheating. I'm not saying that at all. I think he was getting away with stuff that I couldn't get away with. And I didn't think it was fair.