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You want players who believe in their coach and that's what the Golden State Warriors have when it comes to Mark Jackson and his players. The majority of them will glow about their leader on the sideline and showed during their first round loss to the Clippers how much they'll fight on the court with his encouragement and leadership. But after high expectations and a first round exit, Jackson's job seems to be in jeopardy with the Warriors.
That's not sitting well with Stephen Curry, the historically great 3-point shooter and star of the team. Curry wants Jackson back as coach next year and would probably like his coach to receive a contract extension after his deal is up. He certainly doesn't want Jackson to be fired this offseason if owner Joe Lacob decides to go a different way. From the San Jose Mercury News:
But Curry, whose All-Star year lifted the Warriors to 51 wins during the regular season, was clear in saying that he believed Mark Jackson "deserves to be our coach" and return next season.
"I love Coach more than anybody, and I think for him to be in a situation where his job is under scrutiny and under question is totally unfair," Curry said. "And it would definitely be a shock to me if anything like that were to happen.
"I'm going to voice my support for Coach."
"What Coach has gone through this year has been unlike anything I've seen -- just the amount of distractions and the circus that's been around him and decisions he's had to make," Curry said. "We came into the season thinking this was a long-term situation, but obviously he's been having to answer these questions all year."
It's great that Curry believes in his coach the way he does and he is willing to fight for the man to keep his job. It's nice to see a star and his coach get along, especially when we saw so much turnover with coaches a year ago. However, some of this seems to be skewed with the way it's being presented. The distractions and circus Curry mentions were all created by Jackson, as he's had some issues with management and his own assistant coaches in light of being in fear of being a lame duck coach in 2014-15 with the Warriors.
He reportedly had issues with Michael Malone in 2012-13. Malone took the Sacramento Kings' job last summer. He tried to get rid of assistant coach Brian Scalabrine this season, only to be rebuked by the organization. Scalabrine was later reassigned by the Warriors to coach the D-League affiliate in Santa Cruz. He allegedly created an environment in which assistant Darren Erman felt the need to record conversations happening around the team with coaches and personnel. Erman was later found out and fired, and has since taken a job with the Boston Celtics.
The circus is there but the rumors and murmurs that Jackson is the ring leader of such a circus persist. The Warriors didn't live up to title contending expectations, which arose fairly or not after the team signed Andre Iguodala this offseason and re-signed Andrew Bogut. Throughout the season, there were whispers in which ownership wasn't happy with Jackson and it's seemingly caused a stream of insecurity and paranoia from the sidelines.
If they do fire Jackson, they'll have plenty of big time coaches wanting to take over such a great situation with the team. And with Curry under contract through the 2016-2017 season, they'll have plenty of time to repair any potential harm done to their star's relationship with the franchise.
