WHOA, NELLIE : Don Nelson Had Warriors Rolling Until Recent Slide

On Otis, on Winston, on Donner and Blitzen!

The 6-foot-5 guy with the cowlick spilling Huck Finn-like over his reddening face bounces off his seat on the visitors’ bench in the Sports Arena, yells a last critique at a referee . . . and is forthwith dismissed for the rest of the night. He pads off in sport coat, tie, slacks, tennis shoes--don’t tell Huck how to dress, the league tried and he just taped over the designer stripes on his sneakers--and ignominy.

Ask Don Nelson, being prescient most of the time is no guarantee of earthly reward, none at all.

It’s comeuppance time in the real world and the coach of the Golden State Warriors watches his miracle trickle into the sands. He is in the process of accomplishing the National Basketball Assn.’s fourth-greatest turnaround in history with this band of geeks, but they’ve just hit the wall. They will end the season with six consecutive losses and a prettier crew from Phoenix will pass them to post the third-best turnaround.

This, in turn, is almost certain to make the longtime itinerant, Cotton Fitzsimmons, coach of the year, since the writers are tired of giving it to Nellie every other season, and have begun, instead, looking for holes in his game . . . and finding them?

The holes aren’t where you can see them right off, because what Nelson has just done is amazing. His rotation includes Winston Garland, Otis Smith, Rod Higgins and Terry Teagle, who have been waived six times among them. He started a 6-8 center and no one else over 6-5.

In reserve, he kept his Thin Towers--Manute Bol, who weighs about two ounces per foot and is useless on offense inside the three-point line, and Ralph Sampson, who is either hurting, has retired without telling anyone, or is trying to get himself traded.

Wasn’t it just last year that everyone was saying that the day of the 6-foot point guard was over, and if your front line didn’t have a 7-foot center, and a power forward who went 6-10 and 250, you were sissies?

All of a sudden, the Warriors were throwing this horde of dwarfs out there and opposing coaches were benching their own big guys so they could “go small to match Nellie.”

Anyone can go small.

No one really matches Nellie.

“Everybody says I’m so brilliant and everything else,” Nelson says. “Actually, our lineup is due to injury, not to any imagination that I had or any intelligence that I had.

“When Ralph went down with an injury (Sampson underwent arthroscopic knee surgery in December), there was only one thing to do--go with a small lineup and change our philosophy. And that’s what we did.”

What does this man know that no one else does? When he acquired the Thin Towers, who by then were thought to add up to 15 feet of bad attitude and developmental problems, he was thought to be overdue for commitment.

Now, everyone notices the mayhem that Bol causes in his brief appearances. On this night, Benoit Benjamin the 7-foot Clipper center whose right leg probably outweighs Bol, puts a move on him in their first encounter and fires a fadeaway jump shot while seemingly in violent retreat toward an exit. Many more fadeaways follow.

Of course, the mayhem cuts both ways. Manute throws one outlet pass the length of the court--on a fly--and out of bounds, into the row of photographers behind the court. He misses a three-point shot on an important possession.

If Sampson’s stints aren’t as impressive, well, let’s wait to see what happens next season when he’s had a summer to build up the knee.

After all, this is Nellie we’re talking about. He may look like a country bumpkin and talk like he just rode in on a turnip truck, but Nellie’s no fool.

In Boston, where he built a long--not to mention longshot--career after being waived by the Lakers and Chicago Zephyrs, Nelson is remembered for scoring 10,000 points off the bench; for leading the league in field goal percentage at age 35, even though the only layups he ever got were on fast breaks or when the opposing center took a nap; for his hit-the-back-of-the-iron, bounce-up, fall-through jump shot against the Lakers in that famous Game 7 in 1969; for other moments too numerous to mention.

He was the stickum champion of the league. He already had big hands, but when he up-faked some high-jumper, he wanted to know he had control of the ball. He even used to let some of the kids block his first shot now and then, so they’d get the idea they owned him, and would take the fakes the rest of the way.

Stickum was illegal but who could catch him? He was a veterans’ vet. He knew shortcuts to places the rest of the world hadn’t heard of. Today, his No. 19 flies above Boton Garden with all the rest, and he earned his place.

When his playing days were ending, he decided to stay on . . . as a referee, and actually attended an officials’ camp that summer.

Fate hauled him back. Instead, he landed an assistant coach’s job at Milwaukee under Larry Costello. Seventeen games into his apprenticeship, the Bucks were 3-14 and Costello was gone. Nelson was a head coach.

The Bucks had recently traded Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and were ostensibly headed south. In his third full season, Nelson went 49-33, and in the seven that followed never won fewer than 50.

“Nellie did a lot of innovative things and made them work,” says Junior Bridgeman, who was one of Nelson’s first 6-5 swing men.

“We did a lot of a lot of things that weren’t the norm in the league. People will say, ‘Well, you can’t win consistently like that,’ but for the talent we had, and the size we had, I don’t think you could have gotten any more out of a team. What he did was just being on the cutting edge, basically.”

On the cutting edge of what?

Defense, mostly, Bridgeman says.

In the ‘70s, teams without dominating offensive centers had begun to compensate by pulling them out onto the floor and “posting up” smaller players with good one-on-one skills. The defenses usually didn’t compensate, so World Free and Sidney Moncrief, both guards with great jumping ability, pounded their defenders into the floor in the low post.

At that time, double-teaming anyone was controversial. In the 1974 finals, the lordly Celtics, who had never deigned to double Wilt Chamberlain or anyone else, steadfastly played Abdul-Jabbar with one man--the 6-9 Dave Cowens--and watched Kareem destroy him for six games.

After Abdul-Jabbar won Game 6 in Boston with a sweeping hook from the baseline, sending the series back to Milwaukee, there was a famous bull session with Coach Tommy Heinsohn and announcer Bob Cousy that turned into the decision to double-team, at last. In Milwaukee, the Celtics swarmed over Abdul-Jabbar, the Buck forwards missed their jump shots and the Celtics prevailed easily.

As much as anyone, it was Nelson who came up with an answer to all the posting up, which was to double-team not only centers, but anyone in the pivot with the ball. This forced opponents to throw the ball out and settle for a jump shot.

This has become standard practice in the NBA. They pound the ball inside. You double down. They throw it out. You pursue. If they hit the outside shot, congratulations to them. The percentages are better if you’re giving up 20-footers than two-footers.

“I was probably one of the people who started it,” Nelson says. “I found you can’t be afraid to leave some openings. You can take some things away and that leaves other openings.

“But the offense has to find ‘em. Where a Larry Bird or Magic Johnson can find ‘em every time, there ain’t that many Birds and Magics around. The other guy, he doesn’t find ‘em, or he sees ‘em late. By the time he sees ‘em, they’re covered.

“Go ahead and make people make decisions. Don’t let a coach just come down and go to his players’ strengths. Make those other players, who he’s trying to stay away from, or make rebounders of, or beat you up on the weak side with, let them come out and play.”

Nelson’s idea of the game is focused on those decisions. It was an insight he developed in Boston, where the Celtics institutionalized team play and unselfishness as precursors to winning, which in turn became the only tolerable outcome. Nelson was perfect for them. He played that way all along, since he possessed no physical attributes, such as running and jumping ability, to make it any other way.

At Iowa, he was a 6-5 center. As a Celtic, he was the consummate role player. As a coach, he would invariably praise the players doing the little things and the dirty work--setting screens, blocking out, rebounding, moving without the ball. Bridgeman says Nelson would give out 10 compliments for those things, before he’d say anything about a guy scoring 30 points.

Nelson says: “Once you played with players who really saw the game, who were able to pass and cut and do just basic basketball things to perfection, and you ever got in a game with those kind of players, way back in college or in the summers every now and then in a pickup game, when all of a sudden three-four guys would be able to really play, and the feeling that you had playing, just cuttin’ and screenin’ and rolling early and shooting and getting people caught in between, it’s just so much fun.

“You can’t rely on set plays to carry you. They always break down and you never run ‘em to perfection. You always end up in a decision-making posture. And the more players you have who make those good decisions, the easier the game is. You put Bird or Magic in any set in any style and everything works to perfection. You put Larry Bird out with an injury and run the same things with other people, they don’t run so well.

“The secret is to find guys, maybe not with their talent, but who know how to play basketball. Find ‘em and teach ‘em. And everything runs a lot easier.”

In Milwaukee, Nelson found them, taught them, took what they had to give . . . and learned how to protect them.

He started the “point forward,” making a playmaker of small forward Paul Pressey, so he could play two shooting guards--6-3 Moncrief and 6-5 Ricky Pierce. If someone bigger posted up Pressey, who was wiry and pretty good at taking care of himself in the pivot, Nelson made sure help was forthcoming.

Since he didn’t have one outstanding big man, he used a “three-headed center,” getting a little bit out of Alton Lister (shot-blocker, rebounder, if also the Human Personal Foul), Randy Breuer (low-post player) and Paul Mokeski (bulky, outside shooter).

It ended abruptly in Milwaukee, in the spring of 1986. Nelson’s old sponsor, Jim Fitzgerald, sold the team to a new owner, Herb Kohl, a local supermarket magnate and now a U.S. senator. With the team in gentle decline, Kohl started jerking Nellie’s reins for the first time.

Nelson, unhappy, went so far as to exclaim, during an emotional playoff series with the Celtics, “I am the Milwaukee Bucks!”

He was greatly embarrassed by it, and tried to explain it away, even if there was more than a measure of truth in it. By this time, he was more than just the Milwaukee Bucks, After founding “Nellie’s Farm Fund” and touring the state on a tractor, he was wildly popular.

He fell dramatically. The Bucks fell behind in the Celtic series, 3-1, rallied to force a seventh game in Boston Garden, led all the way into the middle of the fourth quarter, by 110-103 with 5 minutes 14 seconds left . . . but lost.

Nelson resigned, and joined the Warrior front office, where Fitzgerald had just bought in. He is sanguine enough about the blowup.

Says Nelson: “I was probably spoiled.”

His days on the bench were supposed to be over. The coach was the young and promising George Karl, whom Nelson recommended years before. Karl guided the team into the playoffs, and even won a game from the Lakers, who went 12-3 in the ’87 playoffs.

But the Warriors buckled. Karl, nervous about the constant speculation that Nelson was about to take over, asked for a vote of confidence and resigned when he couldn’t get it.

Nelson was forced to return. He says he asked four men to take the job, but all turned it down, so he was forced to stay.

But what was he going to do with this team? They’d torn it apart the season before, in the trade for Sampson. He had some nice mid-sized players, including a kind of poor man’s Bird in Chris Mullin, who was returning to form after undergoing rehabilitation for alcohol dependency. He traded up to draft another 6-5, inside-outside guy, Mitch Richmond.

In training camp, Nelson decided to go to a constant motion offense. It was put in as much by fired San Antonio Coach Bob Weiss, as by Nelson, but what the heck?

“He was supposed to be learning from me and I ended up learning from him,” Nelson says. “Which is the way I usually do it.”

It turned out, he was going to need a lot of motion. When Sampson went down, Nelson built an offense around opening up the floor for his two stars, Mullin and Richmond. For relief, comic and otherwise, Bol came in as the back line in a press and batted down shots. It worked, spectacularly.

“I never, ever in my whole career, including when I played, ever feared big vs. small,” Nelson says. “Unless there was a big talent differential. Size has never bothered me that much, and especially if you have good team defensive techniques and philosophies.

“I played centers in my career. I had the largest rebounding night--20 rebounds--when I played against Chamberlain. Someone was ill, or (Bill) Russell missed a game, so I had to play against him, and I couldn’t believe the open shots I got. It was like shooting H-O-R-S-E. Big guys are afraid you’re going to drive on them and they give you open shots.

“I always had strange ideas. I still do, probably. Some of ‘em work, some of ‘em don’t work. I came up with the bank pass. We were going to bank the ball against the backboards and get it. It made so much sense, because of the size of our big players, Manute and Ralph. We worked on it most of training camp and basically had to junk it because we couldn’t even hit the board. If we just had hit the backboard, it would have been all right, but we were throwing it over, under . . . “

Although he’s accused of having developed a large ego, Nelson brings up his failures without being asked and gives credit for the things he borrowed. He is a writers’ favorite, although he doesn’t particularly put on a happy face and play to the press. He’ll be short at times, but he has great credibility. He is considered one of the league’s kingmakers, whose recommendation can make a career.

Of course, coaches generally develop large egos if they don’t already come equipped with them, which is appropriate for men who think it only right and natural that they make a living telling other men what to do.

Nelson won’t necessarily argue.

“If ego means that I want credit given to me, that’s not me,” he says. “If ego means that I want to see my name and my picture in the paper, that’s not me, ‘cause that does not matter to me.

“If ego means that it must be done my way, then I’ve got a big ego. Because basketball-wise, it’s got to be done my way. There can’t be two ways to do it. I think I have a secret of success within a franchise. I think I can make it a winner. I have the ability, maybe because of my background and who I played for, to get in an organization and say, ‘If you want to be a winner, this is what you have to do.’ And if they do it, you can win.

“I believe I’m good at that. If that’s ego, then I’ve got that.”

That’s ego, but who’s complaining? His players like him and always have. The first thing Bridgeman remembers is that Nelson combined the knack of being able to rage at people with being able to keep it friendly.

It’s Nelson’s second time around. He’s now well off, courtesy of investments set up by Fitzgerald. He has nothing much left to prove, but the fire still burns within him.

It’s a slow morning, a week before the end of the season, the day of a Clipper game in Los Angeles. Nelson is seated at a table in the concierge lounge of one of the airport hotels. He says that although his mother may like this story, he’d rather be watching film than getting interviewed.

Bridgeman says no one can ever know how hard Nelson worked, and that was before the videotape days when every second of every game was available to coaches, if they could just get some rookie to lug around enough portable equipment. Now they can study those Clipper back screens all day.

“Maybe it’s not fun at this moment, but I’ll look back on this year as probably the best I’ve ever had,” Nelson says. “I will. I can’t right now.

“All the coaches at this time are tired and stressed out. That’s part of the territory. These are the dog days. (Looking downward) I’m putting on weight again.”

As if to prove his own point, he gets ejected that night. The Warriors fall in overtime.

Downcast, Nelson makes a perfunctory statement to reporters.

What the heck, for the prescient as well as the pedestrian, it’s a living.