The POB story

Last season the Warriors passed up on extending POB's contract therfore putting him in the Free Agency market. In his rookie season it was understood by everyone that Patrick O Bryant needed to be given time to develop. He was a legitmate 7 footer who posted up decent stats at Bradley and wasn't heavily recruited when he came out of high school. Yet for some reason Nellie's sound lack of judgement got in the way when evaluating POB hence the fact he rarely played. POB during his two seasons with the Warriors had a unique blend of size and skill. Yes his work ehtic could have been better and yes he might not have had the motivation to try and become a starting center but everytime he stepped on the court you knew he had a chance of being something special.

In the Summer League of 2007 the Warriors front office and fans ignored the "lets give him time to develop " mantra and started critiscing POB labelling him a bust ignoring the fact he was inexperienced and barely played a minute in his rookie season. To give him credit he bounced back and impressed Nelson before the start of the season but as we all know Nellie is the master of mindgames and a few months later POB was doing his usual role of being the bench warmer

It's not clear as to why POB was let go. Maybe the continous rift between him and Nelson never helped and the fact is maybe Nelson was never willing to try and see if POB the 9th pick of the 2006 draft would amount to anything and it would be better for the Franchise if they let him go all together. Or maybe Mullin decided he wasn't worth 3 million a year and that they would let him be a free agent in the hope that no Franchise would make a move towards him.

With Biedrins and Turiaf the only Centers it would have been nice to have given him a one year extension and play him 10-15 minutes a night to see how far his game has developed. After all it's a given the Warriors won't make the playoffs this year so it wouldn't have hurt to have given him one more chance. This summer the Celtics grabbed him for a two year deal and the reports have showed that his game has conseriably developed in Preseason with Ainge proving he has a good eye for talent.

Ultimately it was Mullin's call but he didn't get any value out of POB and now the Celtics will try and capitzlize. I hope it doesn't come back to haunt us too much.