Based on Larry Riley's world view, Stephen Jackson never made his trade demand. Nothing's happened. Nothing's changed. Camp starts, and Jackson will be right on time, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and happy to be the captain of the Warriors . And why, you ask. Because neither Jackson nor his representative or representatives has ever repeated what he told an audience at a New York shoe show back in August while standing next to former Warriors forward Al Harrington, and logically when someone wants to play for another team, he doesn't forget to ask. "That's what we're presuming," Riley said from the general manager's office at Warriors Interplanetary Headquarters. "Nothing has happened since Aug. 28, and we've talked several times. I've talked to him, and I've talked to Mark Stevens, who is one of his representatives, and they haven't said anything about it since."
That doesn't mean that Jackson has changed his mind, or that the Warriors have changed theirs. It just means that nothing has happened, which you can all agree is a fairly apt metaphor for a lot of Warriors -based things.
But as the team rouses from its public slumber after a summer in which Jackson's trade issue was the only real news, it is the one topic that will, and should, dominate any preseason discussion.
Riley did confirm that Jackson actually had mentioned to Riley his desire to be traded several days before he spilled the goods at the show gig, so the news didn't T-bone him; the news that the news got out, though, did.
But beyond that, nothing. Well, OK, except this:
"Any trade has to come through me," he said, addressing the widely held notion that he is Don Nelson's living coat hanger. "I know that talk is out there, and it's probably going to be out there for a few years. But I'm just telling you."
And after that, there was no Jacksonian news. Except that Riley acknowledged that sooner, rather than later, the Warriors have to become Monta Ellis' team, which leads us logically back to the matter of why Jackson is still the captain, and for how much longer.
"We've said that we want Monta to take on a greater leadership role," he said. "I don't think that necessarily leads to us wanting Jack to take on a lesser role, but we do think we have options about how we play that we want to exercise. But that's going to be Nellie's call."
And beyond that, nothing is new on the Jackson deal. Except for the $25,000 fine.
"That wasn't us, that was the league," Riley said. "I think you can draw any conclusion you want beyond that, but we didn't fine him." Read: The NBA still has issues with Jackson from the Malice in the Palace game, and its memory lasts forever.
And after that, the status is quo. Well, OK, one last thing, we promise.
"Look, I know what his value is in the market," Riley said. "I know what all our players' values are in the market. He's a tough player, and we don't have a lot of guys like him on the roster. We can trade him for another position and address a different need and try to go at a problem that way. But his toughness will be hard to replace in any trade that might or might not happen, and we know that."
So there you have it. Nothing, delivered in as many ways as we know how to do it. Nelson comes Friday to hold his news conference, at which point he will add to the nothinghood in his own inimitable patois, and then there's the media day Monday, at which point Jackson will or won't contribute his version of nothing, depending on his mood and how much nothing he has to add. And Tuesday, the team holds its first practice of training camp, and the nothing will become increasingly difficult to monitor.
Though Lord knows the Warriors will try their gosh-darnedest.
