Blistering analysis of the Ellis-for-Bogut trade. I want to save this so I can look back on it two years from now and see if the author was right.

The thing about the Warriors is that they're trapped in a classic team-building problem. Everyone can see that what they had was NOT working, but no small moves appeared to be capable of breaking the logjam of mediocrity. I think at some level it's fine to trade off the goals of playoff wins vs developing exciting All-Stars -- think Spurs vs Knicks -- but the Warriors weren't achieving either goal. Beloved locally or not, Monta Ellis wasn't QUITE an All-Star... and certainly the Dubs did not have the look of a team that was going to go far in the second season.

There were only only two things that every Warriors fan could agree on:

* The team needed to get a scoring AND PASSING threat in the middle.

* Monta Ellis wasn't getting any younger, and his game wasn't getting any different.

So the Warriors decided to break the logjam by trading the one for the other. They also traded a fairly common commodity (shooting guard) for a rare commodity (best center available to them, albeit due to injury). Those aren't necessarily bad rationales. In this case everything depends on Bogut's ability to recover from injury so there is a large risk component to the trade -- and again, willingness to take big risks is not necessarily a bad thing in a new management team from the standpoint of a Warriors fan.

I do applaud them for taking big risks. I just don't want to feel like we traded Ellis for a bag of magic beans.

Now that I understand the rationale, I hope that Bogut gets healthy. His defensive style of play should be a net gain for the Warriors. Fingers crossed that this works out.