Mark Jackson denied Tuesday’s report of conflict between him, management and his assistant coaches, but the story from Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports appears to have some legs. Sources tell Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle that Jackson is “very insecure” about his assistants receiving credit. Jackson also felt certain that he’d receive a contract extension this past offseason, Simmons reports, but Jackson and the front office have yet to talk extension. Simmons has more in his piece, and Marcus Thompson of the Bay Area News Group adds to the saga, too, as we highlight below:
- Kings coach Michael Malone previously served as a Warriors assistant and reportedly went weeks without speaking to Jackson, but Malone tells Simmons he and his boss were actually on somewhat better terms. “Did Mark and I have great relationship? No. There was definitely some friction, but for him to say that we went weeks without speaking is crazy,” Malone said. “We spoke every day. We worked through it, and he eventually realized that I wasn’t out there self-promoting.”
- Warriors GM Bob Myers was Brian Scalabrine‘s agent for most of Scalabrine’s playing career, Simmons notes. Golden State reassigned Scalabrine, who had been one of Jackson’s assistants, to a gig with the team’s D-League affiliate.
- There were those in the Golden State locker room who thought the media was overstating Malone’s value to the Warriors, and that Malone was more focused on becoming a head coach than his job as an assistant, according to Thompson.
- Jackson still has the support of several Warriors players, one of whom told Thompson that the coach is “absolutely not” losing control of the team, as Thompson writes in the same piece.