Golden State Fires Eric Musselman

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By Andy Katz

ESPN.com

The Golden State Warriors fired head coach Eric Musselman on Wednesday night and have targeted Stanford coach Mike Montgomery as his replacement, league sources told ESPN.com on Wednesday.

"It's been a great two years. The players have played their hearts out," Musselman told the AP in a cell phone interview Wednesday night. "The organization's headed in great direction."

A source close to Montgomery confirmed for ESPN.com that there are ongoing negotiations between Montgomery's representatives and the Warriors on a four-year, multimillion-dollar deal.

If negotiations go well, Montgomery, 57, could be named Warriors coach by Friday.

Musselman, 39, told the AP that he learned his fate at 7:15 p.m. PT from Warriors' executive vice president of basketball operations Chris Mullin. Reached earlier in the evening in Florida by ESPN.com, Musselman said that he hadn't talked to Mullin in two weeks and that Mullin had been non-committal on his and his staff's status.

Musselman, who had one year remaining on his contract, went 75-89 in two seasons with the Warriors, his first NBA head coaching job. He finished second in the league's Coach of the Year voting in 2002-03 after guiding Golden State to a 38-44 record.

Musselman told ESPN.com that hiring Montgomery would make sense since, to his knowledge, the Warriors hadn't been talking to anyone within the NBA about replacing him. It would be a bold hire for Mullin, given the relative lack of success for coaches making the jump from college to the NBA; however, Montgomery is regarded as one of the college game's foremost X's-and-O's men.

Sources told ESPN.com that Stanford athletic director Ted Leland was called out of a Pac-10 properties meeting in Los Angeles and left abruptly, saying he had to return to campus to deal with pressing issues. Calls to Stanford were not returned Wednesday. Stanford's coaches, including Montgomery, were instructing players individually Wednesday on campus.

Montgomery is one of the most successful active college basketball coaches and is coming off a remarkable season, during which the Cardinal went 30-2 abd earned a No. 1 seed in the NCAA Tournament before losing to Alabama in the second round. The Cardinal won 26 straight before losing their the regular-season finale at Washington.

Montgomery, who is under contract at Stanford through the 2007-08 season, is 393-167 in 18 seasons on the Farm and 547-244 overall.

He was honored in April with the John Wooden "Legends of Coaching" Lifetime Achievement Award at the Wooden Award banquet in Los Angeles; he was choked up and humbled upon accepting the award from Wooden.

Montgomery coached NBA players when he was an assistant with the 2002 World Championship team that did not medal in Indianapolis. Considered one of the sharpest coaching minds in the business, Montgomery has been increasingly hardened by the defection of his players to the NBA. The Cardinal lost Jason Collins, Curtis Borchardt, Casey Jacobsen, and now it appears Josh Childress, early to the NBA in the last three years.

If Montgomery takes the Warriors job, he would be trying to change a recent trend of college coaches -- namely Tim Floyd, Lon Kruger, John Calipari and Rick Pitino -- who left prominent Division I jobs and failed in the NBA.

Nonetheless, Mullin wanted to make a splash with this hire. Montgomery is well respected in the Bay Area and would not have to move if he accepts the job.

If Montgomery indeed leaves the Cardinal, then Stanford's job becomes one of the most attractive openings in the country. With or without Childress, the Cardinal are expected to compete with Arizona for the Pac-10 title.

Nevada coach Trent Johnson, a former Stanford assistant who just signed an extension with the Wolf Pack, would be a candidate. So, too, would Gonzaga coach Mark Few, who has looked at the Stanford job as one of Division I's most coveted positions. Rice coach Willis Wilson, also a former Stanford assistant, likely would be in the mix, too.

The Stanford job likely would attract some of the top names in the business who have a history of working with academically rich, highly skilled basketball players. The Cardinal's recruiting pool is consistently considered one of the smallest in the country for a high-major program.

Andy Katz is a senior writer for ESPN.com. Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

This is BS, Musselman did more with than crap team than Rick Addelman, Gary St. Jean, or PJ Carlisemo did. Hopefully he'll get another head job somewhere