This is a horrible, horrible day in Warriors history. Losing our franchise player with absolutely nothing to show for it erases all of our recent success and puts us back in the NBA dark ages. You need an elite point guard to compete in the West, and all of a sudden, we’re dreadfully thin at PG. If Arenas doesn’t take our offer, we’ll be stuck with a PG free agent pool with the likes of Chris Duhon, Anthony Carter, Carlos Arroyo, Jason Williams and Anthony Johnson.

After having a day to stew it over, I really don’t think that we could have done anything about it. Baron wanted to be in LA. It’s his hometown and his film/directing career is supposedly on the rise. He wants to rub noses with Hollywood bigwigs. Nobody just gives up $17.8 million. That’s more than a fourth of his new 5-year, $65 million deal with the Clippers. Nothing short of throwing the max his way (6-years, $100+) would have kept him in GS, and do we really want to do that with Monta/Biedrins still needing extensions and Baron’s health always a question mark?

I’m not sure on the particulars, but perhaps there’s a way to salvage the situation with a sign-and-trade with the Clippers. Since free agents can’t formally sign until July 9th, perhaps we can work a sign-and-trade for somebody like Maggette (who the Clips have to let go to sign Baron and Brand) that gives both guys a better deal than they can sign elsewhere and gives us something to show for losing Baron. Maggette’s not a superstar, but he fits decently into our system — he can score and get to the line, which complements our outside shooters.

So what now? Assuming Monta and Biedrins sign, we shift Monta to the PG spot and Stephen Jackson to SG and play a more traditional backcourt. Maybe this means that we try to resign Barnes (Dallas is interested) or Pietrus (Miami/Orlando interested), both who are unrestricted free agents. We’ll see what happens in the next few days, but Mullin has a lot of work to do to right this ship.