Baron Davis is ready to follow Warriors' new leader

	Baron Davis didn't always see eye-to-eye with ex-Warriors coach Mike Montgomery. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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* Don Nelson vs. Mark Cuban
* NBA scouts' predictions
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Predictions of immediate success have followed Don Nelson into his new job as coach of the Warriors. Will he instantly make them a playoff team? Will Mike Dunleavy instantly flourish as a 6-9 playmaker in Nellie's upside-down system?

Delete "instantly" and the answer to both questions becomes ... yes. Definitely. Nellie will transform both the franchise and its enigmatic young talent, though it may take a year or so.

In the meantime, there is but one certainty in Oakland: Baron Davis will be one of the top players in the league this season. It is the surest of all sure things that he will join Steve Nash, Chauncey Billups and Jason Kidd among the elite point guards in the NBA. While his stock is rising, you can be sure that Davis will share the credit with Nelson. For the first time since Paul Silas was fired by the New Orleans Hornets in 2003, Davis says that he is playing for a coach who commands his respect.

"It's been a long time since I had a good coach like coach Silas," says Davis. "You know, somebody that you respect and that's going to challenge you, and at the same time you can just go out there and be a player and be coached."

Before this gets going too far, let's state clearly that Davis cannot be exonerated for his many public disagreements with coaches Tim Floyd, Byron Scott and Mike Montgomery in the past three seasons, because there were too many incidents and issues that Davis could have handled more appropriately. But let's realize too that this is not the coach-is-the-boss NFL. The best NBA players allow themselves to be coached, with everybody's understanding that their stature and guaranteed money trumps any theoretical power held by the coach.

Was it right that Shaquille O'Neal preferred to be coached by Pat Riley at the expense of Stan Van Gundy? The bottom line is that nobody in Miami is complaining because the Heat won a championship after making that move.

The bottom line in Golden State is that Nellie's dynamic personality and decades of NBA wisdom are going to bring out the best in his best player. Montgomery, a college coach with no previous NBA experience, had no such authority and didn't know how to earn it. Davis told me that Montgomery used to ask him if he wanted to come out of the games.

"As a player nobody ever wants to come out, and it's hard to gauge when you're tired and when you're not and where the team is,'' Davis says. "But when a coach asks you, 'Do you want to come out?' You ask any player in the league, they'll tell you no.''

Davis admits that he often changed the plays that Montgomery called from the sidelines. "That did happen a lot,'' says Troy Murphy, the former power forward who is moving to center in Nelson's system. "It happened toward the ends of games and that was difficult. Coach put certain guys in the game for certain positions, and Baron felt that other plays would be better. And sometimes Baron was right. I don't think we're going to have that kind of indecision this coming season.''

Yet Davis adds that he did not have a disagreeable relationship with Montgomery. "I felt I took a lot of pressure off him -- and I took a lot of criticism, but that's the role that I assume by demanding to take charge,'' Davis says. "It was just a fine line and we could never figure it out, we could never get on the same page as a team, and it was frustrating for everybody because at the end of the day, you look to your head coach to take charge and that wasn't the case.

"A lot of times guys were listening to me and coach on the sideline, and it got to the point where everything was in disarray. The '2' guard was listening to this guy and the point guard was listening to that guy and people on the bench were listening to the dude behind the bench, and nobody had control of the team. But it was me who stepped up and accepted the responsibility of our losses and everything else.