Warriors tip off with new coach






By Marcus Thompson II, CONTRA COSTA TIMES


SAN DIEGO - Mike Montgomery bounced around from station to station, clapping, joking, shouting.


Bent over and resting on his knees, he watched intently as Jason Richardson, Derek Fisher and Mike Dunleavy practiced various jump shots. He patted Troy Murphy on the backside after a post-up drill.






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Montgomery's not in college anymore, but it sure looked like it. He said it felt like it, too.


"I wouldn't have known if I was at Stanford or if I was (at an NBA training camp)," Montgomery said.


Montgomery praised the approach of his players, drooled over the intensity of practice and expressed satisfaction with their overall progress on Tuesday, the first of five two-a-day practices at the Recreation IntraMural Athletic Complex on the campus of UC San Diego.


He said both practices were spent teaching, mostly introducing concepts and explaining terminology. He was impressed that both were spirited.


"I couldn't ask for better at udes," Montgomery said. "They've worked as hard as any group I've had.


"This was all positive. I feel real good about being here. I think this is going to be a lot of fun working with these guys. I think they want to win and I'm going to everything I can to get them in position to win."


Tuesday had been a long time coming for Montgomery. All summer and into the fall, he's been anticipating the "firsts" awaiting him. He said he didn't really sleep at all Sunday night, his rest robbed by the anticipation of Monday.


He did some mingling and took photos with players at Warriors Media Day on Monday afternoon, then had his first team meeting that evening at dinner. He did a little more relationship building at breakfast before hitting the court for 10 a.m. practice.


The morning practice, closed to the media, was defense-oriented. Forward Eduardo Najera (acquired from Dallas in the Erick Dampier trade) and center Dale Davis (acquired from Portland in the Nick Van Exel trade) impressed Warriors executive vice president of basketball operations Chris Mullin -- Najera with his trademark rebounding and hustle and Davis with some blocked shots during half-court drills.


The Warriors worked on offense in the second session, including some time spent on their fast break, before ending with shooting and post drills.


"(Montgomery) was great today, he ran a good practice today," Richardson said. "The first day is typically to set the tone. We played hard. Everybody came in here and competed."


By the end of practice Tuesday night, Montgomery was in full swing. Finally.


"He needed that," Mullin said. "Sitting around a lot can be hard. He just needed to go do it. It's just like players who need to just go out and play, he needed to go do it."


Despite his elation at how things went Tuesday, Montgomery said he doesn't expect to get to be too far along by Sunday's exhibition opener at Sacramento.


Nor does he expect things to be so peachy throughout.


"I'm really pleased at this point," Montgomery said. "There's going to be a point and time when things need to get done. There'll be times when they're tired and maybe they don't feel like executing or making the right play where you need to raise your voice and get them to do it. But it's strictly going to be from the standpoint of 'hey guys, we need to do things right every single time.'"


Note: Second-year swingman Mickael Pietrus (left shoulder) was the lone player on the training camp roster to not practice. Pietrus is still recovering from successful arthroscopic surgery on July 21 after dislocating his shoulder in the first quarter of a July 12 summer-league game against the San Antonio Spurs. He did some shooting and running on the side Tuesday with Mark Grabow, the Warriors' director of athletic development. He will probably start practicing about mid-November.