Monta Ellis: The Golden State Warriors have hired former Laker and Grizzlies executive Jerry West as a consultant on the Basketball Operations side.

West won’t have autonomy, he’ll be part of a team that makes basketball decisions, but it’s pretty clear West was brought in to help owner Joe Lacob transform the Warriors from a perennial lottery team into a playoff and ultimately title contender.

The first trap a team with a losing culture falls into is developing attachments to certain players, especially star level talents. If the player was legitimately a star player, his club wouldn’t be in the lottery.

That’s a message West is trying to send internally as he tries to help the Warriors figure out the next step.

“When I look at (the Warriors), obviously they need more size,” West said to Tim Kawakami of the Mercury News.

In the NBA size comes at a premium, which has opened up the idea that Golden State could deal Monta Ellis in an attempt to trade impact scoring for frontcourt size and depth.

“I’ve seen teams trade players that score tons of points and people say, ‘How in the world can you trade that player?’” West said. “Because he might score tons of points and the team doesn’t win.”

West was not trying to indict anyone, specifically not Monta, and was clear how much he liked Monta as a player and how dynamic his pairing with Stephen Curry is.

“I love to watch them play,” West said. “They’re so much fun to watch play. But at the end of the day, you want to win.

“Monta Ellis, a fierce competitor. He competes his fanny off every night. Love to watch him play.”

But even with those glowing comments, West continued to come back to the reality that there is a real market out there for Warriors’ players and if trading pieces like Monta Ellis can move the talent level and depth of the team up, the Warriors have to look at that.

“But to me, size helps. Size helps.”

“They have attractive players on this team that a lot of people would like to have,” West said of the Warriors.

“If you’re in a position of strength, and you have (a player) somebody might want badly, you might be able to acquire a couple of really good players that give you more depth — it gives you a better balance to your team.”

The Warriors have made a number of front office changes this summer bringing in long-time player agent Bob Myers as assistant GM  and with West now in the fold as an advisor, the Warriors have set up their front office to be aggressive on the deal front, something Joe Locab has said he’d do the day he bought the team.

The Warriors have won 91 games in the last three years (36 games in 2010-2011, 26 games in 2009-2010, and 29 games in 2008-2009) so falling in love with anyone on the roster is dangerous. That’s something Jerry West is making abundantly clear and could spell trouble for both Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry, especially if moving one of them could return a real center.

South Beach Labor Talks: Just prior to tip-off of Game 1 of the NBA Finals NBA Commissioner David Stern and Deputy Commissioner Adam Silver addressed the media.

It took all of five minutes before Stern revealed talks with the Players Association were not where they needed to be and he has requested the Players’ Association and his Labor Negotiation committee to step up their meeting schedule, starting with a “full blown” negotiating session today in Miami.

“It’s going to be a challenge to the NBA owners and the union to reach the right deal so that this success that we’re having can continue,” explained Stern. “And the challenge is to do it before the expiration of the current agreement on June 30th.”

Stern and Silver went on to explain the NBA has sustained damages due to the uncertainties of the labor situation. Ad buyers and marketing partners that typically plan months in advance are in a holding pattern, and while season ticket renewals have been strong, mainly because the NBA is offering to pay interest on season ticket deposits in the event of a prolonged work stoppage, money was being lost.

The comment that was made that rang the truest of them all was about the structure of the NBA’s offer.

“I know that both sides will make their best offers before the lockout,” said Stern of this process. “If they don’t, then there’s going to be a lockout that would be destructive to our business.”

Stern has hinted throughout this process the value of the NBA’s offer will change dramatically if the league is forced to shut down and ultimately miss games.

Stern joked that in the spirit of LeBron James’s now infamous “Decision” Stern said he felt there was no better place to meet.

“We told the players and the owners to bring their negotiating talents to South Beach.”

Stern said every available member of the NBA’s Labor Negotiation Committee would attend and the league has invited all of the NBA Players’ Association labor committee to attend.

This will be the largest bargaining session since the All-Star Break, and while it’s unlikely a deal of any kind is reached today, the message that Stern and his owners want to send is that it’s time to make a deal, especially with less than 30 days remaining to do so.

In Related: Last night after Game 1, during a get together of media guys in Miami, a topic surfaced that was a bit more than amusing, and is worth discussing in this space because its relevant to the situation playing out this week with the Players and the Owners.

First and let’s be clear – the NBA and its Players do not have a new labor deal. They do not have a workable framework for a new deal and are miles apart on almost every key point of making a new labor deal.

The only thing both sides agree on is it’s important to reach a deal, but we’re not even in the same ballpark yet.

There has been and continues to be a lot of speculation about items in one side’s proposal that all of sudden have become fact, or at least being presented as fact.

There is no hard cap, the NBA owners would like one and the NBA players are adamantly opposed to one, any deal reached is going to have to budge on this subject.

Will the cap get “harder” meaning less exceptions, that’s very likely, but the idea the owners will get the rumored $45 million hard salary cap jumps ahead way too far to be reasonable.

There is no “Amnesty Clause.” Fans and writers have already started crossing off names and salaries of bad contracts assuming there will be some type of mechanism to allow teams to drop an unfavorable contract to meet whatever new lower system gets agreed upon. While that’s likely true, there is no Amnesty clause yet, and most who are commenting on it are assuming it will work and function like the last Amnesty clause enacted in 2005. While that may very well be the case, we are again jumping too far ahead.

An Amnesty Clause would be part of multiple changes used to reduce overall costs. The trap here is assuming that it’s a done deal, the Players and the Owners have not settled in on what the costs will be yet; but we are already waiving players and writing checks.

The NBA will have better revenue sharing. This is something almost everyone agrees is long overdue, but keep in mind before every team in the league gets to go digging through Jerry Buss’ change pocket, there has to be material changes to the cost system.

Every team has to have the ability to turn a profit or revenue sharing is not sharing, it’s using profits from one team to prop up another and that’s not the goal. The goal is to get everyone to at least break even, and revenue sharing can be a profit source for a team having a bad season or a means for a team that struggles to sell tickets to remain viable, while they improve.

If each of us can contribute $10 to the pot we can help each other if one of us struggles, but if you can never put $10 in, and are always taking $10 out, that’s not sharing and that’s not a very good system for the rest of us.

The NBA has a complex expense problem; the problem is like being shot, stabbed and poisoned all at the same time. There is not one singular treatment that fixes all those problems. It will take multiple solutions that are combined to solve the problem.

The NBA needs a harder salary cap system because costs have gotten out of control. The NBA needs an amnesty provision to help owners get out of bad deals and reset the books a little. The NBA needs to share amongst itself better than it does, and that’s in the plan.

None of these solutions happen by themselves or improve things on their own.

But before we even get into the mechanisms of a new deal, the NBA Owners and its Players have to agree to some much broader concepts. Until that happens, debating which player the Orlando Magic will buy off is bit premature mainly because the mechanism to do it does not exist and hasn’t been written yet and based on where things stand today, we are a ways away from getting there.

Injuries A Factor? HEAT head coach Erik Spoelstra wouldn’t allow himself to get too excited, despite winning the first NBA Finals game of his very young career. It’s very early in this Finals series and he knows the Mavericks will bounce back.

{AUTHOR_BOX}As he sat at the podium almost emotionless after Game 1 in Miami, a game where his club took a rolling Dallas Mavericks out of their groove. Spoelstra admitted his club, which shot 33.8% from the field, had a lot of work to do before Game 2 on Thursday.

There were grumblings of injury after Game 1, and while Spoelstra downplayed HEAT forward Mike Miller having an elbow/shoulder injury, Miller was seen leaving the building last night with his arm in a sling. Miller donned an elaborate shoulder/arm pad for the game, something Spoelstra refused to engage as a problem.

“Just to keep his arm warm,” said Spoelstra. “He’s fine.”

If Miller is injured more than the HEAT are letting on, that could change the complexion of the HEAT’s lineup as Miller has become a key part of Miami’s fourth quarter push; a push that’s been all but unstoppable over the HEAT’s most recent stretch.

Miller was not the only player to have a clear injury in Game 1.

Mavericks’ star Dirk Nowitzki revealed that while trying to dig out a rebound from HEAT forward Chris Bosh he bent his middle finger on his left hand in an awkward position. Dirk revealed an X-ray after the game verified the finger wasn’t broken but in a deadpanned manner explained that he tore a tendon or “something.”

Dirk downplayed the effect a damage finger would have on his game, but his status and the status of his finger becomes real, especially as this series plays on.

HEAT star LeBron James was asked how a finger injury like that would impact Dirk’s game, and both James and teammate Dwyane Wade laughed off the notion that such an injury would slow down Dirk.

“He’s right-handed,” said James. “He’ll be all right.”

“Dirk is right-handed. He shoots the ball extremely well. That left hand is just a guide hand for all shooters. We all know that. It won’t affect him. He’s still going to be great. He’s still Dirk.”

While the HEAT players recognize that Dirk can still be deadly, how effectively Dirk can rebound and handle the ball while wearing a split and brace remains to be seen.

Both the Mavericks and HEAT have a practice day today in Miami, so both teams will get a chance to see how their rosters look today, but Miami up one game to none, injuries could play a bigger factor down the stretch, especially with Game 2 on Thursday.

NBA Chats: There will be four NBA Chats today starting with my weekly NBA Rumors chat at 10:30am EST. Get your questions in now as the chat will get underway shortly. Salary Cap guru Larry Coon will host his next Salary Cap Chat at 3pm EST. If you have questions about the current cap or want Larry’s thoughts on the current labor situation, drop those in now. HOOPSWORLD rookie Mark Nugent will host his weekly NBA Chat at 5pm EST. Senior NBA writer Tommy Beer will round out the day with his weekly NBA Chat at 8pm EST. You can always find the next chat here: Upcoming NBA Chats.