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Once again, the Warriors are in a wait-and-see mode

As expected by pretty much everyone, the Warriors did nothing at the trade deadline. It was expected because, well, when you're 13 games out of the last playoff spot, you're not really shopping for immediate help, and the only calls you field are "OK, we'll take Corey Maggette off your hands but only if you throw in Andris Biedrins and Anthony Randolph."

But being on the periphery of what turned out to be a bad market for deals neither helped nor harmed the Warriors much. They remain what they are, and in fact are about to enter the next phase of the season - giving more time to the far end of the bench to see just what's what and who's who.

It's the first phase of the 2009-10 season, or as it will soon enough be known, The Next False Start.

Of course that's the cynical way to look at it, but we're just following the well-worn path of the Warriors basketball experience - starting over, running around in a circle for a time, then stopping to look for a new circle.

In the meantime, coach Don Nelson is already preparing mentally for his next scouting trip - the one to Oakland.

"I think we'll get to that point soon, where (the starters' minutes) will go down a little bit," he said Thursday in the wake of Wednesday's not-quite-a-win against the Lakers. "We're probably going to do that before long. We have 28 games left, and we need to get some playing time for the other guys."

That is also the view of Larry Riley, the assistant general manager in charge of being general manager - to see what they have and who they are.

"Actually, given the way other teams value our players, it's surprising we have 19 wins," Riley said. "But over the next 28 games, we want to get a better idea of what our young guys can do, what they need to do to get better, and what we need in the draft and over the summer."

Ah yes. The draft. As though the draft would help a team that is already younger than is useful for a playoff team.

The Warriors are not in a position to start tanking games, because they have already given the worst teams (the Clippers, Wizards, Kings, et. al.) too much of a cushion. There is also little benefit to trying to get into the top end of the lottery because there is no slam-dunk pick that turns them from the 1997 Spurs into the 1998 Spurs - no Tim Duncan to make all the errors and panicked judgments of this year moot.

No, there is no quick way out - no trade that makes them relevant the way the Baron Davis deal did, no known piece that requires some creativity and the clearing of dead wood like the Stephen Jackson trade did. So more time will be granted to Randolph and Marco Belinelli and C.J. Watson and yes, Brandan Wright.

"We're still trying to win as many games as we can," Riley said, stating a point that didn't need to be made given the minimal value of aggressive losing. "But we also need to see what we have so we'll know how to proceed in case we want to make some moves over the summer."

And that explanation doesn't even cover the other issue - the front office. At some point shortly after the season, the topic of Nelson's future will re-rear its head, and so will that of vice president Chris Mullin. The Warriors didn't take just the obvious backward steps this year but also added upper echelon chaos and anger over the Davis and Monta Ellis situations, and while some folks remain amused by the notion of Nelson as moody Svengali, the Warriors' dysfunctions run deeper, wider and higher - as they always do.

There are no educated guesses to be made about how this will end save that Mullin probably will find more gainful employment with another team. Nelson may stay on, or he may finally decide that enough is too much. People have tried to surmise his sell-by date for years, but he seems closer this year than ever before, that there is less fun between games than there used to be. That making the Warriors into a real boy is more than the 69-year-old Geppetto is capable.

And then there's Ellis, whose future remains an imponderable, and then there's determining if all the young, thin left-handers the team has stockpiled are keepers, and then there's the economy, and then ...

... and then who knows? The Warriors began this transition to uncertainty when they cut bait on Davis last summer, traversed it though the benighted attempt at Elton Brand, the Pavlovian response that was Maggette, the Ellis accident, and now they are saying that they want to more thoroughly road-test their past two drafts.

Maybe somewhere in all this is a clear direction, but you'll have to wait until next season to figure out what it is. Typical. Next to the "The CITY" uniforms, waiting is the oldest and most reliable thing about the Warriors.