Rumors

Nellie? After leaving the Warriors in 2010, he headed back to his home in Maui and fell off the basketball map. In 2013, I visited him at his home in Paia. He greeted me in flip flops, looking trim and tan, and led the way to the patio to smoke stogies—he’d cut out beer—and watch the waves, his two dogs lounging nearby. Later, once he figured out the DVR, we watched a Warriors-Grizzlies game. He cackled a lot, praised Andrew Bogut, and cursed David Lee. He took life at its own pace. Long afternoons. Shuffleboard out back of the bistro he owned. And, best of all, poker games in his upstairs man cave. There, he and his buddies—including Woody Harrelson, Owen Wilson, and Willie Nelson—would get magnificently stoned and play deep into the night. Once, he told me, a beloved regular, Greg Booth, passed away right there during the game, his aorta giving out. The coroner was late arriving, and the group looked to Nellie, who said, “"He'd want you to play on." So they’d finished the game that night, stepping around Booth’s body to get to the veranda for a smoke. "Poor bastard," Nellie told me, "but he went out doing what he loved."

Sports Illustrated