The Mavs are gone and Avery Johnson is out in Dallas. The Suns and Mike D’Antoni? Ditto and probably ditto. Even the once mighty Spurs are down 2-0 facing the upstart Hornets in the wild Western Conference playoffs, as Chris Paul and company are poised to shred the defending champions.

Everywhere you look in the NBA, big changes are afoot. The Celtics? Clearly back as they have been all season. But it was a midseason trade for Pau Gasol that made the Lakers perhaps their most likely opponents in the Finals. That is if KG, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce can make it that far. The Association is currently undergoing a seismic shift as the old guard steps aside for the new guard . . . which, ironically, except for the Hornets, was actually the old guard not so long ago.

So, let’s say you’re the old guard. The current version, I mean. What exactly do you do? More and more across not just basketball, but all professional sports in the US, the procedure teams are coming to seems to be increasingly odd. The new trend seems to be blowing up a franchise before it collapses in on itself, and that’s probably the smart way to do things.

Look at the Lakers for example — yes, they probably could have won another title with Shaq and Kobe, or at least challenged for one, but there’s no way they would have been able to set themselves up for another title run so quickly, as the Gasol-Bryant-Andrew Bynum core looks to be one of the NBA’s most solid going forward. It was because Los Angeles acknowledged that their current situation wasn’t going to be great for them over the long haul that the team was able to rebuild itself into the contender it has become now.

Whether firing a coach falls under that general umbrella of knocking down the old so that you can build up the new is another matter entirely, but the fact remains that more and more teams are choosing to be brutally honest with themselves in order to save long-term pain. As the example of the Lakers shows, this is, indeed, a philosophy of team building that has plenty of merit. But the question then becomes: when is the right time to pull the trigger on a rebuilding project?

And, locally, is the time now right for the Golden State Warriors — who suffered a late season collapse — to stage their own mini-rebuild? Perhaps attempting to trade older players and make youngsters Monta Ellis, Andris Biedrins and Brandan Wright the new centerpieces?

It’s a difficult problem, and it’s one that another Bay Area team has recently failed dealing with, albeit in a different sport. The San Francisco Giants rode the Barry Bonds gravy-train beyond any sensible limits; it wasn’t until this off-season when the team began to contemplate life without one of the greatest offensive forces to ever play the game.

A forward-thinking team might have realized that the years where Barry could be expected to carry the Giants single-handedly were over following 2004’s heartbreaking near miss of the postseason. Bonds’ injury riddled 2005 season should have sent a much clearer message. By 2006, even the slowest of GM’s would have realized that the former star’s best days were behind him and it was time to move on.

But the Giants waited until midway through 2007 to begin rebuilding their barren farm system, and tried to hedge their bets by signing the ever-consistent Barry Zito to a gigantic contract in the ‘06 off-season. A look at the standings and at Zito’s statistics as a Giant should show you just how well that’s turning out.

So what’s to be done in the situation here, by the Bay, when it comes to the Warriors? Well, a good start would be picking a plan and sticking with it. If Golden State wants to be in the playoff bonanza next season (and really, we should all be hoping for that given the sheer entertainment that has been the Warriors up-tempo style in recent years), they need to make the tough choices. It’s your move, Warriors.

Denis Griffin wants the Golden State Warriors to take matters into their own hands. Email him at djgriff@stanford.edu if you agree.