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Bell: ‘I wanted to see how cash considerations was playing over there’

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OAKLAND–Klay Thompson told Jordan Bell the truth.

“They don’t want you, JB.”

While Bell admitted he tried to block out the noise leading up to his first career start, Thompson’s words finally got to him. If the Chicago Bulls didn’t want him, he was going to show them what they were missing.

“Yeah, I’m not going to lie, it was (special),” Bell said after the Warriors’ 143-94 victory on Friday night. “Just because of everything that happened. At first, like coming to the game I wasn’t even thinking about it, but then like, everybody kept reminding me about it today.”

“Everything that happened,” of course, is Bell’s reference to this summer’s NBA Draft. As a big man out of Oregon, Bell caught the scouts’ attention with his athleticism and rim protection skills which helped the Ducks reach this year’s Final Four. Come draft time, though, Bell slipped into the second round. When he finally did hear his name called, it was because it was involved in a trade.

Instead of keeping Bell and grooming him as a center or power forward of the future, the Chicago Bulls were trading him for cash considerations.

Ultimately, Bell knows things worked out for the best. He said after Friday’s game that he felt like the first pick in the draft when he found out he landed with the reigning champs. But for as happy as Bell is with Golden State, revenge was on his mind when he squared off against the team that swapped him for $3.5 million in cash.

“At first, I was thinking about all types of things to troll the other team, like doing all of this and then 3.5 but I think I got closer to the game and I just focused on the basketball game, trying to win it,” Bell said. “Then, when I saw we had won the game, then I started trolling a little bit.”

Bell rubbed his fingers together as part of a “money sign” celebration during the starters’ introductions on Friday, and when Golden State had the outcome sealed up, he rubbed them together again. It was coordinated.

“I wanted to see how cash considerations was playing over there,” Bell said.

Bell finished the night with seven points, six rebounds, four assists and two steals. He also added a career-high six blocks, the most blocks by a rookie starting his first game since DeAndre Jordan finished with six blocks in his starting debut in 2009.

As hard as Bell tried to cancel out distractions, he decided to lean into them, and wound up showing the Bulls exactly what they missed out on.

“Today, I said I wasn’t going to play into it, but he started me this day, playing them, my face is on little posters, it’s kind of hard not to feed into it,” Bell said.