When Brooklyn native Chris Mullin took the reins of the meandering Golden State Warriors before this season, the club had the longest running playoff drought in the NBA at 11 seasons and counting, due in large part to a disturbing lack of prescience and business sense dating back to the mid-90s. It appeared as though things could only get better under Mullin, and as of this week, they finally are.

After a dreadful start to the season, the Warriors had won eight of their last 13 games going into last night’s contest against the Knicks in Oakland, and the team recently notched back-to-back road wins in Phoenix and Sacramento. Golden State boasts a solid nucleus of young players, and for the first time in a decade, the team actually seems to have a long-term plan.

All this comes as a surprise following Mullin’s first few months on the job, which were characterized by moves that bordered on ridiculous. Charged with the task of tweaking a talented young team that finished 37-45 in 2003-04, Mullin inexplicably let the team’s two best big men, Erick Dampier and Brian Cardinal, depart via free agency. Even stranger, he used the freed-up money to sign two aging, reserve-caliber players, center Adonal Foyle and point guard Derek Fisher, to star-level pacts. Nor did the dismissal of head coach Eric Musselman and the hiring of longtime Stanford coach Mike Montgomery buoy optimism; college coaches have miserable track records in the pros.

Still, after signing power forward Troy Murphy and shooting guard Jason Richardson to contract extensions in early November, Mullin declared that the team was poised to make a legitimate playoff run. The Warriors went on to lose 10 of their 13 games that month. They kept their heads above water in December before taking a nosedive in January, losing 14 of 15 games. Some fans probably wanted Mullin to clarify exactly what year the Warriors were going to legitimately contend; others probably just wanted to toss him off the Bay Bridge.

After a flurry of trades pulled off at the NBA trade deadline in late February, however, Mullin is suddenly looking much smarter. His biggest acquisition, Baron Davis, was a risk – the mercurial point guard has missed 80 games to injury in the last three seasons and is signed to a hefty contract – but Mullin rightly judged that it was one worth taking.

Under the direction of Fisher and Speedy Claxton, who went with Dale Davis to New Orleans in exchange for Baron Davis, the Warriors’ offense was stagnant, ranking 24th in Offensive Efficiency with 99.8 points per 100 possessions after finishing 11th at 100.5 in 2003-04. With Davis running the point, the Warriors have played more aggressively, increasing their pace and scoring efficiency. The new floor general has also been able to get younger role players like forward Zarko Cabarkapa and swingman Mickael Pietrus into the flow of the offense.

Cabarkapa was another smart Mullin pickup, arriving from Phoenix in exchange for two second-round picks; he’s averaged nearly 20 points per 40 minutes since his arrival in Oakland. In an addition-by-subtraction deal, center Clifford Robinson was dealt to the Nets for a pair of second-round picks. This restocked the draft pool and enabled rookie center Andris Biendrins to see consistent minutes. In response, the 18 year-old Latvian has been averaging a double-double per 40 minutes.

Mullin completed his good work by moving Eduardo Najera to Denver for Rodney White and Nikoloz Tskitishvili. Although Tskitishvili is little more than a cautionary footnote about drafting obscure Europeans, the rest of the personnel acquisitions make the team younger and more athletic. They are particularly surprising given that Mullin’s off-season moves suggested that he had few – if any – player evaluation skills.

This upgrade in athleticism was particularly evident in a loss to the Mavericks last week. Early on, Davis attacked the rim with abandon, scoring often, setting up teammates for open jumpers, and allowing the team to keep pace with the potent Dallas offense. But when Fisher took the helm, the offense degenerated to a series of low-percentage jumpers with little penetration into the paint. Fisher’s lack of aggression also exposed one of the weaknesses that Mullin’s midseason makeover did not address: the Warriors’ lack of any sort of post presence on offense.

Biendrins is the most likely solution to this problem; like the Nets’ Nenad Krstic, he’s a foreign pivot man who isn’t allergic to the paint. Any 18-year-old with his size and ability is a commodity worth keeping, but the Warriors will still need to use their mid-level exception and their lottery pick to fortify this element of their roster.

Golden State’s recent run of success is more than random chance. Montgomery has got the team running in the right direction, and the core trio of Davis, Richardson, and Murphy are all on the upward arcs of their careers. Still, Mullin hasn’t dug the Warriors out of the hole he did so much to create, and there’s still a lot of work to do before they really can contend – after all, the team’s record in 2005 is an ugly 24-45. They desperately need a post presence and a more consistent offensive design that encourages Davis to attack the rim.

The Warriors have a lot of talent in place to break their long drought, but the same thing could have been said last year. The Mullin makeover has resulted in a team with more upward momentum, if an underwhelming immediate payoff. If this coming off-season goes better than the last one, Mullin might well find a measure of redemption.