92-78

Great game last night from the dubs, and we have fan reaction from folks at the game and those on the couch.

From behind the Knicks bench… PNQ weighs in.

Ish: I hate this guy’s game. With a passion. But he produces results… he’s our energy guard. Unfortunately we still don’t have a backup PG though.

Jenkins: slow as HELL. Looked OK against Sacto, but they are slow as hell too. But against Douglas, this guy was in slow motion. Guess that answers why he isn’t playing much. How much would it take to get Luke Ridnour from MIN?

Klay: Poor floor game tonight. Burned awfully bad early by Fields and was otherwise shut down by him on offense as well.

Rush: No quit at all in this guy. This is the player I was talking about as Kansas… if this continues, that’ll be one more hit on my all-time ‘need to draft’ list. Which would leave Earl Clark and Cole Aldrich as the 2 players I’ve so far missed on in 5 years /gratuitouspattingselfontheback (and FTR, I’d still take Clark and Aldrich. Love their games)

Dorell: Played like ass most of the game. Hit a late 3, but the guy was getting burnt on D and his penchant for pump-faking lost him a number of shots. This season has not proven himself to be starting caliber.

McGuire: This guy is our stopper, and he’s very, very good at it. We need to find him some more minutes.

Udoh: Very solid defense on Amar’e, and threw up a nice hook I remember for some reason. Works for position pretty well, but I cant see this guy starting, ever, at PF. His future is likely as a reserve 4/5 that patrols the lane, which isn’t bad at all. A very necessary piece IMO. But time to lower the expectations of him.

Biedrins: Inhaled rebounds. Solid defense. Didn’t crap the bed offensively… what more can you ask from him?

Kwame: See: Biedrins. Added bonus: whenever he gets a bunny shot that isn’t a dunk, its entertainment factor 10.

Lee: Great, understated game from Lee. He single-handedly took Chandler out of the game. Sitting behind the Knicks bench you could hear Chandler complaining about him at times. Lee was GASSED at the end of the game though, and you could see it on the FT line. And for those who noticed, the Knicks defense was so, so chaotic in the 4th because of their missing anchor, which perfectly set up…

Monta: Let me preface by saying the 1st 3 Qs were abysmal. Now that that’s over, his 4th Q was great. He avoided the lane for most of the game, and then out of nowhere took it to the hole and dished to Lee, and the light switch seemed to go on – the Knicks were tired and they had no help inside. And like a smart player would, he smelled the blood and attacked. I hate calling it a PG peformance – simply because Ive never seen a PG lose his handle with minimal pressure so much before – but that’s what it was. It was opportunistic, and in a game without our initiator, that’s HUGE.

Jackson: I’ll catch crap I’m sure, but not impressed. Everyone’s propping him for changing the culture… no no no. It’s the players. We have surrounded our ‘stars’ with good defenders and hard workers, and THEY are rubbing off on the players. In one instance in the 3rd Q, Monta was sent to the bench and the scrub unit was out there. Met at around mid-court, and one player (couldn’t tell who) was firing the team up and talking about switching and accountability. The very next play I saw some beautiful scramble defense that resulted in Melo missing a jumper and the W’s scoring… which eventually brought us the lead.

Great, resilient game from the W’s last night… never seen them fight back like that, ever. With some consistency and a real backup PG we can do some damage this year..

From a couch somewhere in Northern California Earl J Slick

I don’t think you need to call Monta’s 4th quarter a pg performance. He played like a good SG who wasn’t hitting open shots and decided to involve others. That alone is a monumental improvement over the first 3 quarters. Agree on the poor handle.

As for Jackson, there clearly is some coaching going on and it’s probably Malone and other assistants. Players don’t design the defense, they execute it. Someone is actually designing the defense and teaching solid team defensive concepts to the starters. Most of the others guys came from places where that probably happened, but our starters have never had that. I credit them for executing but if you just threw them out there it wouldn’t be happening like this. I credit Jackson for setting the priority as well but as we saw last year, that’s nothing without a plan and players buying into the plan.

And of course it’s only three games. They have to play like this for the entire season before it matters.

Response to Dubit’s post on David Lee not being the answer from Tanner.

Obviously Duncan, Gasol and Dirk are better than David Lee. Those guys are going to go the Hall of Fame. Aldridge is better (even though he’s had some pretty underwhelming seasons himself.) Griffin and Love are both better. I will not give you Randolph. You don’t get credit for dogging years, destroying teams and then “figuring it out” when you’re 30 and playing for a contract. Ibaka is a role player. Millsap and Scola are not better although they are both good. If you replace Lee with any of those last 3 the Warriors are not a better team. And what are the Warriors supposed to do, just hold out until they can get a guy better than LaMarcus Aldridge?
Continue reading “David Lee Signing Not As Bad As You Think” »

The first of a point / counterpoint from 2 forum members discussing the merits of the David Lee deal.  With the Warriors failure to make an impact at the trading deadline, and recent decline in play, fans are throwing in the towel for this season.  Conversation is now moving to the long term prospects of this team as it’s currently constructed.

Dubit weighs in with his take on why the David Lee signing is a bad deal, and the wrong fit for this team.

Lee is one of the top 4′s in the west in fantasy hoops but not on the floor. Western 4′s better than Lee: Duncan, Nowitzki, Gasol, Odom, Ibaka, West, Aldridge, Randolph, Griffin and Love. You could argue Millsap and Scola as well but I left them out to keep it clean. That puts Lee 11th in the west out of 15 teams.
Continue reading “David Lee Signing A Bad Deal For Warriors” »

The one knock against the Golden State Warriors tiny back court has been that they could be exploited by larger guards.  In the early part of the season against sub .500 teams, high scoring has made this a non-issue.  Last night against the Phoenix Suns, a team not known for it’s defense, all of the warts were exposed.  The Suns played Jason Richardson on the Warriors smaller guards, posting them up at will.  The Warriors defense was lazy and uninspired with Ellis gambling for steals and leaving a free path to the basket.  On a night where Biedrins played uninspired basketball, and the Warriors had no healthy shot blocking bigs, there was a layup line at the basket.  As the season starts to slip away, and the schedule gets more difficult, fans react to the back court.

From delsol650 in the forum

My take on this back court and this team. Just for reference of the last successful team to run a small back court.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/DET/1989.html

Having 2 pint sized back court players won’t work in the long run. This isn’t the Detroit pistons of 20yrs ago. compared to that team, this duo are NOT defensive nightmares nor as strong/aggressive as Isiah/Dumars were. Those guys had guys  like Rodman, Laimbeer , Aguire, Dantley, Sally, V.Johnson, Mahorn and Dawkins behind them if their man blew by them. That team was decently sized and played superior defense, team basketball and roles were cemented and played.

Our team is constructed as a guard eccentric team in which most of their points come from JUMP SHOTS or points scored outside the paint. We don’t have REAL bruising type players that had the complete skill. Our roster is extremely flawed.

C- Although can be a rebounding guru and has pretty good hands, he is offensively very limited, not strong and does get punished even by the likes of the Landry’s, and similar 6’7” PF’s.

Our bench is god awful, even with the return of Lou ( we know what he brings and he’s consistent ), everyone else is either OK only to garbage.

We need a bigger, defensive minded guard that can play within the offensive scheme,  and doesn’t dominate the ball. I’ll also take a defensive rebounding big that can actually hold his own inside the paint and not get pushed around. Someone to just do the dirty work kinda like in the mold of Kendrik Perkins.

This team will get tested more and more by bigger stronger guards to will continue to pound our small back court throughout this 82 game campaign. Smart coaches will start to hone in to getting our smaller guys into foul trouble, fatigue, and make our other players leave their man to help out and double team. Sure Monta Ellis  and Stephen Curry will have nights that they can handle it somewhat but that isn’t going to last nor be effective for 82 games and imagine the toll on their bodies from getting beat up by bigger guards night in, night out. Not all teams have capitalized yet, but trust me we’ve only played a hand full of GOOD/Great teams.

Our offense does get stagnant when the ball is being pounded on top of the 3pt line while the other 4 stand around. Defense’s just stand and wait for the drive or ISO.

Ellis has been great this year, but can we live with that for 82 games and a possible that 1/2 those games he won’t be as effective and can also become a volume shooter. Ellis needs to also know that besides shooting he can also help this team to do other things than just attack the basket not just every other game or so.

Curry really needs to reign in his game and start watching film of his previous games, mistakes, short comings and also what he does good to hopefully learn and improve from them. For this team to do well for now, he and Ellis needs to raise their games to unheard of levels.

We always complain of getting out rebounded or don’t get to the line but that’s what happens when you have a small team and purely a JUMP SHOOTING team. This team lives and dies with the long shot or 3. and this team has a very soft belly.

Also, I really don’t know what this ownership can get with the expiring contracts of Gadz/Bell/Radman and with the sweetener of Brenda Wright being used as trade fodder.

(I’m profiling the big three unpredictable factors for this upcoming Warriors season. Today, the focus is on a forgotten man)

Brandan Wright. He still exists. He still looks like a sad Dracula. His shoulder still slumps atop his arm, waiting to explode all over some unsuspecting baseline. In this Summer interview, he mentions the possession of “unbearable potential,” which is either a malapropism or Freudian reveal: Continue reading “Wildcard No. 1: BWright back?” »

I’m going to miss a mostly Curryless Russia-USA game due to a marauding wisdom tooth. It’s rearing its ugly cap en route to punching my face in slow motion. Impressively, the tooth has survived in secrecy longer than Stephen Curry has existed. It will be ripped from my jaw, coated in dripping dark blood. Perhaps the tooth will be laced with that rancid sulphuric plaque stench-my deviant brain can only imagine what odors lie beneath. The experience will be unpleasant, but the longer it stays, the worse my mouth’s trajectory. Wait in denial, and expect crocodile features, that morph into creatures worse than wrong. So it’s an extraction worth celebrating, especially since the little bastard’s cutting my inner cheek like Carl Landry sent it on a mission.

And in that spirit, it’s time to move on from Don Nelson. This isn’t an angle coming from an armchair GM–it’s the visceral Continue reading “Wise to Move On from Don” »

Because it’s September and because the Dubs are daring me to conjure something about Rodney Carney, I asked economist/statman/hoophead Dave Berri this old musky question:

“Who would win, five prime Dennis Rodmans vs. five prime Kobe Bryants?”

I assumed he’d choose Rodman, because the Worm bests the Mamba in Berri’s Wins Produced metric. His answer surprised me: Continue reading “Non-GSW question: Rodmans vs. Kobes” »

From IshWarrior in the forum:

David Lee is probably the biggest Warriors’ FA signing…ever, but that’s not the point. Sure it is an improvement right now, we should have more wins than last year and we have a legitimate rebounding body right now, but it isn’t the most logical fix.

It’s my opinion that the Warriors needed to start looking at alternative directions for the team. After last year, the team became less about building around Monta Ellis and Andris Biedrins (which many, including myself, argued for a couple years ago) and more about building around Steph Curry and the potential of Anthony Randolph.

The biggest deficiency in Warriors basketball is defense. It’s non-existent. Sure, our offense hits a high gear every once in a while and we have a single, or a string of, good games, but I think we all know very well that it won’t get the team very far (see 2006 playoffs). Signing a guy like David Lee who doesn’t really play a lick of defense is not addressing this very, very large concern. What he does, he does very well. He’ll get you some points, he’ll crash the boards, and he’ll run a pick-and-roll. He has defensive capability, but we don’t see it. Not the right move, Riley.

With the expectation of new ownership coming into town soon, meaning a new front office and new coaching, it is in the best interest of the fans that we give the “new” team as much flexibility as possible. Although Nelson and Riley might as well mail it in, that doesn’t mean go out there and continue the typical Warriors less-than-logical moves.

I know that this is just my opinion and several of you probably disagree, it was my dream scenario that the Warriors would stick with Steph Curry, Anthony Morrow (if we could get him to stick around), Anthony Randolph, Brandan Wright, and Ronny Turiaf. In the mean time, make the best of Monta Ellis and Andris Biedrins. If they were a legitimate fit on this vision of the future, then go for it. If not, then send them out for young, cheap talent to go along with short (read: 1-year remaining), large contracts.

A year from now, that possibly meant a new owner: Larry Ellison. A new GM: Jerry West, Kevin Pritchard, or at least someone competent with a halfway decent track record. A new coach. And a roster consisting the aforementioned Stephen Curry, Anthony Randolph, Brandan Wright, Ronny Turiaf, hopefully Anthony Morrow, a flurry of expiring contracts, and maybe some young talent go to along with it. Sure the CBA is being re-written and this year was the year of free-agents, but the point is the Warriors would have a great deal of flexibility under a new ruler.

That’s what I feel should be in the best interest of fans. We need a totally new movement when the new owner comes around, and we’re putting a longer time-table on a redefined team with contracts like these. At best, we’re putting ourselves onto the road to no-man’s land. We could add some more talent and be a .500 team, not making the playoffs, and not getting a great pick. Not the goal of a basketball team. We should take note of the work by Sam Presti and Kevin Pritchard. Making smart moves to go with youth, stack up draft picks, scout well, and build a brighter future. Right now, the only thing keeping me sane is the wallet of the very well connected Larry Ellison, Stephen Curry, and the light, although not very bright, of the not-so-close future.

/Rant.