Dwight Howard made the statement prior to the start of the season that he wished to be traded from the Orlando Magic, and then it seemed as though he had flip flopped. But then Otis Smith went on the record to say that Howard had not backed off his request and still essentially wanted out of Orlando.

According to multiple reports, D12 has provided the Magic organization with a wish list of teams with whom he would accept to join. It’s important to understand that Howard cannot actual veto any trade in which he is involved; however his ability to become a free agent (he has a player option allowing to opt out of his current contract at the end of the 2011-2012 season) at the conclusion of this season make it extremely important that Howard actually goes to a team of his choosing; otherwise that team would give up valuable assets to acquire the big man only to see him walk away at the end of the season.

Continue reading “Putting Dwight’s Career Night Into Context” »

Warriors World reached out to a few Pacific team bloggers to get their thoughts on the Warriors. So we were able to get Phillip Barnett of Forum Blue &Gold (Los Angeles Lakers), Nick Flynt of Clipperblog (Los Angeles Clippers) and Andrew Lynch of Valley of the Suns (Phoenix Suns) to go 3-on-3.

Continue reading “3-on-3: Looking at the Warriors” »

With the Golden State Warriors (2-4) traveling to face the Los Angeles Lakers (4-4) tonight (7:30 PM PST), Warriors World reached out to David Murphy of Forum Blue and Gold to get his take on the game.

J.M. Poulard, Warriors World: The Golden State Warriors are not only the darlings of the state of California, but they are also officially better than the Lakers. Want proof?

The Los Angeles Lakers lost on opening day to the Chicago Bulls while the Dubs handled them rather easily despite the absence of Stephen Curry in the fourth quarter. It only makes sense really: we beat the team that beat you. Supremacy I tell you!

By the way, congratulations on avoiding the Los Angeles riots that an 0-4 record would have caused to start out the season. To borrow a phrase from Michael Ray Richardson: “The ship be sinking!”

All jokes aside, how is the Mike Brown experiment coming along?

Continue reading “Pacifying the Pacific: Los Angeles Lakers” »

The Golden State Warriors were victorious against the New York Knicks last night by a decisive 92-78 score. The Dubs used an airtight defense to take the Knickerbockers out of their comfort zone and sweet spots on offense.

Indeed, Brandon Rush, Dorell Wright and Kwame Brown brought some toughness as well as some resistance against the likes of Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire, which in turn frustrated them into a combined eight-for-27 shooting night.

Continue reading “The New Old Monta” »

The Golden State Warriors shocked the Chicago Bulls last night with a 99-91 victory that saw the Dubs have numerous big leads throughout the game. At the half, Mark Jackson’s bunch held a 16-point lead and by the end of the third quarter they were up by 17 points.

The Warriors were able to get a win thanks in large part to their defense. Yes, defense.

During the summer, I made the bold proclamation that if the Dubs put in any semblance of effort and strategy in their defensive game plan that they could potentially look like a playoff team. And although there were mixed results on opening night against the Clippers, Golden State was just a little better against a Chicago team with less scoring options.

Save for the fourth quarter, the Dubs held the Bulls to 22 points or less in every quarter in last night’s game. The end result was a defensive efficiency of 95.8 (defensive efficiency projects how many points a team would score in a game with 100 possessions) for the game.

Granted, crediting Golden State’s defense would be shortchanging the team’s efforts on both sides of the ball last night. Indeed, the Dubs produced 57 points in the first half versus the Bulls’ 41 points, and in the second half they scored 42 points while the opposition put up an even 50.

The second half saw the Bulls flex their muscles a little and take advantage of the Warriors on the boards.

But a big part of why the Warriors were so successful on offense against a tough Bulls’ defense was that they shared the ball. The box score may read that Golden State only had 22 assists; but the flow and pace of the game favored the Dubs because they actually ran their offense.

Last season, we became accustomed to watching Monta Ellis pound the ball endlessly as he tried to set his man up for drives or contested shots.

Clearly we can tell that Mark Jackson wasn’t a fan of such a philosophy and thus preached better ball movement.

The end result is that the Warriors three best players (Curry, Ellis and Lee) are getting the majority of the touches, but they are also getting an opportunity to make plays. Have a look at their usage rate (percentage of possessions used) for the game against the Bulls:

The intended consequence of Jackson’s offense is the lack of isolation basketball. Instead, the Dubs rely more on creating shots off of movement via pick-and-rolls, post ups and cuts.

The Golden State Warriors converted 36-of-77 field goals last night (46.8 percent from the field) and according to Synergy Sports, they were three-for-10 from the field in isolation situations (30 percent conversion rate).

Low isolation figures means that more players get to touch the ball and consequently the Dubs offense is less predictable, especially against a Bulls team that does good job of bringing help from the weak side of the court.

Keep in mind though, the Warriors offense is largely tied to its defense. Indeed, when the Warriors got stops, it helped them unleash their most potent offensive weapon: their fast break.

Synergy Sports tells us that Golden State converted 64.3 percent of their field goals in transition against Chicago on Monday night. Thus every successful defensive possession for the Dubs has the potential to create high percentage shots going back the other way.

It’s important not to get too carried away after two games given that there are still 64 more to go, but let’s just say that Mark Jackson has been a success so far.

Now if he could only get Stephen Curry’s ankle to heal…

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them in the comments section or you can contact me by email at [email protected].

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Photo by Steve Yeater/NBAE via Getty Images

After losing to the Los Angeles Clippers last night, the Golden State Warriors were hoping to replicate the same formula they used last season to defeat the Chicago Bulls at Oracle Arena. Their defense smothered league MVP Derrick Rose as well as his teammates, by forcing them to take some tough contested shots.

Let’s look at who stepped up for the Warriors tonight.

Stephen Curry 21 points| 10 assists| 7 rebounds| 6 steals| 7-12 FGs

Although Curry sprained his ankle midway through the fourth quarter and was forced to sit out the remainder of the game, Curry submitted perhaps the best pure point guard performance of this young season. He scored when needed, fed his teammates, rebounded and jumped into passing lanes to snatch passes from the opposition. And just for good measure, he shot 58.3 percent from the field.

One does wonder mind you if Curry’s ankle troubles will be an issue for the immediate future given how important his presence and production is to the team.

Monta Ellis 26 points| 7 assists| 1 steal| 10-17 FGs

Ellis got started early, scoring 13 points in the first quarter and made his poor shooting performance against the Clippers a distant memory. Much like Curry, Monta figured out when to assert himself offensively and when to defer to teammates. Indeed, with Curry off the floor late in the fourth, the Bulls double-teamed the Warriors starting shooting guard at half-court; where Monta willingly gave up the ball to David Lee and trusted that he would consistently make the right plays down the stretch.

David Lee 22 points| 7 rebounds| 1 assist| 8-16 FGs

David Lee did a good job once again of converting the majority of his shots and also making good decisions. He caught the ball in traffic and finished, but was also a threat from midrange.

House of haunted horrors

For the second season in a row, the Bulls struggled in Golden State. They shot a mere 41.5 percent from the field and turned the ball over 20 times, which resulted in 20 Warriors points.

The player most affected by his surroundings though was none other than Derrick Rose, as the reigning MVP scored 13 points on four-for-17 field goal shooting.

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them in the comments section or you can contact me by email at [email protected].
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If we polled a few NBA experts as well as some fans and asked them which player they would like to have on their team with five minutes left in a close game to take them home; most would mention the names of Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, Dwyane Wade and Carmelo Anthony to name a few. These players’ performances in late game situations make it as such that we just naturally trust them to deliver with games hanging in the balance.

Mind you, relying on big names can at times fool even the most astute basketball mind.

Indeed, one of the biggest traps in professional basketball is that fans and even media members fall in love with nationally televised games and use them as benchmarks for the performance of stars. For instance, hitting or missing a game-winning shot on a Sunday game against the Lakers is not the same as succeeding or failing in crunch time against the Cavaliers on a Monday night. The game that was played in front of the larger audience was seen by more people and thus is much more likely to be cited as evidence than all of the obscure games that take up the regular season.

This partly explains why most people were shocked to find out that the New Orleans Hornets (who rarely show up on national television) have had the best crunch time offense in the league for the past few seasons.

In a nutshell, this is one of the main reasons why Monta Ellis rarely gets any praise for his performances down the stretch of games: not many are paying attention. Indeed, Ellis is viewed as an inefficient guard trying to emulate Allen Iverson’s shot strategy (you know, put enough shots up and some are bound to go in) for the sake of accumulating points. But if we dig deeper, there is something to be said about Monta’s scoring prowess in tight late game situations.

Ian Levy did a brilliant job of illustrating this when he compared various NBA players’ ability to create and convert shots in the clutch (82games.com defines clutch as the last five minutes of a game or overtime with neither team leading by more than five points). He stated for Monta:

I have to admit I was shocked to see Monta Ellis score so efficiently in these situations. It’s especially amazing since his TS% for the entire season was just 53.6%, 6.2 points lower than what he shot in clutch situations.

Have a look at Levy’s piece, it helps give some perspective on not only Ellis but also some other players in the league and how they fare as far as creating shots down the stretch of games.

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them in the comments section or you can contact me by email at [email protected]  You can also find me on Twitter with the handle name @ShyneIV.

Labels and perceptions are funny things in sports. Once we place a label on a player, the perception of this said athlete tends to stick even though it may no longer apply. For instance, for years it was said that Dirk Nowitzki was soft and that he could not and would not play big when the pressure was at its highest. The smoking gun for this theory was his less than stellar play in the 2006 NBA Finals and it seemed that his disappearing act in the 2007 playoffs against the Golden State Warriors only reinforced an open and shut case.

Consequently, when the #NBARank announced that the German had been rated as the fifth best player in the NBA for his performance during the 2010-11 regular season and 2011 playoffs, some might have felt that he was ranked too low. Many felt he had come a long way and finally conquered his demons. With an NBA title and Finals MVP now accompanying him like an I.D. card, he had finally arrived.

Except that was not entirely the case. Dirk Nowitzki’s been tearing up the NBA for the past four years; especially during the playoffs. Mind you, the issue wasn’t him shrinking in big moments, instead it was the collective failure of the masses to notice he was playing big in crucial moments but that his teams often failed to deliver. Have a look at his playoff statistical output from 2006 to 2011:

The narrative during the 2011 postseason was that Dirk had finally acquired the mental toughness that had eluded him for so long; but such was not the case. Nowtizki had acquired some toughness after the elimination at the hands of the Dubs but few noticed in the following playoff appearances because the Mavericks only made brief cameos.

The Mavs star forward is the best seven-foot shooter the league has ever seen but that would be shortchanging his talent. He is not only an impressive shooter, but he is also one of the best scorers to ever participate in an NBA game.

Nowitzki boats an impressive 47.3 percent career field goal shooting mark, 38.0 percent career 3-point field goal shooting and an 87.6 percent free throw figure for his career.

In addition, his scoring and rebounding during the postseason have consistently surpassed his regular season numbers throughout his 13 seasons in the NBA.

Granted, the statistics are one thing but has Dirk always been the assassin we saw on his run to the title? Actually, yes.

It’s easier to remember Nowitzki allowing Udonis Haslem to push him around in the 2006 NBA Finals and Matt Barnes as well as Stephen Jackson essentially bullying him into submission in his following postseason appearance; but let’s not forget that Disco Dirk lit up the Phoenix Suns for 50 points in the 2006 Western Conference Finals and also had arguably one of the best three-point plays in NBA history when he drove past Bruce Bowen and converted a tough lay up while getting hacked by Manu Ginobli in Game 7 of the 2006 Western Conference  Semifinals to send the game to overtime where the Mavericks were victorious (on the road no less).

Also, we have moments like the 2009 Western Conference Semifinals where Dirk lit up bruisers like Kenyon Martin, Nene and Chris Andersen despite their tough physical defense.  In those five games, Dirk poured in 28, 35, 33, 44 and 32 points.

Fast forward to the 2011 NBA Finals, and really Nowitzki’s game hadn’t changed all that much. He carried himself with the same swagger, played just as hard and was just as deadly from the field. Dirk has been one of the top 10 players in the league for quite some time, but it just unfortunately took him winning a ring for people to finally realize it.

Dirk hasn’t arrived, he’s been here for a while…

Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them in the comments section or you can contact me by email at [email protected]. You can also find me on Twitter with the handle name @ShyneIV.