Every year, the NBA goes through a fairly lengthy regular season that determines which teams will participate in the playoffs and where they will be seeded. At the conclusion of a grueling postseason, the league crowns a champion. The first team to win 16 playoff games takes over the top spot and gets tons of praise thrown their way for accomplishing a feat that is reserved for only one team every season.

In perfect world, we should be able to spot the characteristics of a would be challenger to the throne and determine if they have what it takes to win the elusive NBA title. But that’s just it, we do not live in a perfect world, and thus it can get confusing at times to understand what makes a team championship ready.

Continue reading “Championship Teams Not Created Equal” »

In the spring of 2007, the Golden State Warriors became the darlings of the basketball world because they entered the postseason playing what seemed like a reckless style of basketball and upset the team with the best record in the league in the Dallas Mavericks.

The playoff run enhanced the legacies of Baron Davis (always been known to be a terrific playoff performer) and Stephen Jackson (we might forget this now, but Captain Jack guarded Dirk Nowitzki and owned him in that series) given the way they played brilliant basketball for the Dubs. They scored, rebounded, defended, passed, ran the offense and stepped up late in games and made big plays; basically they played like superstars.

Davis and Jackson’s contributions were extremely important, mind you they completely overshadowed the talent and production of the team’s unsung hero: Jason Richardson.

Continue reading “The 2007 Warriors’ Unsung Hero” »

Our Warriors all-time starting five is coming close to completion. At shooting guard, we went with a player that played both the guard and forwards positions but that just shot the lights out, selecting Chris Mullin. At small forward, we went with the gifted passing and scoring forward Rick Barry while at center we easily selected the most dominant player the league has ever seen in Wilt Chamberlain.

With such a talented trio on board, the team needs a point guard to handle the ball, get the stars their looks, break down defenders, score late in the shot clock, but more importantly, fit in.

Continue reading “Starting at PG for the Warriors All-Time Team….” »

If asked to look back through the NBA’s rich history and to come up with the best individual rivalries, the answer is easily Wilt Chamberlain versus Bill Russell and Magic Johnson versus Larry Bird. However, in the case of Chamberlain and Russell, both players played the same position, which in turn made the matchups extremely compelling.

Indeed, before Hall of Fame center Hakeem Olajuwon was taking the likes of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, David Robinson, Patrick Ewing and Shaquille O’Neal to school, the league had already seen two marquee centers face off against one another repeatedly in the postseason.

Continue reading “No One Likes to Root for Goliath: Ask Wilt and Kareem” »

In the quest of building the Warriors all time starting five, we have in the past few weeks been looking at former great players that once upon a time were part of the Warriors franchise. So far, we have selected two players for our five-man unit: Rick Barry, who has one of the best passing forwards of all time and Wilt Chamberlain who we could all argue was the most dominant force the league has ever seen.

But whose got next?

We are looking for a shooting guard that can make due with the possessions he gets; which means making open shots, finishing at the basket, good decision making and occasionally creating plays for others. Sounds like an easy job and yet many guards are incapable of doing all of those.

Continue reading “Warriors History: Starting at Guard…” »

Although the Warriors season ended once again without a playoff appearance, one could still make the argument that it was a successful campaign as far as fan interest goes. Indeed, the Dubs averaged 18,692 fans per home game (10^th best in the league) because they put a fun and entertaining squad out on the court every night.

Heck, fans of other teams began tuning in to watch the Warriors because of the high-octane offense and potential to see the team score north of 65 points in one half.

At the center of it all during the 2010-11 regular season, was the face of the franchise Monta Ellis.  His scoring outbursts as well as his clutch play in some late games led to a yearlong ongoing debate: build around Steph Curry or Monta Ellis?

Continue reading “What to do With Monta…” »

After looking at Rick Barry’s career last week, the idea came to mind to do the same for players that we could consider to be the best in Warriors history. And let’s be honest, if we go all the way back to the days when the team played in Philadelphia, San Francisco and obviously Golden State, we will find that numerous great players have at least once worn a Warriors jersey.

Hence, trying to come up with a Warriors all-time team could prove to be an interesting feat as well as barbershop talk. Mind you, I felt it was necessary to at least have a few requirements when selecting the players in order to fully capture their contributions to the franchise:

• At least five years spent with the Warriors team
• Memorable accomplishment or moment
• We are strictly looking at what these players accomplished with the Warriors

Now that we have figured out our requirements, who would be the starting center on the all-time Dubs team?

Continue reading “Warriors History: Center of Attention” »

Last week, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar voiced his displeasure with the fact that the Los Angeles Lakers had not honored him with a statue at Staples Center much like they did with Magic Johnson and Jerry West. One could make a pretty convincing argument that Abdul-Jabbar is the second best player in NBA history and perhaps even the its most dominant scorer ever, as evidenced by him holding the NBA’s all time scoring record.

And yet, when talking about Laker greats we often hear about players like Elgin Baylor, Jerry West, Magic Johnson, Shaquille O’Neal and now Kobe Bryant. A lot of that stems from the fact that the players just previously mentioned were all personable in some way, shape or form. The public liked them for the most part except possibly for Kobe Bryant (more on this later), and thus the media have recounted their stories much like parents do when they read bedtime stories to their kids.

Continue reading “Say Hello to the Bad Guy: Rick Barry” »