Forgive us Warriors fans for getting a little excited. We haven’t seen our team begin a season this well since 1994-95, when the W’s ran off 5 straight wins to open the year. You remember that season, don’t you? That was the year we finished with a 26-56 record, traded our 20-year-old franchise player, lost our Hall of Fame coach, and first became accustomed with the dwellers of the shallow end. But now the Warriors are off to a 5-3 start, and while that may be a mere 1 game better than .500, it’s miles from what we’re used to. Right now, this team could break out their highway cleanup crew orange unis at this point, and I probably wouldn’t even bat an eye. Yes, things are going <i>that</i> well.
Of course, any and all talk surrounding the Warriors has to start with The Franchise: Baron Davis. Not only is Baron only the engine that drives this team, he’s also the wheels, frame, sunroof, and fuzzy dice on the rearview mirror. He can have a horrendous shooting night (which is pretty much every night), and still hit the big shot at the end of a game, no matter how frigid he is from the field. He also helps make up for the team’s lack of any real presence inside by penetrating and causing opposing defenses to collapse on him in the paint, setting up Warriors big men for easy baskets they didn’t earn. The only downside to Baron’s game right now is that he’s driving with the parking brake on.
Bay Area fans spent the offseason holding their collective breath regarding Baron’s health, only to see him emerge the preseason unscathed- and then promptly get hurt in the season opener. Davis pulled up lame with a hamstring injury at home against Atlanta, and you could feel the collective mojo in The Arena let out like air from a flat tire. Without Baron, the Warriors are suddenly the same team that careened out of control last year, losing games and hemorrhaging leads just like their Golden State predecessors used to. I don’t even have an organ donor sticker on my driver’s license, but I’m willing to take out my own hamstring, cauterize the wound with a BIC lighter, and donate it to Baron if it means making the playoffs. If it weren’t for the apparent cancellation of "Arrested Development", Baron’s hamstring injury would easily qualify as the worst news of the new millennium. Even Neo wasn’t this important to one group of people.
Davis’ hamstring pull draws attention to all of the preseason talk declaring that the Warriors point guard was in shape and finally injury-free heading into the season. While Baron is certainly in better shape than he was last year, when he was on the verge of becoming The Beer Baron, he still has not fully recovered from his knee problems. He doesn’t have his jumping ability back yet, which even he seems to forget on occasion- there are times when Baron is caught in mid-air looking to pass a ball he once would have dunked, a tiny thought bubble creeping out of his head saying, "I’ve made a huge mistake".
Of course, one of the main reasons the Baron trade has worked so well to date is that the team’s incumbent best player, Jason Richardson, willingly took on a supporting role as the Rita Wilson to Baron’s Tom Hanks. J-Rich looks like he’s headed to All-Star Weekend again this season, but for once he’ll actually get to stick around and play after the dunk contest is over. Richardson has grown so much as an all-around player that he’s arrived at the point where I assume each and every one of his shots are going in (the first time that’s happened since Mullin left), and he scores his points when the team seems to need them most. In the old days, if the Warriors were lucky (or unlucky) enough to have built a lead, the other team would inevitably build a wave of momentum and reclaim the advantage before the midway point of the 4th quarter. But J-Rich is finally able to feel that momentum shifting, and is able to come up with baskets which stem the tide. It’s like watching a puppy learn to pee outside; I just feel an immense amount of pride when I watch J-Rich.
The team’s third scoring option thus far has been Troy Murphy, the member of the Warriors starting 5 who worked the hardest to become tall. Murphy is still a bit of a black hole on offense, but that isn’t so problematic now that Murph has a better understanding of his own game, which includes much better range from beyond the arc. Murphy has become a very good 3-point shooter, and is able to use the pick-and-roll with Baron as an effective way to score the majority of his points. Sticking to the perimeter also prevents Murphy from having his shots rejected in the paint, which became a disturbingly frequent habit last year. Murphy can now use his jumper to set up drives to the basket, and has made strides on the defensive glass, though he still has a ways to go before he becomes a reliable inside presence (note his difficulty last week at Chicago, when he failed to keep Buster Douglas out of the paint in the final seconds).
The biggest drawback with Murphy as the third option is that the role of third wheel was originally intended for someone else. That part was supposed to be played by Mike Dunleavy, the team’s latest mega-contract recipient. Dunleavy used the money from his new deal to finance an expedition during the first week of the season, in search of a jumpshot with the ability to hit an NBA rim. J-Rich and Murphy had the same problem last season after signing their contract extensions, which leads me to believe that the problem lies not with the players, but with the team. The belief here is that the Warriors don’t make a big enough deal out of the long-term contracts, which creates tension among both the fans and the players.
It’s like when someone turns 50; if you don’t throw a party for the person to take their mind off the situation, they’ll just sit and dwell on the large number that’s now attached to their name. No, you need to hold an extravaganza, something to celebrate the special occasion. For instance, to honor Dunleavy’s extension, the Warriors could have handed him one of those oversized golf tournament checks, hired cheerleaders to hang out in the bathroom, and had owner Chris Cohan regale partygoers with his rags-to-riches story of how he went from a poor, disadvantaged youth to Lord of the Underworld simply through hard work and poor management skills. They could have even had a celebrity roast- complete with Oakland mayor Jerry Brown presenting Dunleavy with a giant key to Fairyland (you had one as a kid, don’t lie).
Most Warriors fans have a hate-hate relationship with Dunleavy, which makes it even harder for him to emerge from his slump. He’s a slow starter by nature, but he somehow has a knack for coming up big late in games. Keep in mind that this is the same player who won the NCAA Championship game with a last-minute three as a freshman, and did the same late in the 4th quarter at Chicago last week in a losing effort. Dunleavy always seems to take a while to get comfortable, in both individual games and within a season, which is why his efforts to start strong against the Bulls on Monday were great to see. It seems to take Dunleavy a while to remember that he’s a slow starter, which is strange considering how many Warriors fans are willing to remind him each night. (Note: Dunleavy would be the worst beer pong player in history, hands-down. Not only is beer pong a game in which a slow start effectively ends your night, but both the ball and the target are much smaller. No wonder he left college early.)
At times, rooting for Dunleavy is like tuning into a nature show about cheetahs and rooting for the gazelle. He always seems overmatched physically, and he appears to be the least aggressive mammal on the planet. But I’m willing to be patient with him, because right now he’s the team’s fifth-best player, and there aren’t many teams whose fifth-best player is as good as Mike Dunleavy. Perhaps more importantly, though, is his contract: Dunleavy is untradeable for the next 2 years, so any complaining done on my part is pretty much moot. How’s that for an endorsement?
The reason Dunleavy’s lack of production hasn’t killed the Warriors is because Derek Fisher has been a miracle off the bench. D-Fish has worked (or as Mickael Pietrus would say, "walked") hard all season to keep the ship steady while the team’s stars take a breather. One of the best things that’s happened since the Baron trade is that Fisher has been able to go back to being an All-NBA role player, which is where he excelled back in his days with the Lakers. Fisher just knows what he’s doing out on the court; he makes a handful of big plays in each game, and he’s been the best perimeter shooter on the team so far, hitting half of his 3-point attempts. It may be because he lost the starting job he felt was rightfully his, or it may be because he shaved his head and now looks like the black Matt Geiger, but D-Fish has looked tougher and more focused than ever this season.
Unfortunately for D-Fish, his job as backup point guard means he must occasionally pass the ball down low to the team’s frontcourt, which is a disaster no longer waiting to happen. Center Adonal Foyle is a starter in name and pretense only, riding the bench when games count the most (read: the entire second half) and relied upon only in case of emergency. Foyle is also the owner of the worst pair of hands since Jim Abbott, and he’s become "that guy" on offense. I’m convinced that Foyle’s mom is friends with Baron’s mom, and Baron keeps passing to Foyle for fear that if he doesn’t, he’ll get yelled at after the game. I’m not 100% certain that Foyle wouldn’t be better off donating one of his hands to injured rookie Ike Diogu, and playing the remainder of the season with one hand and a hook. Adonal is the last person picked for the water balloon toss every year at the Warriors company picnic, and watching him chase a loose ball is like watching a 13-year-old who’s just entered puberty, grown 9 inches, and no longer has any concept of how his body works.
In his defense, Foyle is an extremely hard worker, a good defender, and his play has gotten better as of late. He’s also the longest-tenured Warrior, and has remained somewhat quiet (you can always tell a Milford man) with respect to the constant losing and never-ending turmoil that have defined this team in the post-Josh Grant era. But the Warriors will soon resort to the Costco "big-man-by-volume" strategy once Diogu returns, using a Foyle-Diogu-Murphy-Taft-Biedrins combination inside, in the hopes that the team can wear opponents down with numbers in place of talent. It is this lack of any real threat in the paint that makes those comparison to last year’s Suns ring hollow, though it has been nice to hear the various NBA analysts mention the team in a positive light for once.
No, these aren’t last year’s Suns, but they aren’t last year’s Pistons, either. For all the recent talk about the team’s emphasis on defense, keep in mind that the Warriors have played only two teams who rank in the top half of the league in scoring (Milwaukee and Phoenix, who dropped 110 and 101 on the Warriors, respectively). These Warriors aren’t bad on offense and they can play a little defense, but they are among the league’s best in neither category. There has been only one area in which these Warriors have shown they can excel: winning the games they should win. For this franchise, that is no small feat. In fact, it’s something akin to a miracle. It’s the very reason I’m so happy right now (though you’d never know it after reading this column). Warriors fans may whine and bicker about individual players, but watching this team win games and climb the standings is more satisfying than we ever could have imagined, and one can do a lot of imagining in 12 years.
The first big test of the season comes on the road this Saturday against the Clippers, where the surviving fans of both teams will find out just how good their surprise contenders really are. Who would have guessed that the biggest divisional battle of the early season would pit the Golden State Warriors against the Los Angeles Clippers? My prediction: it will be a great game, and very few people will watch. Here’s hoping FOX doesn’t cancel it at halftime.