Golden State Worriers

You Talk About Mark Jackson...

2011-06-10T17:26:00.000-07:00

So what do we know about Mark Jackson, other than that he knows how to butter up a 'cob and sweet-talk a Guber?

He probably won't get as mad as Nellie would about five-second back to the basket violations.

He was a damn fine player in his day, a kind of Jason Kidd without the rebounds, handed out the third-most assists in NBA history, and is generally acknowledged to have been a totally awesome floor impresario to boot. It's always a little bit fatuous to try to infer a potential coach's philosophy and his favored strategies and tactics from his playing days—baseball fans will immediately think of Joe Morgan, whose huffy, wrong normativeness stands in stark contrast to his transcendent results on the diamond—but I, at least, feel slightly if irrationally comforted knowing that Jackson was a pass-first guy.

And, uh...hmm...that's basically all I got. But as Hayes mentioned to me over dinner last night, we have hundreds of hours of footage of Jackson grunting out opinions from which to form impressionistic worries (hey, it's what we do here).

On ESPN and ABC, Jackson always struck me as primarily concerned with coming off as very loud and very certain. As I recall, he especially enjoys saying the phrase, "The game of basketball." He generally talks tough and takes the position of precedented old-school orthodoxy that doesn't really make anyone think. He's not afraid to say what he thinks, of course, but his comments are never really robustly contrarian or particularly well formulated, and his phraseology leaves a lot to be desired. With all this said, his early comments as Warriors head coach are nothing particularly inspiring, either. Am I reading too much into the light-hearted riffs of a color commentator?

This reliable traditionalism made him a fine foil for the shrewish Stan Van Gundy and his progressive twitterings, but it remains to be seen how it works in the locker room and in the huddle. I know I get rankled by the platitudinous boss, but professional sports, like AA meetings, are where slogans are at their strongest. Professional comity notwithstanding, and assuming the Warriors don't trade Ellis, I can for some reason just taste the impending rancor between Jackson and Ellis, possibly stemming from a latent and complex ontological disagreement about the point guard position.

At three years (and $6,000,000), we'll have plenty of opportunities to worry over his decisions. I know nothing about Mike Malone, but he was valued and valuable defensive guru in both Cleveland and New Orleans, a man in the mold of Tom Thibodeau, and may in the end be more important to lasting Golden State success than Jackson ever is. At the very least, we should be thankful that the Warriors didn't give the head coaching job to Mike Breen. Woof.

Lacob's Jabber

2011-03-06T23:37:00.000-08:00

There's lots to talk about in Oaktown. In the last several days, the good guys debuted their latest no-D gunnin' swingman, gave a $54 million man's starting lineup spot to a rookie, and faced two of the other eight NBA originals, losing to both Celts and Sixers in that torturous fashion that exemplifies dem Dubs on the road. There's plenty of basketball-related business that we'd like to discuss. But we can't get to that stuff just yet, because the Warriors' new owner simply refuses to shut up.

We Worriers were heartened by the fact that Joe Lacob attended the Sloan MIT Sports Analytics Conference over the weekend, a stat-nerd summit that the Warriors eschewed last year. We were somewhat less heartened by the only news he made there, claiming that bloggers "are not real fans, because they don't have season tickets" (though to be fair, the context was and remains murky). And we were downright, well, worried by Lacob's recent interview with Tim Kawakami. The whole piece is worth reading in a "buckle your seatbelts" sort of way, but these are the five takeaways that troubled us the most:

1) Joe Lacob's math is fuzzy. He makes the de rigueur reference to "$20 million in expiring contracts"; when Kawakami currently points out that said expirings won't actually lead to much flexibility in practice, Lacob sort of waves his hands, saying, "we'll be well under the cap." The Dubs have $49.1 million in salary commitments for next season, an average figure. The cap, which stands at $58 million this year, won't be anywhere near that high once the owners finish savaging the players this summer. As such, Lacob's claim is -- let's put this politely -- unconvincing.

2) Joe Lacob seems to think 2nd-round picks are awesome. If the Brandan Wright dump didn't already make it clear, Lacob has a vicious case of Landry Fields Syndrome: "We've got good flexibility as far as free agents go, we've got a no. 1 draft pick and a no. 2 draft pick coming up and we think we can improve the team." Setting aside the facts that the Warriors don't have much flexibility and that every NBA team is given a no. 1 and no. 2 pick every season, the fact that Lacob regards the newly-won 2nd-round pick as an asset worth mentioning is troubling. What happens seven months from now, when the Warriors' second-rounder gets cut in camp, as half of all such picks do?

3) Joe Lacob thinks fans will still buy the "Cohan is cheap" routine. "Unlike the previous regime, we're prepared to spend money. Unlike the previous regime, we're willing to make big moves." Either Lacob thinks the fanbase has forgotten about the hundreds of millions of dollars given to Baron, J-Rich, Dunleavy, Murphy, Foyle, Monta, Maggette, Biedrins and Jack, or he has no understanding of the recent history of this team. We leave it to the reader to decide which possibility is scarier.

4) Joe Lacob thinks Gerald Wallace wouldn't have helped the Warriors. "We could've gotten Gerald Wallace -- he's not somebody we thought would make us better. I really believe that. He doesn't fit for us. He's a good defensive player, rebounder, certain things that do fit, certain things that don't." You have to give Lacob points for accuracy here -- a good defender and rebounder absolutely wouldn't fit on the current Warriors roster. Take that weird crap somewhere else, Gerald!

5) Joe Lacob thinks Antawn Jamison would've helped the Warriors. Lacob alludes to a deadline trade the Warriors were willing to make that fell through: "...we were acquiring significant starting-level talent who for us would've been on the bench and given us tremendous depth." The Warriors were buzzing around one and only one player when the deadline hit, and that was our old pal Antawn, a guy who certainly won't freak you out by rebounding or playing D. The discussed deal involved Troy Murphy's contract. In other words, the Warriors' braintrust was willing to take on '11-'12 salary to make a playoff push, but the guy they thought would put them over the hump was yet another ineffective volume scorer.

Lacob seems to have learned the wrong lessons from the Cohan Era. Chris Cohan wasn't despised because he never granted interviews or because he didn't spend enough money; Chris Cohan was despised because he led a basketball outfit that had no idea what it was doing. The problem was never that Cohan didn't want to win... any profit-minded owner would crave the extra revenue that playoff appearances provide. The problem was that Cohan had no idea how to win.

It's early yet, but thus far in the Lacob Era, the Warriors have suffered from the same malady. They have pissed away useful trade chips for no particular reason; they haven't bothered to fish for upside with their lowest couple roster spots; they have overvalued scoring, and undervalued everything else; most critically, they have shown no awareness of the workings of the typical NBA success cycle. And if Joe Lacob can't rid the front office of these blind spots and misconceptions -- if he can't even rid himself of these blind spots and misconceptions -- he will also become a pariah, no matter how accessible he makes himself.

Thornton?! Wild! Er...

2011-03-04T10:22:00.000-08:00

The signing of Al Thornton, coming immediately on the heels of his being bought out by Washington, has been a polarizing one in the wilds of Warrior Nation. Two types of reaction have predominated:

1) "Al Thornton? Nice! He's a former lottery pick, and the dude can score. We just got an NBA starter for nothing. Great signing."

2) "Al Thornton? Gross! All he can do is score, and he can't even do that well. Why grab this clown when you can go for real upside in the D-League? Shit signing."

We Worriers place ourselves unequivocally in the latter camp. Thornton is an ineffective player, and at age 27, he's not likely to become effective all of a sudden; another offense-first player ain't exactly what the doctor ordered; a gamble on a D-Leaguer would've made far more sense. This was a poor signing.

However, comparisons to the pickups of the Azubuikes and Reggies of the world are premature, for one simple reason: those guys were brought in to play, at moments where the Warriors badly needed someone to swoop right into the rotation. In this situation, the guy Thornton will be backing up is fourth in the NBA in minutes played. The starter at the other position Thornton could conceivably fill leads the NBA in minutes played. And the main backup to those two positions is playing the best basketball of any Warrior. If you're worried about Al Thornton coming in and playing a lot of low-quality minutes, you can stop worrying... there's no room at this inn. From the looks of it, he was acquired for emergency purposes only.

That doesn't make it a defensible signing. The shiniest D-Leaguer on the tree still would've been a better choice, and Lord knows if Matt Steinmetz's theory is correct -- that the front office sees Thornton as Reggie's replacement for next season -- we'll cry bloody murder as loudly as anyone. But in all likelihood, Al Thornton won't play 150 minutes in a Warrior uniform. Unless and until he does, his acquisition is better described as "pointless" than "disastrous".

Golden Stats, 3/01/11

2011-03-01T00:04:00.000-08:00

The Warriors have opened the season's second "half" with three straight losses, the last to a Minnesota Timberwolves team that is comprised of, well, Minnesota Timberwolves. The trade deadline has come and gone, leaving Oakland one young 'un lighter and one blooper heavier. Hope, in its many-splendored forms, has been extinguished from the hearts of all but the most crazed Dubs fans, and there's nothing left to do but take a peek at what's left in this grim cupboard. Line up, Warriors: you're getting inspected, numbers-style.

Last season, we Worriers experimented with a statistical amalgam we called SCORE. We've put that bad boy on ice, partly because BP's WARP, a tentpole metric, has not yet been published for this season, and partly because statistical amalgams are for fucking babies. This year, we're busting out a fat chart. This chart will feature

- John Hollinger's famously flawed and nevertheless useful PER;

- Justin Kubatko's readily available and plentifully plausible Win Shares per 48 minutes;

- and net overall unadjusted ratings and two-year adjusted plus-minus from Aaron Barzilai.

Without further ado: said chart! Above-average numbers are in green, below-average in red.

An alphabetical approach leads us to the recently re-signed Jeff Adrien! The beefy rook fares pretty well here, but caveats are warranted: the Dubs' improved play in his limited minutes is due to extremely efficient team offense, something that probably doesn't have much to do with Adrien (9.8 points per 36, .470 TS%). Lou Amundson, while almost surely the better player, has fared worse than Adrien thus far, with an even more frightful TS% and free throw shooting that is actually sub-Biedrins. Charlie Bell's good plus-minus showings are due to sample-size noise and his healthier Bucks work of yesteryear, respectively; the production-based stats tell the real story here, and the story is that the dude's done.

Production-based stats do not tell the whole story of Andris Biedrins, who looks useful (albeit less so than he used to) by PER and WP48. The Dubs have been significantly worse on both offense and defense with Goose in the game. We have a soft spot for him, but at this point even we can't deny it: there's something rotten in Latvia. The story is similar for the other longest-tenured Warrior; Monta Ellis has produced laudable individual numbers, but greatly hurt the team's chances in the process. (The glass-half-full take on 'Ta is that he's not hurting the offense, as he did a season ago. He's just hurting the defense... very, very badly.)

We may notice that we skipped someone, and it's because Ol' Babyface has earned his very own paragraph! Stephen Curry, we warmed to you slower than most, but it's official: you are the best player on the Warriors, and one of the roster's two unalloyed positives. Your passing numbers, though still poor, don't stop the offense from soaring when you take the floor, and your defense, though still really poor, isn't bad enough to stop you from being a big asset, 21st-in-the-league-in-APM-as-of-this-writing big. We're still not sure that you can lead a team to the playoffs, but we'd rather see you try it than anyone else in Oakland. Good job, Junior.

Acie Law gets scapegoated for losses more often than he should, but he certainly hasn't done much to demonstrate he's a worthy NBA rotation guy. David Lee's been an offensive asset, as his passing has made up for his weaker scoring... he's been every bit the defensive nightmare we warned about, though, and does not rate as a winnin' dude. Worth eighty million, he ain't. Jeremy Lin is Lee's opposite, both financially and basketball-wise: he's brought it on D (4.7 steals and 1.7 blocks per 36) and looked lost offensively (a .389 TS% that rates among the league's five lowest). His minutes have been too scant for his plus-minus to mean anything, and he's probably in over his head. At this point, though, there'd be no real cost in pleasing the Oracle faithful and giving him Law's backup PG job to close out the year.

Had we been more on the ball in the first half of the season, we'd have devoted a column to the quiet resurgence of Vladimir Radmanovic. The Hairy One has played smart, active basketball, and surely the fact that his contract is expiring is a coincidence. Ekpe Udoh has some of the weirdest plus-minus results in the league this season: his production has been nothing short of unacceptable (7.7 points and 6.4 boards per 36, .485 TS%), and yet both the offense and defense have thrived when he's played. His energy has surely had some effect, but this disparity can't last forever... if he can't boost his numbers, he can't boost the team long-term. Reggie Williams, who looked quite pedestrian when last we checked, has upped his production up to the fairly lofty levels he reached last year. He's done yeoman's work with the second unit, and while his defense still stinks, he's a useful piece. That negative adjusted plus-minus is rising by the week.

You know what's interesting about Dorell Wright? Compare his numbers to those of the average starting NBA small forward.

Creepy, right? We're not saying Dorell is average, though... he scores a tiny bit more often and a tiny bit more efficiently than your average three, and grabs a few more rebounds and a few more dimes and a few more steals. These little things add up to make the guy a solidly above-average small forward.

Adjusted plus-minus is a lot more effusive than that: Dorell currently has the tenth-highest APM in all of basketball. We're frankly not sure where that metric's getting that from. Neither this year's Warriors nor last year's Heat profited all that much from Dorell Wright's presence, and he only played 73 minutes two seasons ago; to the regression-ignorant eye, Dorell doesn't look like any sort of game-changer. We'll need to see more until we believe the guy is that good. He's good, though. Like Curry, he helps the cause.

These Warriors of ours have never seemed wise to the utility of statistical analysis... we can't expect them to get numbers-savvy in a heartbeat. They could help themselves a lot by learning the importance of two simple numbers.

#1 and #30 are good. And if you want to start winning, you should start with them.

Wright To Remain Silenced

2011-02-22T23:24:00.000-08:00

The Dubs' slaughter at the cold, unfeeling hands of the Green Machine was not actually the worst news coming out of Oakland today: the Warriors stand poised to trade Brandan Wright and Dan Gadzuric to the Nets for Troy Murphy and a second-round draft pick. The deal may be announced as-is on Wednesday, or may get incorporated into a larger deal that lands Devin Harris in Dallas or Portland. The Warriors are expected to buy Murphy out shortly thereafter, so at least Dubs fans will be spared a second act of one of the league's droopiest and least effective players. But whatever happens with Murphy, and even if the trade fails to happen, the message is clear: the Warriors' front office has shit in its collective head.

Imagine that your team drafted a power forward after his senior year of college, and that in the first 35 games of his career, he posted the following averages:

15.3 points on 11.6 points (.578 TS%), 8.5 rebounds, 1.0 assists, 1.3 turnovers, 2.0 blocks, 0.9 steals, 3.7 fouls, in 36.0 minutes

Moderately frequent and extremely efficient scoring, adequate rebounding, high block-shot rate, low turnover rate. This guy isn't perfect -- he's a bit of a black hole, and his defense is spotty -- but at 23, he's already playing effective, winning basketball overall. You're probably feeling pretty damn good about your new power forward, right?

Well, news flash, motherfucker: your new power forward is Brandan Wright. He's played 35 games' worth of minutes at 36 per, and has compiled those exact numbers. He is 23 years old.

The Golden State Warriors think that guy's worth less than a second-round pick. Which is to say that they think Brandan Wright's worth less than two million dollars in cash. Because, make no mistake, second-round picks are purchasable commodities (five have been sold in the last two drafts alone), and the prices rarely even get that high. If Joe Lacob loves draft picks as much as he claims, he can offer cash for some any time he likes. He's chosen not to do that. Instead, he's chosen to trade an above-average NBA power forward for a commodity that has a greater than 50% chance of being completely worthless.

Any franchise that thinks that David Lee is worth eighty million dollars but that Brandan Wright isn't worth a second-round pick has absolutely no idea what it's doing. If this is life under Joe Lacob, then life stinks. At least Cohan had the decency to drop out of sight when he started managing the team into the gutter.

A year ago, the Warriors had nine promising players who were 25 or younger. That number is now down to four.

A new day is not dawning in Alameda County. God help us all.

At The Break: An Overview

2011-02-18T12:56:00.001-08:00

Whoops! Looks like we tuned out for 37 games. Don't fret, Worrier Nation -- reputable blogs do this kind of thing all the time.

When last we spoke, the Warriors were 8-10 and flailing. They lost eight of their next nine, but have since gone 17-11, a modest achievement that nevertheless demolishes anything they've done since the Beard disappeared. The Dubs have already matched their '09-'10 win total, something only two other teams (dem Nets and dem Sixers) can claim. Here at the dawn of All-Star weekend, they stand above an honest-to-God NBA team (dem Rockets) in the standings. The 9-18 start and the monstrosity that was 1/28/11 have faded in the thrill of six straight wins over plus-.500 teams. The Warriors are starting to rise, and the fanbase is starting to buzz. Is there reason for all the excitement in Oakland? Let's take a closer look.

When you analyze the season to date, the first impression you get is a sadly familiar one:

1) The Warriors Have Been Bad At Basketball

Any clear-eyed analysis has to start here... while the Warriors haven't been a terrible NBA team, they've been a solidly poor one. They have the 18th-best record in the league but just the 21st-best point differential. And the team's recent competitiveness has come during a part of the schedule that has been heavy on home games and -- something that hasn't gotten enough attention -- very light on back-to-backs. When a team gets a string of rested games in its building, it should win some games.

After a road-heavy start to the season, the Dubs have now played as many home games as any team in basketball. The Dubs have actually been healthier than the average outfit... the Curry/Monta/Wright/Lee/Biedrins lineup has started 33 games, tied for fifth-highest among NBA quintets. And for all that, the team is still decidedly below average. At their pre-Christmas nadir, the Warriors placed 22nd in Basketball Reference's adjusted rankings. The recent flurry has skyrocketed them all the way to, well, 21st. This has not been a good basketball team. And why not? The two-pronged answer is also sadly familiar.

2) The Warriors Have Been Clueless On The Road

The most consistent difference between good teams and bad teams is an ability to compete on the road; the Dubs have lost 18 of 25 outside of Oakland, and have gotten outscored by almost seven points per road contest. If you play sub-Wizards-level basketball in half your games, you're going to have a tough time. But a more relevant question than when the Warriors tend to lose is how they tend to lose. To that point...

3) The Warriors Have Been Horrible Defensively

While there are some legitimate concerns about this team's offense -- Monta's tunnel vision, Curry's turnovers, Biedrins's timidity -- it's worth keeping some perspective. The Golden State offense is the 11th-most efficient in the league. What the Warriors do offensively works more often than it doesn't. If the Warriors played defense as well as they executed on offense, they'd be on pace for the fifth seed in a hyper-competitive Western Conference.

Sadly, the Dubs don't play defense as well as they execute on offense. The Dubs, to paraphrase Bart Scott, can't stop a nosebleed. Their 111.0 defensive effiency rating is the 28th-"best" mark in the NBA. The Warriors' defense has been every bit as bad this season as it was last season. You simply can not compete for a playoff spot if you have one of the three most porous defenses in the league.

"This talking point is out of date, you friggin' turkey," some of you are saying. "Sure, the Warriors' D stunk for awhile, but they're starting to figure things out." Is this true? Is there reason to think that the Warriors' defense is improving?

4) There Is Some Reason To Think That The Warriors' Defense Is Improving

A quick-and-dirty way to gauge how well your team's D-ing up? Compare their opponents' overall offensive efficiency to their offensive efficiencies in their games against your team. For instance, the Jazz have an offensive efficiency of 108.5 so far this season. On Wednesday night, their offensive efficiency was just 107.2, meaning the Dubs held them a bit below par (-1.3, to be exact).

So let's split the Warriors' season into five eleven-game sections and see how their defense has fared by this method. (Negative numbers are good, here.)

Games 1-11: -0.05 differential

Games 12-22: +7.96 differential

Games 23-33: +3.66 differential

Games 34-44: +6.74 differential

Games 45-55: +2.15 differential

So the most recent fifth of the Warriors' season has been its second-best on a defensive level. And if you slice things a bit more finely and only look at the Warriors' last nine games (throwing out the lone Hornets loss and the Captain Jack Attack), you get a defensive efficiency differential of -0.62. In short, the Warriors have been playing some better defense lately. However.

5) There Is Not Much Reason To Think That The Warriors' Defense Is Improving

The Warriors' defensive performance over the past nine games has been downright solid... their defensive performance for the season's first eleven games of the season was rock-solid as well. In between, however, they played 35 games' worth of some of the worst defense you'll ever see. And while it's tempting to think that a light has just come on, when you look at the last nine games closely, it's hard to shake the feeling that this team has actually plugged its leaks.

Game 47 (-18.0): the Dubs beat the Jazz 96-81, holding Utah miles below their season-long offensive efficiency. This game, however, came with a monstrous caveat: no Deron Williams. That doesn't mean you just throw the game out... the Jazz underperformed even against their usual non-Deron standards. But this was more or less a gimme.

Game 48 (+5.2): a 100-94 Warriors win obscured the fact that they actually played some pretty weak defense here. The Bucks were significantly more efficient than usual, this despite a woeful 6-for-23 performance behind the three-point line. The Dubs' offense carried the day, and that's just fine. But this was not a successful defensive showing.

Game 49 (-6.6): the Dubs stunned the Bulls, thanks in large part to one of the worst games of Derrick Rose's career. The Bulls were 8-for-25 from three, below their usual standards... still, this was a strong defensive effort, maybe the Warriors' finest of the season.

Game 50 (+5.1): the Suns were even more efficient than usual in dismantling the Warriors in Oakland. They shot a bit better from three than usual... still, there's no way to spin this one as decent defense.

Game 51 (+4.6): a wild shootout in which nobody really played much D, though both teams' lights-out three-point shooting inflated the numbers a tad. Great win, bad defense.

Game 52 (+8.5): the Warriors get slaughtered in Phoenix, in a game that saw less than 27 minutes from Steve Nash. The Dubs' defensive grade for this one: a big fat F.

Game 53 (-3.3): the Dubs outlast the Thunder in a thriller this Worrier caught live, and defense was very much a factor here... the Warriors played a "We Believe"-style deflection-heavy defense to perfection. A genuinely good defensive performance.

Game 54 (+0.2): you'd think holding the Hornets under 90 would be evidence of stout D, but in fact New Orleans actually slightly outperformed their season-long offensive efficiency, despite sinking only three treys all night and lacking Emeka Okafor. Not really a bad defensive performance from the Dubs, but you'd be hard-pressed to call it good.

Game 55 (-1.3): the Dubs kept the Jazz a bit under their usual standards, in a rare credible defensive performance on the road. Still and all, even beyond the obvious chaos in Utah, the Jazz were just 3-of-14 from downtown. If they'd hit two more threes (still keeping them well south of their usual 3P%), the Dubs would've been easily below par here.

In these nine games, the Dubs played good defense three times, decent defense twice and downright bad defense four times. (Again, we're accounting for the quality of their opponents: it's not that the Suns and Nuggets scored well, it's that they scored even better than usual.) If you had to give the Dubs a letter grade for their defensive work here, it'd come out to maybe a B-minus. That certainly ain't bad, and you could skate by with it if your offense was clicking... but you'd like to see something better than a B-minus with cherry-picking this extreme. Frankly, the Dubs defended better to start the season than they have in the last couple weeks, and that sure didn't last.

It's been a fairly fun season to date (as long as you ignore the actual Western Conference standings), and maybe the Warriors will play winning basketball to close this bad boy out. But seeing as the Dubs play twelve of their next seventeen on the road, and that their opponents aren't likely to underperform from long-distance to the degree they have been of late, we're betting otherwise. The official Worrier prediction: an 11-16 close to the year, a final record of 37-45, and a lot of sheepishness over the optimism this season occasionally engendered. This is a below-average and badly built basketball team, and "hey, we don't outright suck anymore" is a mantra that will lose its charm real damn quick.

Sins of the Starters

2010-12-02T12:51:00.000-08:00

So. Since we last spoke, the Dubs have lost semi-competitive games in Houston and Memphis, snapped their losing streak with a solid performance in Minnesota, and kick-started a new losing streak with a stinker at home against the Spurs. For all the changes in the offseason, these seem a lot like the same old Warriors: an offense that's not as good as it looks, a defense that's every bit as bad as it looks, and team that's going nowhere, and going there rather quickly.

There is still a fairly compelling glass-half-full view. The Dubs have solidly outscored their opponents when David Lee has been on the floor... more to the point, the results of the Curry-Ellis-Wright-Lee-Biedrins quintet have been rather spectacular. In the 138 minutes that the starting lineup has played together, they've outscored their opponents by a mind-boggling 83 points, the equivalent of winning three games by an average score of 121-92. By Basketball Value's adjusted plus-minus (the usual sample-size caveats apply), the Warriors' quintet actually ranks as the fifth-most effective unit in the league, and the second-most effective starting lineup in the league, behind only the Miami variant that features Big Z at the five. That dog'll hunt.

Unfortunately, this half-full glass has a couple cracks in it. For one thing, the starting lineup's stellar results are predicated partly on an offensive excellence that may be sustainable, but partly on a defensive brilliance that isn't. More to the point, however, the Warriors starters create negative externalities that make life even harder for the overmatched backups that succeed them. The starters hurt the team in ways that elude even the most sophisticated plus-minus systems.

As you may have heard, these Warriors have a whistling problem, in that they commit a ton of fouls and draw very few. As a result, opponents shoot 10.3 more free throws a game than they do, and score 9.3 more points at the line per game than they do. These numbers are almost without precedent... only the '92-'93 Mavs, who lost 71 games, faced a bigger nightly free-throw disparity. That team both took and allowed many more free throws than these Dubs, so on a percentage basis, the current Warriors fare worse on this front than any team in the history of the NBA.

Who's to blame for this? A ton of people, really. Keith Smart and the coaching staff deserve a massive amount of blame, as does Nellie for creating this completely apathetic defensive culture in the first place. On the offensive front, Larry Riley's hands aren't entirely clean... while jettisoning Corey Maggette was a fine move, replacing him with a low-contact scorer like Lee has proven costly.

But on a game-by-game basis, the most straightforward culprit is simple: it's the starting lineup. Let's compare each starter to the average NBA regular (25+ minutes per game) at their respective positions.

Stephen Curry: 5.0 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, 4.6 fouls per 40 minutes

Average NBA PG: 4.7 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, 3.0 fouls per 40 minutes

Monta Ellis: 6.1 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, 3.0 fouls per 40 minutes

Average NBA SG: 4.8 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, 2.7 fouls per 40 minutes

Dorell Wright: 2.6 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, 2.5 fouls per 40 minutes

Average NBA SF: 4.4 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, 3.0 fouls per 40 minutes

David Lee: 4.5 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, 2.3 fouls per 40 minutes

Average NBA PF: 4.9 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, 3.5 fouls per 40 minutes

Andris Biedrins: 1.0 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, 5.3 fouls per 40 minutes

Average NBA C: 4.8 free throw attempts per 40 minutes, 3.8 fouls per 40 minutes

The biggest culprits here are Curry and Biedrins. Curry averages 3.9 fouls per game, the third-highest total in the league for any player, big or small. No guard has committed that many nightly fouls in over twenty years. Biedrins, like Curry, fouls more often on a per-minute basis than any other starter at his position; what's worse, he gets to the line less often than any other center. Dorell doesn't help, either, as his trips to the line are also abnormally rare. Monta and Lee are mildly positive contributors here, but you'd like to see your big-scoring stars rate a little better than that.

So the starters are foul-happy and bad at getting to the line. This is a big flaw -- maybe the defining flaw -- of the unit, and it's reflected in their plus-minus numbers. What isn't reflected is that when the starters come out, the backups inherit an unfavorable game environment, in which any foul is very likely to result in free throws. When Curry, Biedrins et al are done, they're not likely to be in the penalty, and their opponents are very likely to be in the penalty. As such, the second unit loses at an even faster clip than they should on the merits.

Every Biedrins stab at a driving guard, every Curry slap at a guy on the perimeter, every Monta gamble at midcourt... enough of these lazy, thoughtless plays can sink a season. The Warriors' bench is bad enough without a consistent uphill battle on the fouls front. The starting lineup is pretty good, but they need to better about this. Whistles may tell the story of this season.

The Bench

2010-11-23T16:45:00.000-08:00

That 6-2 start was mighty nice, but if the last six games haven't taken the wind out of your sails, your boating license oughtta be revoked. Since David Lee went down with a case of tooth elbow, the Warriors have

- gotten gored by the Bulls in an understandable but ugly road-weary blowout;

- been outscrapped by Milwaukee in the worst Golden State offensive performance in years;

- barely survived a middling Pistons team after a complete second-half collapse;

- been lit up by the Knicks in front of the home faithful;

- gotten stomped by a Lakers team that never even considered leaving cruise control, and

- gone cold in Denver, in another excusable loss that was uglier than it had to be.

Simply put, dem Dubs have been playing some wretched, wretched basketball. The offense is tied for 19th in the league in efficiency; the defense, which had shown early signs of legitimacy, now ranks 26th. The team's -4.7 point differential is significantly worse than last year's. Yes, they're still .500. But this may very well be the least impressive 7-7 team in league history. And given the rough road they have to travel over the next four weeks -- after the holiday, their list of opponents reads "Spurs-Suns-Thunder-Mavs-Spurs-Heat-Jazz" -- the Warriors probably won't be .500 for long.

Others will tell you that better days are coming -- that the return of David Lee will make a huge difference (possible, though he never seemed to help the Knicks' fortunes to any massive degree), that the return of Louis Amundson will help a bit (certainly so), that the schedule will get easier (indeed it will), that "these guys just need time to gel" (possible but unfounded). We're not here to tell you that things won't get better. But we are interested in examining why they've gotten so bad. The nightly disparity in free throws is a big reason. Another is the bench.

Holy crap, this bench is horrible. We'll take an alphabetical stroll through the wreckage in a moment, but if you want a shorthand explanation of how bad things have gotten: nineteen NBA players have a 42.3 TS% or worse this season. Five of those nineteen players are in the Warriors' second unit. This is the most bricktastic bench in basketball, and much like many of their shots, the competition ain't close.

Jeff Adrien
'10-'11 Per 36: 8.4 PTS on 8.8 shots (.419 TS%), 11.6 REB, 2.0 AST, 1.2 TO, 1.2 STL, 1.2 BLK, 4.0 PF

'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: +30.72

That net plus-minus ain't a misprint... it's a testament to the risks of tiny sample sizes, but it may also suggest that this banger can play some D. The Dubs have rebounded and defended extremely well with Adrien on the floor, and his numbers suggest that he's been a big part of the reason why. The team's improved offensive fortunes with him on the floor are less convincing... he's a beast on the offensive glass and has passed capably, but a .419 TS% is nobody's idea of a good time. Still and all, Adrien may be the one second-unit Warriors who's exceeded expectations to date. If he keeps going at this clip, he'll be able to forge a nice little career for himself, bricks and all.

Charlie Bell
'09-'10 Per 36: 10.3 PTS on 9.9 shots (.486 TS%), 2.9 REB, 2.3 AST, 1.2 TO, 0.9 STL, 0.3 BLK, 3.0 PF
'10-'11 Per 36: 6.6 PTS on 9.9 shots (.322 TS%), 3.7 REB, 4.1 AST, 2.1 TO, 0.8 STL, 0.0 BLK, 2.5 PF

'09-'10 Net Plus/Minus: -0.04
'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: +5.02

Bell is the only bench player besides Adrien who can boast a positive net plus-minus on the season to date, thanks solely to the defensive end of the floor. That may not be a fluke, either... Bell's lost a step, but the idea that he is outdefending Curry and/or Monta doesn't sound outlandish. What does sound outlandish? A FUCKING .322 TRUE SHOOTING PERCENTAGE. We're talking about a total of 24 shots from the field (17 missed) and two free throws (both missed), so maybe Charlie can pull these numbers up a tad. But he's four years past his last non-horrible offensive season, and he's only getting slower. We said it when the Dubs acquired him, and we'll say it again: if this guy's in your rotation, something has gone horribly wrong.

Rodney Carney
'09-'10 Per 36: 13.4 PTS on 11.8 shots (.515 TS%), 5.8 REB, 1.6 AST, 0.9 TO, 1.1 STL, 0.8 BLK, 3.3 PF
'10-'11 Per 36: 14.9 PTS on 12.1 shots (.538 TS%), 4.5 REB, 1.6 AST, 2.0 TO, 1.3 STL, 0.4 BLK, 3.6 PF

'09-'10 Net Plus/Minus: -0.69
'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: -10.65

Trend-bucker! Rodney's the one supporting Warrior that is scoring more often and more accurately from the field than he did last season... indeed, he's hovering right around the league average in both respects, a fine showing for a bench piece. Where Carney is disappointing is, well, everywhere else, as the declines in his rebounding, passing and shot-blocking totals are even starker when you remember that his '09-'10 numbers were achieved at a slow Philadelphian pace. Still, Carney's ugly net plus-minus showing is roughly par for the course on this benighted bench, and the on-court/off-court disparity is entirely offensive, suggesting that it's more a function of his not getting to play with the good players as much as anything else. Carney has been... okayish. Around here, that's pretty damn special.

Dan Gadzuric
'09-'10 Per 36: 10.1 PTS on 10.2 shots (.440 TS%), 10.5 REB, 1.4 AST, 1.7 TO, 1.0 STL, 1.5 BLK, 7.2 PF
'10-'11 Per 36: 9.0 PTS on 10.6 shots (.390 TS%), 12.0 REB, 0.9 AST, 1.8 TO, 1.7 STL, 1.8 BLK, 6.5 PF

'09-'10 Net Plus/Minus: +5.80
'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: -15.43

Oy. Nice guy, plays hard, knows his role, yadda yadda yadda... it's downright scary when Gadzuric has the ball in his hands. The Bucks had some freaky-good defensive showings with him on the floor, but that magic has not followed him to Oakland; there's nothing in the numbers to suggest that Gadzuric's a big help on that end. As with so many of these guys, Gadzuric's passing numbers (no great shakes to begin with) have taken a distinct turn for the worse. The reason why isn't exactly mysterious: when nobody on the floor can score, you're a lot more likely to rack up a turnover than an assist.

Jeremy Lin
'10-'11 Per 36: 9.3 PTS on 9.7 shots (.408 TS%), 3.0 REB, 5.1 AST, 3.0 TO, 5.5 STL, 1.7 BLK, 3.8 PF

'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: -5.75

Where to begin with Jeremy Lin...

...let's start on defense, where Lin is posting eye-popping video-game numbers of 5.5 steals and 1.7 blocks per 36. Those numbers won't hold up with more playing time, of course, and they come with a high cost in terms of fouls, but Lin does deserve some defensive credit: the Dubs profit from his presence on that end.

On the other end, there's really no nice way to say it: thus far, Lin's offensive numbers are not those of an NBA-caliber player. Far too many misses (especially given how rarely he shoots), too many turnovers, only two offensive rebounds in 85 minutes. Lin's numbers could improve, and I'd take him over Charlie Bell in a heartbeat. But I wouldn't take Charlie Bell if I wanted to compete, and I probably wouldn't take Jeremy Lin, either.

Vladimir Radmanovic
'09-'10 Per 36: 10.3 PTS on 11.0 shots (.449 TS%), 7.2 REB, 1.8 AST, 1.8 TO, 1.2 STL, 0.3 BLK, 3.9 PF
'10-'11 Per 36: 10.7 PTS on 12.1 shots (.422 TS%), 5.9 REB, 3.7 AST, 1.7 TO, 1.3 STL, 1.3 BLK, 6.1 PF

'09-'10 Net Plus/Minus: -4.58
'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: -11.17

Same shit, different day. Vlad's doing a few things differently -- passing better and blocking more shots, rebounding worse, fouling more -- but the overall picture remains the same, a PER in the single digits and an inexplicable place in a team's rotation. Vlad's poor plus-minus is especially damning, as he's gotten to play with the first unit more than most. Vlad's initially fooled many a coach over the years, but the good ones come to realize how useless he is... let's hope Keith Smart can do the same.

Reggie Williams
'09-'10 Per 36: 16.8 PTS on 13.0 shots (.588 TS%), 5.1 REB, 3.0 AST, 1.3 TO, 1.0 STL, 0.3 BLK, 2.3 PF
'10-'11 Per 36: 15.2 PTS on 12.6 shots (.539 TS%), 3.8 REB, 2.7 AST, 2.1 TO, 0.5 STL, 0.2 BLK, 3.6 PF

'09-'10 Net Plus/Minus: +0.43
'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: -19.84

The striking thing about the dip in Reggie's production is the lack of anything striking: there isn't a single category where he's dropped precipitously, and he's even slightly improved in a couple areas (getting to the line a bit more, shooting threes a bit more often). But if you score a bit less often and a bit less efficiently, and rebound a bit less, and pass a bit worse, and make even fewer defensive plays while fouling a bit more... well, you can go from "intriguing young hotshot" to "adequate bench piece" in a hurry. And of course, Reggie's plus-minus showing is striking, and for all the wrong reasons. For the second straight year, the Dubs have played extra-shitty defense with Reggie Williams on the floor, and he hasn't provided any evident offensive lift to counteract that.

Reggie is not as bad as that plus-minus showing suggests. That prism is unkinder to him than to anyone else, as he's the guy who's most often saddled with the task of making an offense out of these goofballs. It would take a special player to do that.

Unfortunately, after an eye-opening rookie campaign, Reggie Williams is doing nothing to make you think he's special. He's still a reasonably productive offensive player, but no better, and his defense is putrid. Most teams have a better sixth man than that. A number of teams have a better eighth man than that. Right now, Reggie Williams is part of the problem.

Brandan Wright
'08-'09 Per 36: 16.9 PTS on 12.9 shots (.570 TS%), 8.2 REB, 1.1 AST, 1.2 TO, 1.2 STL, 1.9 BLK, 3.9 PF
'10-'11 Per 36: 15.1 PTS on 12.6 shots (.545 TS%), 7.9 REB, 0.7 AST, 2.2 TO, 0.0 STL, 2.5 BLK, 5.0 PF

'08-'09 Net Plus/Minus: +0.77
'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: -2.60

And then there's this guy.

Brandan Wright, for the third of his three star-crossed NBA seasons, has outplayed pretty much everyone else on the Warriors bench. His numbers are the worst of his career, and they're still miles ahead of anything Vladimir Radmanovic or Rodney Carney has ever done. What's more, the team defense has taken a dramatic uptick whenever Wright's been on the floor. And yet all you'll hear from most Warriors fans is something to the effect of "show some fire, ya goofy bust!"

There's no use in getting upset about it at this point -- Brandan Wright will never get a sustained chance here, and injuries may prevent him from ever amounting to much of anything. But he's been pretty good, and a team with a supporting cast this bad would do well to give its most promising bench player a longer leash. Don Nelson shoved him aside, and Keith Smart's doing the same. A franchise that evaluates talent that badly will often have struggles, and benches, as bad as this.

Ten Games In: The Starters

2010-11-15T11:55:00.000-08:00

For the first time in several years, the Warriors have a clear-cut starting quintet. How are these five fellas doing? Let's examine that question by looking at their per-36 numbers and plus-minus results, again using '09-'10 numbers as a frame of reference. (Data comes courtesy of two of our faves, Basketball Reference and Basketball Value.)

Andris Biedrins

'09-'10 Per 36: 7.8 PTS on 6.5 shots (.561 TS%), 12.2 REB, 2.7 AST, 1.5 TO, 0.9 STL, 2.1 BLK, 5.5 PF

'10-'11 Per 36: 7.9 PTS on 8.0 shots (.474 TS%), 12.7 REB, 1.8 AST, 1.6 TO, 1.4 STL, 1.0 BLK, 4.9 PF

'09-'10 Net Plus/Minus: -5.67

'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: +12.44

To hear Fitz and Barnett tell it, Beans has come back from a wretched, injured season to regain his earlier high level of performance. The numbers tell a quite different story: this Andris Biedrins is basically last year's model, only with more misses and worse passing.

Now, part of the disconnect is that last year's Beans was a lot more productive than most people thought: an efficient-scoring rebound machine that passes well has its uses, timidity and defensive flaws notwithstanding. But Andris is still gunshy around the basket -- he's currently getting to the line one sixth as often as he did in '08-'09 -- and has had uncharacteristic trouble converting on the few occasions when he's been willing to shoot. His foul rate is not as comically high as last year's, but it's still far too high. Dude's not yet back to his old form, and not particularly close to it, either.

You'd be hard-pressed, however, to say that his issues have been hurting the team's chances thus far. Andris's plus-minus numbers have taken a sharp 180... to hear the early adjusted plus-minus results tell it, Andris now, as he often did in the Baron days, boasts the best on-court/off-court results of any Warrior. That Andris Biedrins is useful is undeniable. That he will reach his 2008 form again is an open question.

Stephen Curry

'09-'10 Per 36: 17.4 PTS on 14.2 shots (.568 TS%), 4.4 REB, 5.9 AST, 3.0 TO, 1.9 STL, 0.2 BLK, 3.1 PF

'10-'11 Per 36: 20.5 PTS on 16.9 shots (.547 TS%), 3.3 REB, 6.8 AST, 3.7 TO, 2.5 STL, 0.4 BLK, 3.7 PF

'09-'10 Net Plus/Minus: +2.03

'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: +10.93

In the scheme of things, the Warriors have to be delighted with this guy. Based on expectations, however, it's hard to see his season so far as anything other than a mild disappointment. Curry's scoring a bit more often than he did on the whole last season, but less often than he did once he got in gear in the season's second half. His scoring efficiency is down a bit, thanks largely to a dip in his three-point shooting; he's grabbing rebounds only 75% as often. His assists have taken an uptick, but the uptick in turnovers more than counteracts that... Curry's 1.82 assist/turnover ratio ranks 33rd amongst 44 eligible point guards. It's officially time to shelve the Steve Nash comparisons.

Still and all, Curry's a strong offensive player, and the Warriors' attack hums when he's in there. Defense is where the trouble lies. Steph's grabbing more steals than ever and has even blocked a couple extra shots, but he negates all that fun by committing 3.5 fouls a night. Stephen Curry is committing fouls more often than Emeka Okafor, Serge Ibaka and Samuel Dalembert. Stephen Curry is slapping the shit out of people.

If you take only one thing from this benighted blog of ours, let it be this: you can not compete for long if your guards are racking up whistles on the perimeter. Your quarterly allotment of fouls is best spent near the basket, where poor free-throw shooters are attempting high-leverage shots... drawing a whistle on a pick and roll behind the arc is a mistake and a waste. Thanks in large part to the foul-happiness of their point guard, the Warriors let their opponent reach the penalty early and often. That's not a sustainable formula for success, and let's hope that a player with Curry's intelligence can figure that out.

Monta Ellis

'09-'10 Per 36: 22.2 PTS on 19.1 shots (.517 TS%), 3.5 REB, 4.6 AST, 3.3 TO, 1.9 STL, 0.3 BLK, 2.6 PF

'10-'11 Per 36: 23.9 PTS on 17.7 shots (.584 TS%), 3.8 REB, 4.5 AST, 3.2 TO, 2.4 STL, 0.2 BLK, 2.7 PF

'09-'10 Net Plus/Minus: -11.52

'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: -6.69

No disappointments here -- Monta is posting a strong bounceback campaign, predicated largely on better shooting inside the arc. His passing numbers haven't improved any, but they're still a bit above average for a two guard. Of note: Monta's foul totals may look good compared to Curry's, but he's still fifth among NBA twos in fouls per game, and he'd also be well-served to pull back a tad.

Monta's plus-minus showings continue to be shockingly bad, and the defensive end is the reason why... the Warriors have defended a lot better with him on the bench. The sample size merits caution, but based on the numbers and the games, it's hard to shake the idea that Monta coasts at times defensively when his minutes are huge. A little more Reggie Williams may be in order here, to ensure that Monta's playing at full tilt on both ends when he's out there.

David Lee

'09-'10 Per 36: 19.6 PTS on 15.0 shots (.584 TS%), 11.3 REB, 3.5 AST, 2.3 TO, 1.0 STL, 0.5 BLK, 3.1 PF

'10-'11 Per 36: 14.8 PTS on 12.6 shots (.511 TS%), 11.7 REB, 2.9 AST, 2.9 TO, 1.2 STL, 0.3 BLK, 2.5 PF

'09-'10 Net Plus/Minus: -1.54

'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: +13.96

Lee's struggles to date have been well-documented... he seems to have lost a lot of his scoring efficiency to Monta in a locker-room card game, and his sharply improved passing numbers from last season haven't carried over thus far. Still, as with Biedrins, this is a guy who gets you 11-12 boards per 36 and passes willingly, and there's a lot of value in that. Defensively, Lee has been stinking up the joint, merely slowing the bleeding with some quick hands. If you've never seen an NBA team whose starting point guard averages more fouls and more blocked shots than its starting power forward... well, you have now.

There's some air in Lee's plus/minus numbers, as the Bulls game he missed was bound to be a fatigue-addled blowout with or without him. Still, the Warriors' offense has sung with him on the floor, and he may indeed help on that end more than he hurts on the other. Worth eighty million and Anthony Randolph? Jury's still out. Worth having? No question.

Dorell Wright

'09-'10 Per 36: 12.3 PTS on 10.1 shots (.567 TS%), 5.7 REB, 2.2 AST, 1.3 TO, 1.3 STL, 0.8 BLK, 2.3 PF

'10-'11 Per 36: 14.5 PTS on 12.6 shots (.539 TS%), 5.1 REB, 2.5 AST, 1.9 TO, 1.1 STL, 0.9 BLK, 2.0 PF

'09-'10 Net Plus/Minus: -0.90

'10-'11 Net Plus/Minus: +4.03

This guy is fun. And for all the talk of his breakout year, it's worth noting that Dorell is just doing what he always does, albeit in bigger minutes. Maybe he's been fluky-hot from behind the arc, but if history's any indication, he's also been fluky-cold inside of it. His rebounding rate has been in a gentle decline for years now, but he's still around league-average for the position... he passes better than your average three, and his defensive numbers are strong across the board.

Dorell's plus-minus numbers aren't nearly as good as you'd think, with a horrible night in Milwaukee doing him no favors. His on-court/off-court numbers aren't Monta-bad, but they lag far behind those of the other starters, and early adjustments paint him as an overall mixed bag at best. It will be interesting to see what the upcoming homestand does to his numbers.

Next time out, we look at the bench! (Sneak preview: the bench sucks!)

Ten Games In: The Team

2010-11-14T22:48:00.000-08:00

(Quick programming note: our decreased unemployment has made regular blogging a taller task. Going forward, we're not going to cover every single game. But we will be chiming in on dem Dubs every Monday and Thursday, in our traditional numbers-heavy style, and will single out the occasional game for the microscope. We hope you tune in and join us.)

So. On the one hand, the Warriors are 6-4, and (cue the desperate kind of accounting that crappy teams' fans are reduced to), if the season ended today, they'd nab the sixth seed in the Western Conference. On the other hand, their -1.9 point differential bespeaks a .400 team more than a .600 team. But on an unprecedented and terrifying third hand, their early schedule has been road-heavy and arduous, with one of the season's three big East coast swings already in the books. Maybe a -1.9 differential in these ten games ain't so bad, after all. Or maybe it ain't not so bad. How good are these guys, really?

Let's take a look at the team output thus far, using last year's wretched squad as a reference point. (Next time out, we'll take a look at the season's output on an individual level.)

'10-'11 Pace: 96.9 possessions per game (4th in the league)

'09-'10 Pace: 100.3 possessions per game (1st in the league)

The numbers above slightly understate the degree to which Keith Smart has slowed things down; the league as a whole is playing faster this season. (Which three teams are outrunning dem Dubs? Why, the Timberwolves, Knicks and Rockets, you silly goose!)

'10-'11 Offensive Efficiency: 104.7 points per 100 possessions (19th)

'09-'10 Offensive Efficiency: 108.2 points per 100 possessions (14th)

This year's offensive results lag a bit behind last year's. Given the assiness of the last two games, and that those games represent 20% of the Warrriors' output thus far, a poor showing here shouldn't be altogether surprising. Things get more interesting, however, when you break down the offense Four Factors-style...

'10-'11 Effective Field Goal Percentage: 49.3 (16th)

'09-'10 Effective Field Goal Percentage: 51.4 (8th)

Thus far, the new Warriors have flat-out missed more shots. They're making and taking threes at almost the exact same rates as last season (odd, given the massive personnel turnover), but the team's collective FG% on two-pointers has fallen from 49.9 to 47.4, a big ol' difference. Breaking it down even further, with the help of the fine folks at Hoopdata, you see that the main problems occur from 10-23 feet: the Dubs just aren't making mid-range jumpers nearly as often as they did last season.

'10-'11 Turnover Rate: 14.6 per 100 possessions (25th)

'09-'10 Turnover Rate: 17.6 per 100 possessions (t-9th)

Yikes! The Dubs are turning it over an extra three or so times a night, and yeah, that'll hurt you -- that'll hurt you a lot. C.J. Watson's absence is felt keenly here.

'10-'11 Offensive Rebound Rate: 31.1% (5th)

'09-'10 Offensive Rebound Rate: 21.0% (30th)

Yikes in a good way! The '09-'10 Warriors were one of the worst offensive-rebounding teams in NBA history. This year, thanks to David Lee and some basketball-sized lineups (we don't miss you, Nellie), the Dubs are one of the league's best at crashing the offensive glass. They get the ball back nine more times per game than they did last year. That's a massive, massive difference, one that more than cancels out the uptick in turnovers and even the greater frequency of bricks. The Warriors have improved so much in this department, in fact, that it's hard to see how this offense won't exceed last year's...

'10-'11 Free Throw Rate: 17.8 free throws made per 100 field goals attempted (30th)

'09-'10 Free Throw Rate: 23.0 free throws made per 100 field goals attempted (13th)

...ruh-roh.

The Warriors are netting 4.4 fewer points at the line per game this season than they did last season. In fact, the Warriors have taken fewer free throws than any other team thus far despite their top-five pace, and they've made many fewer free throws than any other team, thanks to a bottom-five 71.8 team FT%.

This is a big, big problem. Free throws are called free for a reason... a team that gets to and converts at the line frequently can stumble its way to a credible offensive night even when everyone's cold. If you can't draw whistles, you're going to have some downright horrible offensive nights. Nights like, say, Saturday, when the Warriors totaled six made free throws, 72 points and an execrable 82.1 team Offensive Rating. The '09-'10 Warriors never had an offensive night that bad.

Onto the defense...

'10-'11 Defensive Efficiency: 106.6 points per 100 possessions (12th)

'09-'10 Defensive Efficiency: 111.7 points per 100 possessions (29th)

...a sunnier story indeed, as the '10-'11 Golden State Warriors currently rank as an above-average defensive team. Let's just jot that down one more time: the '10-'11 Golden State Warriors currently rank as an above-average defensive team. For this reason alone, Keith Smart deserves a little benefit of the doubt... he's already turned a lot of Nellie's chicken shit into chicken salad.

'10-'11 eFG% Allowed: 48.3 (10th)

'09-'10 eFG% Allowed: 52.5 (t-27th)

If the Warriors aren't hitting as many shots as they did last season, that goes doubly for their opponents: thus far, opponents are scoring more efficiently from the field against the Celtics and Spurs than they are against the boys from Oracle. A closer look at Hoopdata's shot location numbers, however, suggests this strong showing may be short-lived. Opponents are feasting on the Dubs inside ten feet, and given the horrid D of Lee and his ilk, that trend seems likely to continue. Opponents have only made 32.4% of their threes against the Dubs in '10-'11, and that trend's not likely to continue... no team held their opponents to a number that low in 2009-10. The new-look Warriors will undoubtedly suppress field-goal shooting better than their predecessors, but they may be punching a bit above their weight right now.

'10-'11 Turnover Rate Allowed: 17.8 per 100 possessions (5th)

'09-'10 Turnover Rate: 17.5 per 100 possessions (1st)

A number of teams are forcing turnovers at aberrantly high rates this season. The Warriors don't currently lead the pack, but they're in the mix... thanks to Curry, Monta and the quick hands of the frontcourt, the Dubs should continue to enjoy an advantage in this department.

'10-'11 Defensive Rebound Rate: 69.6% (26th)

'09-'10 Defensive Rebound Rate: 68.5% (30th)

Curiously, the sea change in rebounding ability on the offensive end hasn't been mirrored on the defensive side of the ledger. These new Warriors do protect their glass a bit better than their predecessors, but they still do it pretty damn badly. Heal quickly, David Lee.

'10-'11 Free Throw Rate Allowed: 28.6 FTM/100FGA (27th)

'09-'10 Free Throw Rate: 26.0 FTM/100 FGA (27th)

It turns out there are two ugly sides to this free throw coin, as the '10-'11 Warriors have, improbably, sent opponents to the line even more often than the slap-happy '09-'10 team. All told, they are scoring 8.1 fewer points at the line per game than their opponents. No NBA team in this century has recorded a free-throw deficit that big. In fact, in the last decade, only five teams have recorded a deficit of more than five points:

1. MIN '07-'08: -6.0 FTM/G; 22-60

2. DEN '02-'03: -5.8 FTM/G; 17-65

3. CHI '05-'06: -5.7 FTM/G; 41-41

4. ATL '04-'05: -5.2 FTM/G; 13-69

5. MIL '09-'10: -5.2 FTM/G; 46-36

The list does feature two surprise playoff entrants, but the average performance of these teams was 28-54. This ain't a group you want any part of.

We'd wondered if these Warriors really had any shot at competing in a loaded-as-ever Western Conference. The fact is, they might... but only if they address their nightly disparity in whistles, because a team that commits fouls much more often than it draws them doesn't have enough margin for error to win close games. And since Corey Maggette isn't walking through that door, the coaching staff's time is probably best spent teaching defensive discipline. Simply put, these guys have to stop fouling so damn much. Real teams don't slap away possessions like this.

#1: HOU @ GS 10/27/10

2010-10-27T19:16:00.000-07:00

PreThoughts

We Worriers are busy, and them baseballers in orange and black have been consuming what little sports energy we have. But a new Dubs season is upon us, and a fascinating one it should be.

The official Worrier predictions for the year: a 36-46 showing, and frequent mutterings from us and others about Anthony Randolph. These Rockets are tough; this conference is fierce; this offseason may not bear immediate fruit. But several monkeys have been stripped from our collective backs, and who the fuck knows, as they say on Opening Night. Best of luck to us all.

Rocket To Watch: Yao Ming, whose usage patterns will be fascinating.

Warrior To Watch: David Lee, who will provide us some happy memories if he provides any defense.

PostThoughts (Warriors 132, Rockets 128)

Let's get the obvious out of the way: OMGWEWONPLAYOFFSILOVETHISGAME

With that all said, this was not a particularly encouraging performance. Outlasting tired Yao-less teams in your building doesn't mean you have a future... it just means you have a pulse. We've seen performances like that from Monta before, and we've read all the ensuing puff pieces about how his devotion to the franchise is going to lead to a brighter day, as though 75% field goal shooting will become his new baseline. The truth is, Monta Ellis is going to continue to have many nights on which he misses a ton of shots. On those nights, the Warriors are going to have to figure out a way to win. Not much about this game indicated they have the ability to do so.

We're not saying there weren't positives here. Monta was indeed stellar, Curry was strong, and Dorell gave the kind of pitch-perfect supporting performance he was signed to provide. David Lee looked tremendous on the offensive end; Biedrins's strong play and increased minutes were welcome sights, as was Brandan Wright (we Worriers loooooove us some goddamn Brandan Wright). Keith Smart dipped his toe into the Pool of Misguided Smallball, but unlike Nellie, he willingly pulled his toe back out. There were positives. Plenty of 'em.

Still, when you add it all up, you get a team with monstrous defensive holes (ye gods, Lee is every bit the disaster on that end the metrics suggest), a team that can't stop fouling everybody (Biedrins and Curry were as egregious on that front as ever), and a team that can't field a credible second unit (why was punting away C.J. Watson a good idea again?). This will be a better Warriors team, and when the first unit is playing, a fairly competitive team. But without more of the three D's -- defense, depth, discipline -- this franchise won't make a dent in the landscape of the Western Conference, and no amount of passive-aggressive ref whining from Bob Fitzgerald is going to change that.

Whoa, Nellie.

2010-09-30T12:46:00.000-07:00

While we Worriers were busy elsewhere, the biggest, gnarliest thorn in this blog's side was removed: Don Nelson jetted home to Maui, after tendering a "resignation" that had a distinct "you're fired, so save face if you like" flavor to it. The organization predictably named Keith Smart as Nellie's successor, with the big man's strong blessing... we'll address Mr. Smart soon enough.

The bones of this particular issue have long since been picked clean, but we'll chime in with a couple belated reactions to Nellie's departure.

* First off, thank the good lord. This team had no prayer of becoming relevant with a head coach on autopilot. The 2010-11 Warriors probably won't be relevant under Smart either, but having a motivated and detail-oriented man at the helm will make a big, big difference. The fact that Lacob, Guber et al realized this is an encouraging data point... it didn't take a rocket scientist to realize Nellie's useful days were done, but the previous regime never figured it out.

* Nellie was fired after a second straight 50+ loss season, after a season that produced several embarrassing NBA records, after alienating over $120 million worth of the roster, after a disgracefully unprofessional performance. He became the league's all-time winningest coach in April, and yet the new ownership regime couldn't even wait to assume ownership to get rid of him. Incredibly, this is the classiest and most amicable parting Nellie has ever had with an NBA franchise.

* Nellie presided over a tumultuous four seasons, with heavy roster turnover, front office conflict and sudden changes in team direction... he was complicit in all of these factors, of course, but they make an overall synopsis of his coaching performance difficult. However, you can pretty decently sum up his second Golden State tenure with a simple pair of statistics.

'06-'10 Warriors (with Baron Davis): 84-62, .575

'06-'10 Warriors (without Baron Davis): 61-121, .335

Nellie used more or less the same strategy throughout this run: go small, go fast, go for steals, and give tons of minutes and leeway to your best offensive player. With a maestro like Baron around, this strategy worked, and worked well. When the Dubs' best offensive player was anyone else -- Jack, Monta, Curry -- the strategy was more or less disastrous. Nellie never bothered to veer from it, and his failure to re-jigger led to an embarrassing two-year finish to his coaching career. The man was long lionized for his ability to adapt. When he stopped adapting, he quickly perished.

* Don Nelson finished his NBA coaching career with a record of 1,335-1063, going 418-445 in Oakland and 917-618 everywhere else. Given the length of his two tenures and the bland failures of the men who served in between them, many Warriors fans have trouble even remembering another coach, and yet when you look at Don Nelson's career, you realize his Golden State years amount to little more than padding. Whatever coaching and team-building greatness the man displayed took place in Milwaukee and Dallas; coaching the Warriors was what Nellie did when he wasn't doing anything important. It's one last painful reminder of this team's irrelevance over the past several decades.

Fare thee well, Nellie. You were often maddening, but rarely boring, and when a little more dust collects on the ugliness of the past two years, we will remember you fondly. Until then, lose our fucking number, you clown.

Carneyvale

2010-09-09T00:05:00.000-07:00

Lucky Warrior #13, come on down! We're looking at you, Rodney Carney. And as with so many other Golden State moves this summer, we're seeing something of a mixed bag.

The good news here is pretty straightforward: Carney is a solid commodity as cheap bench pieces go, a useful 26-year-old with some athleticism and upside. His career per-36 numbers -- 13.9 points, 4.6 rebounds, 1.0 assists against 1.2 turnovers, a .510 TS% -- scream "slightly below average", and his plus-minus numbers more or less echo that take. He probably is who he is at this point, but he did record career-best marks in rebounding, passing efficiency and free-throw shooting last year, so you could at least plausibly wishcast him into an average player down the road. Even without improvement, the guy should make a good third-string small forward this season.

But the signing of Rodney Carney begs a smack-your-forehead obvious question: Why is the front office worried about the third string when the second string is so horrible? As things stand, the Warriors' B-team includes Jeremy Lin, Charlie Bell and Dan Gadzuric... this is a team with gaping holes in its second unit, and meaningful patches like Louis Amundson and Earl Watson are still available. Instead of locking those guys in, the Dubs have done what they always seem to do when they have a roster quandary: they've shrugged and grabbed a swingman.

Rodney Carney isn't any sort of problem. But for this team, at this time, he isn't any sort of solution, either. The Warriors need another bench big and another bench guard, and if this signing precludes the acquisitions of guys like Watson and Amundson, it's money very poorly spent.

The Road Not Taken

2010-08-24T21:39:00.000-07:00

It's very easy to bag on the Warriors' offseason, as we did yesterday... it's another thing entirely to propose a superior strategy. Pitch positive, as they say in our other line of work. How would we Worriers have handled this summer? We're glad you asked!

First, we would've decided upon a direction for the franchise. And as it happens, that direction would be the same one we advocated eight months ago: rebuilding, with an eye towards competing in 2011-12. There is, and was, no reason to believe that the Warriors could contend for a playoff spot in the upcoming season, so why waste resources trying? Moreover, NBA armageddon looms next summer, as a lockout and extensive re-jiggering of the salary cap structure are more than likely. If you don't have a good team when the mushroom cloud hits, you're best off getting yourself cheap, young and flexible, so you can nab talent from those teams that need to dump salary in a hurry.

A rebuilding mindset would've led to the following moves. (Note: we're not changing the Udoh pick, because that's too easy.)

1) A dump of Corey Maggette's contract, much like the one that actually happened.

2) A dump of Monta Ellis's contract.

3) Matches of the Nets' offer to Anthony Morrow and the Bulls' offer to C.J. Watson.

4) Firing the living shit out of Don Nelson.

The only move here that should merit even a moment's debate is the dumping of Monta, and a close observer won't need more than a moment. We Worriers love the guy, but he's now two years removed from his last effective season, and it's no longer reasonable to expect the heights we dreamed about in 2008. In the cold light of objectivity, four years and $44 million for an undersized two with effectiveness issues screams "money poorly spent". Sorry, Dub fans... this isn't the building block we're looking for.

Let's say we pull the trigger on the Milwaukee Maggette deal, and that we get the Grizzlies to agree to the same Monta-for-Mayo-and-Thabeet deal they offered us at the deadline. Our roster would then look like this:

PG: Stephen Curry, C.J. Watson

SG: Anthony Morrow, O.J. Mayo, Charlie Bell

SF: Kelenna Azubuike, Reggie Williams

PF: Anthony Randolph, Brandan Wright, Ekpe Udoh, Vladimir Radmanovic

C: Andris Biedrins, Ronny Turiaf, Hasheem Thabeet, Dan Gadzuric

Is this team as good as the current version? Probably not (we also denied ourselves the tempting cheat of aping the Dorell Wright signing), but it's not a totally laughable proposition. The defense wouldn't have been any worse -- the departed Anthonys weren't nearly as brutal on that end as Monta and Lee were last season -- and Anthony Morrow's been a much bigger offensive asset than Monta the past two years. CJ, Mayo, Ronny and Thabeet make ours the superior bench by a mile. Barring a massive regresson by Anthony Randolph, there's just not a lot to separate the two rosters on production, and if Randolph takes a step forward, we just might have the better one.

More to the point, we're not making the playoffs this season anyway. Our goal isn't to maximize our win potential... our goal is to maximize the attractiveness of our assets. And with the singular exception of Charlie Bell, every single player on the roster above is either an expiring contract, a cheap and useful role player, an intriguing young talent or some combination of the three.

The above roster puts us squarely in the middle of the conversation every time a star is on the market: we can offer help and value at every single position, with frontcourt depth to spare, in particular. In the meantime, we're evaluating talent, and possibly moving pieces for draft picks when opportunities arise (the salary situations of Turiaf, BWright, and Azubuike make them good candidates to be dealt, and we'd try to re-trade O.J. Mayo, because fuck O.J. Mayo). Nobody is untouchable here... not Curry, not Randolph, not anybody. Nothing about a crappy team is sacred. But we're not moving upside guys under team control for anything less than maximum value. If a good deadline deal arises, great. If not, we sail into next summer with

- Stephen Curry

- C.J. Watson

- Anthony Morrow

- Anthony Randolph

- Ekpe Udoh

- Andris Biedrins

- Hasheem Thabeet

- the expiring contract of Charlie Bell

...at a total cost just south of $35 million, plus our 2011 draft pick(s) and whatever future picks we may have netted along the way. We've got three high-upside guys in Curry, Randolph and Thabeet (who's put up Mutombo-esque numbers in his limited NBA minutes), plus useful role players in Biedrins, Morrow, CJ and (hopefully) Udoh. We need a small forward, but we've got the space to add a max guy via signing or trade, so we're not exactly hurting for options.

Guaranteed success? By no means... you can't assure that out of the pieces at hand. You need a great player to have a shot. But you need to give yourself a shot at a great player. And by whittling our roster down to Curry, Randolph, Thabeet, tradeable assets and cap space, we've done that as well as we possibly can.

Stupid teams panic and pay through the nose for non-superstars. Smart teams grab value on the cheap and wait for a target worth pulling the trigger for. We'd still be waiting.

Warriors Stumble On... 35 Wins

2010-08-19T23:48:00.000-07:00

You may remember an article that created a bit of a stir in the Warriors blogosphere a month or so ago... Jeremy Britton, a Dubs fan and Wages of Wins contributor, pointed out that the new-look Warriors projected to be a 50-win team by WP48. Actually, the exact projection he came to was 56.9 wins, a number so outlandish that he didn't even dare mention it in the text of the piece.

In case you couldn't tell, we ain't buying this 50-win talk. Frankly, we ain't buying WP48, either. Kevin Love, a guy on a 15-win team, is the fourth-most effective player in the league? Troy Murphy, a massive detriment, a blight upon the earth, is the twelfth-most effective player in the league? Like fun, Wagers. As Dave Berri's evasve snippiness in the comments section attests, this isn't a system you can really vouch for. All you can do is claim that it's infallible, eyes shut, fingers in your ears, shouting to the heavens. We Worriers aren't statisticians, but we know an echo chamber when we see one.

So we're going to project this team's potential ourselves, using two different tools: the Win Percentage figures over at Basketball Prospectus and the Win Shares figures at Basketball Reference. This'll be some quick and dirty figgerin', and the results won't be the gospel by any means, but we'd take them a lot more seriously than the WP48 results. Why? Every key Warrior, except for Dorell Wright, presided over worse team defense when on the floor than their individual numbers suggest. These two metrics attempt to account for that; WP48 doesn't.

So. First, let's estimate minutes totals for the '09-'10 Warriors.

PG: Stephen Curry (36), Charlie Bell (12)

SG: Monta Ellis (36), Reggie Williams (12)

SF: Dorell Wright (30), Reggie Williams (18)

PF: David Lee (30), Brandan Wright (18)

C: Andris Biedrins (30), David Lee (6), Dan Gadzuric (12)

This is an oversimplification, of course, and a pretty Pollyannaish one in several ways. We're not likely to see every rotation member play 82 games, for one thing, and Biedrins will have to get back on track in a big way to play a half hour a night. We're also assuming that Nellie will largely avoid smallball, a dangerous assumption given recent history. You can quibble with some of the numbers here... Jeremy Lin may usurp Charlie Bell, Udoh should eventually grab some minutes, and obviously the Warriors could sign a guy or two who'd figure into the picture. But this, roughly speaking, is the plan.

Next, we convert each dude's playing time into a percentage. A guy who plays all 48 minutes would take up a total of 20% of the available player-minutes. Accordingly, guys who play 36 minutes, as we project Curry, Monta and Lee to do, take up 15% of the available player-minutes. Going down the list:

Stephen Curry: 15%

Monta Ellis: 15%

David Lee: 15%

Andris Biedrins: 12.5%

Dorell Wright: 12.5%

Reggie Williams: 12.5%

Brandan Wright: 7.5%

Charlie Bell: 5%

Dan Gadzuric: 5%

Now, if we weight each player's '09-'10 results by their playing time, we ought to be able to get a reasonable estimate of the win total each system would predict. (We'll use Brandan Wright's '08-'09 data for simplicity's sake.)

1) Winning Percentage

Stephen Curry: .519

Monta Ellis: .484

David Lee: .635

Andris Biedrins: .525

Dorell Wright: .502

Reggie Williams: .508

Brandan Wright: .579

Charlie Bell: .334

Dan Gadzuric: .408

Weighted Total Win %: .518 x 82 = 42.5 Predicted Wins

By our rough estimate, Win Percentage is somewhat bullish on the new-look Warriors roster, predicting a record a bit over .500 with perfect health. The metric sees David Lee as an excellent player (though it isn't as starry-eyed as WP48), it regards five of the other top six players as above-average contributors, and even Monta comes off okay here. Win % thinks Dan Gadzuric and Charlie Bell stink, but they're hardly alone on that one.

2) Win Shares Per 48 Minutes

Stephen Curry: 0.077

Monta Ellis: 0.023

David Lee: 0.163

Andris Biedrins: 0.101

Dorell Wright: 0.137

Reggie Williams: 0.104

Brandan Wright: 0.131

Charlie Bell: 0.060

Dan Gadzuric: 0.077

Weighted Total WS/48 = 0.494 x 82 = 40.5 Predicted Wins

Win Shares doesn't echo Win Percentage on a granular level -- it likes Monta and Curry much less, and the Wright Brothers much more -- but it comes to a similar overall conclusion. Enough talent to be competitive when healthy, not enough elite talent to really approach "good".

While we're having fun, let's irresponsibly throw another stat on the pile.

3) Adjusted Plus-Minus

Stephen Curry: +4.50

Monta Ellis: -2.95

David Lee: -2.45

Andris Biedrins: -3.76

Dorell Wright: +6.20

Reggie Williams: -7.50

Brandan Wright: -1.22

Charlie Bell: -1.21

Dan Gadzuric: +1.67

Weighted Total APM = -0.836; Pythagorean Estimate: 38.6 Wins

APM isn't really meant to be used this way... it does not necessarily follow that, say, David Lee's plus-minus numbers as a Warrior forward will mirror his results as a Knick center. This is the noisiest and least reliable data set. Still and all, its results are interesting, and more than a little troubling: an APM-based approach doesn't even see a freakishly healthy Warriors team cracking 40 wins. Curry and Dorell both rate as big, big pluses, but every other key guy rates as a negative, generally due to wretched defensive numbers.

Conclusion

By any accounting that acknowledges how a team's defense was affected by the presence of a given player, these Warriors do not rate as having 50-win potential, nor anywhere particularly close to it. They look like a .500 team. And while you may believe that guys like Curry, Monta and Biedrins will play better this season than last, you've also gotta believe that the Warriors' top seven guys will not all play significant minutes in all 82 games. There are more reasons to tug that 41-win estimate down than up, given how poor the team's injury replacements project to be, and given the fact that Don Nelson looks ever more likely to retain the ill-fitting title of "head coach" to start the season.

This is a team with a decent starting lineup and a very bad bench, a team with very little defensive talent, a team with a coach with very little interest. The Dubs should crack the 30-win mark for the first time since Baron left, but barring a major trade or a Nellie firing or both, they probably won't hit 40. And there's no real reason to expect them to compete for a playoff spot, either. If we assume the Lakers, Mavs, Spurs, Thunder, Blazers and Nuggets are all playoff-bound, the Warriors will have to finish at least second in a scrum that includes the Rockets, Hornets, Jazz, Suns, Grizzlies and newly Griffin-ed Clippers. David Lee has never even led a team into the Eastern Conference postseason, and while Stephen Curry is very good, he'll be competing with Chris Paul, Deron Williams and Steve Nash for a playoff spot... it's hard to argue that he gives the Warriors an edge.

Trading Anthony Randolph for David Lee is pretty much the epitome of a "win now" move. The Warriors don't seem at all likely to win now. What was the point of that, again?

An Open Letter To Joe Lacob

2010-08-11T15:45:00.001-07:00

Greetings, kind sir, and apologies for the dreadfully hackneyed format of this blog post.

Congratulations on your new basketball team! We were delighted to hear of your acquisition (the failure of Larry Ellison to buy the franchise caused no tears in Worrierland), and your hour-long discussion with the Razor and Mr. T was informative and appreciated. It must be a hectic time for you and your partners. You don't even officially own the team yet, and joy-starved Warriors fans risk overburdening you with demands and requests (one of which you've already been kind enough to sound off on).

Our worry-filled cup runneth over... we have no shortage of suggestions, thoughts, gripes and musings. But as your time is limited (and since you'll never actually read this), we will make only one request, one you can fulfill simply by doing nothing.

Do not trade Andris Biedrins.

Not this season, anyway, and certainly not before it. You're hearing a lot of babble about his free-throw shooting and his controversial Latvian interview... your task is to ignore that babble. There's a slam-dunk statistical argument in favor of keeping the guy, but we needn't even resort to that to demonstrate how important Beans's continued presence is. Some general business rules of thumb will do.

1) Never sell low. Trading Andris Biedrins anytime in the near future would qualify. Twelve months ago, he was a 23-year-old coming off of a double-double season, a guy who'd engendered occasional All-Star mutterings outside the Bay Area, a player who was discussed as the centerpiece in deals for Chauncey Billups and Amar'e Stoudemire, among others. Now, thanks in large part to other Warriors employees, he's seen as a wart-ridden goofball. Joe, you didn't become a whateverionnaire by pissing away commodities at the nadir of their value. Biedrins is 24, and on a non-increasing contract... you can stand to wait a while and see if he appreciates.

2) Protect your investments. The above is doubly true because of the summer's key acquisition, the guy who'll earn almost a fifth of what you just paid for this team. David Lee is a guy with many strengths, but "playing center in the NBA" ain't one of them. Alongside a five who protects the rim and cleans up his messes, Lee could be the difference-maker he was paid to be; left to fend for himself in the middle, he's a defensive sieve, and an overall mixed bag at best. The only player on the Warriors roster -- hell, one of the few in the NBA -- that has a chance at complementing David Lee properly is Andris Biedrins. It may not work even with Andris, but it sure as hell won't work without him.

3) Choose the right people. There are rumblings that you may leave Don Nelson on the bench to start the season. While we Worriers quite emphatically wouldn't, there's an argument for ceding to inertia in this case. However, this franchise has hemorrhaged a good number of useful players away in the fat man's name over the years, and while he once provided enough value to make that a worthwhile trade, he no longer provides enough value to justify hemorrhaging away a Twix bar. If you are forced to choose between Andris Biedrins and Don Nelson, please, for the love of fucking fuck, recognize that that choice ain't no choice at all. Andris Biedrins is an imperfect asset; Don Nelson is a noxious sunk cost.

Thanks, Joe. We'd say "good luck", but we're hoping you're an intelligent enough chief executive to not need much of it.

Mr. Lee

2010-08-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

The misbegotten Chris Cohan era will be neatly bookended by a pair of 80-million-dollar power forwards. The rookie deal Chris Webber opted out of in 1994 was slated to earn him $84 million over fifteen years, numbers that sound bizarre now for all sorts of reasons. And the signature act of the last-ever Summer of Cohan was the trade for David Lee, who came equipped with a freshly inked six-year, 80-million-dollar contract. If Lee plays out that contract in the Bay Area, he'll end up being paid more money than any player in Warrior history. As such, the guy merits a pretty close look under the statistical magnifying glass.

Here are ten good things about David Lee:

1) He scores often and efficiently. Lee's 20.2 scoring average placed him 15th in the league last year, two slots ahead of Corey Maggette, and one slot behind the dearly departed Stephen Jackson. He shot .545 from the field last season, the ninth-best mark in basketball. His .584 True Shooting Percentage was the lowest of his five-year NBA career, and he still just missed the league's top twenty by a nose.

2) He rebounds like a beast. Lee averaged 11.7 rebounds a night in each of the last two seasons, placing third and fourth in the league for his efforts. The Knicks' pace inflated his numbers, but only by a tad: Lee's 17.9% Rebounding Percentage was the eighth-best mark in 2009-10. His work on the defensive glass is particularly impressive... only Dwight Howard grabbed more defensive boards than David Lee last season.

3) He's becoming an excellent passer. After putting up pedestrian assist totals in his first several seasons, David Lee found religion on the passing front in 2009-10, leading all centers with 3.6 nightly assists. This wasn't mitigated by a boatload of turnovers, either... Lee posted a 1.56 A/TO ratio, well above most big men and comfortably ahead of (ahem) Monta Ellis.

4) He makes his free throws. Lee shot .812 from the charity stripe in '09-'10, the third time in four years he'd topped 81%. A big that can ice free throws late is a valuable thing.

5) He stretches the floor. While he made his name as a banger, David Lee has quietly become a marksman from inside the arc. From 10-15 feet, he hit 49.6% of his shots last year, just a shade below Kobe Bryant... from 16-23 feet, he made 43% of his shots, just a shade below Stephen Curry. Lee hasn't made a three-pointer in an NBA game yet, but given the rate at which he's improved his range, that day isn't far off.

6) He excels at the pick and roll. There are no real numbers to codify this, but trust us, he does. The Warriors run a lot of pick-and-rolls with Andris Biedrins, whose inability to shoot from distance limits the play's versatility. With Lee, the play becomes much more difficult to defend, and both Curry and Monta figure to profit significantly from his presence.

7) He avoids foul trouble. Lee averaged just 4.1 fouls per 48 minutes last season, one of the lower marks among bigs. (Anthony Randolph averaged 5.9, and Andris Biedrins averaged a nightmarish 7.4.) This allows Lee to stay on the floor... he averaged 37.3 minutes a game in 2009-10, trailing only Zach Randolph, Dirk and LaMarcus Aldridge among NBA big men.

8) He's durable. David Lee has missed exactly one game in each of the past three seasons. Since 2007, Don Nelson has missed more games than David Lee has.

9) He's likely to age well. Good rebounders that score efficiently tend to have long careers. Last year's Basketball Prospectus annual listed Lee's best statistical comps as Tyrone Hill, A.C. Green, Drew Gooden and Michael Cage. The skills of Gooden, who's two years older than Lee, have shown no diminution of late... Hill, Green and Cage were all effective players through age 32. Lee will be 32 when his Warriors contract runs out.

10) He parties with Snooki. I think I speak for all of us when I say I want to see Snooki come out of this thing okay. If David Lee is willing to help her complete her squeaky drunken ride through life, more power to him.

These are not trivial pluses we're talking about, here. The Warriors just acquired a sturdy rebounding machine who scores and passes well and makes necrotic Chileans feel good about themselves. Against David Lee's many massive positives, there is only one meaningful negative: his poor defense. And yet, that one negative may be malignant enough to render the whole exercise of acquiring him pointless.

The 2008-09 New York Knicks had a -3.4 point differential with Lee on the floor and a -0.7 point differential without him. The 2009-10 New York Knicks had a -4.1 point differential with Lee on the floor and a -2.8 point differential without him. Lee was the alpha and omega of that team, its unquestioned star, and yet the Knicks played more competitive basketball when he was on the bench. This wasn't a distortion caused by an unusually effective bench, either... Duhon, Chandler, Gallinari and Jeffries, the Knicks' other primary starters last season, all posted positive net plus-minuses. The team just didn't seem to profit from the guy's presence. And the reason why isn't exactly mysterious: the Knicks' defense just collapsed with Lee out there, giving up three or four more points per 100 possessions when he played in the last two years. When David Lee plays, opposing teams tend to shoot better and record more assists. Most troubling, they seem to grab just as many offensive rebounds when he's in there, despite his prodigious totals.

This description will sound familiar to the more grizzled Warrior fans out there. We once had another power forward who combined scoring polish with eye-popping rebounding numbers, a guy who seemed like a good building block for a playoff team on paper. Problem was, Troy Murphy absolutely murdered, and continues to murder, any chance his team has of competing defensively. He doesn't affect shots, he doesn't body up hard, and he doesn't smack guys who dare attack the rim near him. He just sets up shop and waits for that defensive rebound. If it comes, he's likely to get it. But it often doesn't come, because opposing players realize they can get to the hoop by going, well, straight at Troy Murphy. Murphy continues to post sterling production stats, and his teams continue to lose, because you can't win if one of your big men won't make any noise on defense. Lee is a better player than Murphy, but he is cut from the same cloth. And if that scares you, it should.

Dub fans, we have to pray that Lee's defense will improve from "team-killingly horrible" to plain old "horrible" when he returns to his natural position of power forward. His plus-minus numbers were solid from 2006-08, when he mainly played the four... he hurt the Knicks' D then too, but not enough to outweigh his contributions on offense. It's possible that with enough help defense from Andris Biedrins, David Lee can be as big a contributor to winning as his numbers suggest he is. If he can, our newest postseason drought will be a short one. This could very well work out.

But this could very easily be a disaster. The idea that David Lee can help you win is just theoretical at this point... no team he has played for has ever won 34 games in a season, let alone 44 or 54. A Curry/Monta backcourt is going to let boatloads of guys drive to the hoop, and the Warriors have just sold the farm for a player who may not slow them down when they get there. All the pick-and-roll polish in the world isn't going to save you if your team can't stop anybody.

Paying a good-but-not-great high-scoring non-defender more than anyone else is willing to, in a season where you should clearly be rebuilding, is a mistake. Warriors fans recognized that two years ago when the team signed Corey Maggette. It's mind-boggling that they've forgotten that lesson so quickly.

David Lee has not yet shown that he can be the centerpiece of a decent team. Can he? Maybe. But it wasn't worth parting with Anthony Randolph and eighty million dollars to find out.

Pargomania...?

2010-07-27T22:13:00.000-07:00

For a team that seemed comprised almost exclusively of little guys just four months ago, the Warriors sure ran out of 'em quick. Corey Maggette and Kelenna Azubuike were traded away; the blink-and-you-missed-him Raja Bell signed with the Jazz; the Warriors decided not to match reasonable contract offers to Anthony Morrow and C.J. Watson. All five of these players play small forward or smaller in a sane universe, and their departures stripped the returning non-big depth chart down to Curry, Monta and Reggie Williams. To compensate, the Warriors have added a promising three in Dorell Wright, a charming novelty act in Jeremy Lin, and a pretty useless vet in Charlie Bell. Today, the Dubs added another piece: 31-year-old journeyman Jannero Pargo has agreed to a two-year contract worth $2.4 millon in full.

The way to look at this signing is to ask yourself the following question. Let's say you've just signed a player to an 80-million-dollar contract, thereby signaling that you're serious about competing in the near future. Your cap situation is decent... you aren't likely to sign any max players in the near future, but you're in no danger of triggering the luxury tax, either. In that scenario, which would you rather have?

A) Two seasons of one of the best backup combo guards in the league

B) Two seasons of one of the worst backup combo guards in the league, and two seasons of $2.3 million in cap space

Because, let's be very clear about this: Pargo is one of the absolute worst guards on any roster, a guy who makes Charlie Bell look like an offensive powerhouse in comparison. Brandon Jennings got savaged for posting a 47.5 true shooting percentage in his rookie season... Pargo posted a 42.9 TS% last year, has averaged a 47.1 TS% for his career, and unlike Jennings, doesn't pass nearly well enough to balance things out. His effect on the offensive efficiency of his various teams has been horrific: in his last four seasons, Pargo's teams have scored 5.3, 8.1, 5.5, and 1.5 fewer points per 100 possessions when he took the court. This guy may be the single worst offensive player in the NBA.

Defense is Pargo's calling card, and he plays it well, but not nearly well enough to balance out his offense. In his five NBA stops, only one team has played better with Pargo than without him, a 23-59 Bulls team for whom he played 13 fluky-hot games six years ago. Every other team, whether good or bad, high-scoring or defensive-minded, LA-based or Chicago-based or New Orleans/OKC-based, has suffered from his presence, usually by a lot. C.J. Watson, of course, has greatly improved the Warriors' chances of competing when he's taken the floor the last couple years.

The gap between these two players isn't a stream, it's a river. If each guy gave you 18 minutes a night, CJ would net you about three more wins than Pargo would... the difference between these guys is the difference between a 39-43 team and a 42-40 team. And the front office accepted that downgrade for $2.3 million in cap savings in '10-'11 and '11-'12, which is less than 40% of an opening MLE offer, around the same amount as the biannual exception, and far less than Ekpe Udoh will earn while he dresses nicely at courtside. Was that trade really worth it? Even if the Warriors felt they needed to dump CJ at the trade deadline to clear space, would a top-tier backup point guard with $5 million total left on his contract really be tough to move, when each conference's superpower needs help at the position?

The problem with the Warriors' summer isn't simply that they traded Anthony Randolph, or overpaid David Lee, or let Morrow and CJ go, or humored hometown sentiments with Lin, or signed a terrible player to a small contract. The problem is also that all of these moves, in concert, do not reflect any sort of coherent vision. If you want to compete, you should keep your cheap and useful complementary pieces around. If you want to rebuild, you shouldn't offer the sun and moon for a 27-year-old who won't fix you. Signing David Lee and nuking a good bench doesn't even qualify as "penny wise, pound foolish"; it's more like "penny foolish and pound really foolish."

Jannero Pargo won't break the newly minted Lacob/Guber bank, but his signing is another mistake in a summer chock-full of them. This smacks of the Mikki Moore signing of yesteryear: Pargo's the kind of guy you sign because you need to sign, well, somebody. The Golden State Warriors will not be competitive until they stop making transactional shrugs like this one.

Lin-demonium!

2010-07-20T23:27:00.000-07:00

Say this for the new ownership regime: they ain't apathetic about PR. Recent Harvard grad, native Palo Altan and lifelong Dubs fan Jeremy Lin is now a Warrior, making him the league's first full-blooded Asian-American in over 60 years. Lin is the poster child of a heavily-linked Youtube clip, a raucous GSOM campaign and an e-mail a fan sent to new owner Joe Lacob, an e-mail to which Lacob promptly responded.

Let's start here: no, Jeremy Lin is not going to be as good as C.J. Watson. CJ is an efficient scorer, a tremendous ball-handler, a canny defender... he's an above-average NBA player. DraftExpress deemed Jeremy Lin just the 95th-best prospect in the 2010 draft, for reasons that a good Summer League performance doesn't magically erase. Lin is dreadfully small for the NBA game, and rates as neither an elite shooter nor an elite passer. If the front office thinks Lin can fill CJ's shoes, it's a dumber front office than even the most jaded among us give them credit for.

Now, the front office probably doesn't see Lin as the backup point guard, so much as an end-of-the-bench fan favorite who'll sell a few marginal tickets and get the franchise some positive press. And seen in that light, this is a tremendous signing, a savvy PR move without any real cost. Lin is an intensely likeable and entertaining player, and a guy who may spark new fan interest in the Bay Area's massive Asian-American community. Ain't nothing wrong with a great story.

But let's just hope everybody remembers that it's a story, and that the odds of Lin ever becoming a good NBA player are remote. The Warriors are coming out of a long sojourn in the wilderness, and the last thing they need to do is to fall in love with a narrative that minimizes the importance of wins and losses. Great stories are good; competitive basketball is better. And this team still needs a backup point guard.

See Ya, C.J.

2010-07-19T23:43:00.000-07:00

The other half of last season's underrated backcourt bench tandem has just flown the coop. C.J. Watson is Chicago-bound, in a sign-and-trade that nets the Warriors a second-round pick and a trade exception worth $3.5 million or so. The Udoh pick was silly, the Lee trade was heartbreaking, the Morrow loss was needless... but make no mistake, superfriends. This, right here, is the dumbest move of the offseason.

When you factor in his miniscule turnover ratio, his solid scoring and his stellar showings by plus-minus (a team-best +6.7 net plus-minus last season, a +2.47 two-year adjusted plus-minus that places him in the league’s top fifty), it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that C.J. Watson is one of the best backup point guards in basketball. The guy records steals by the bushel without getting called for fouls... he takes tremendous care of the ball... he drives rarely, but with precision. C.J. Watson is a winning player, something that can't be said of many Warriors. And now he's gone.

The Warriors had the money to keep him. They also badly need someone to back up Curry, and to help out at the two if Monta gets hurt and/or Reggie gets called into action at the three (Charlie Bell should not be in any team’s rotation at this point in his career). Simply put, there was no bigger no-brainer this offseason than matching a two-year, $7 million dollar offer to C.J. Watson. I don’t know what the current ownership complexities are, and I don’t really care. This is an absolutely moronic decision, far dumber than letting Morrow go. Teams don’t get better by punting away good players on cheap contracts.

Congrats to C.J., who will probably help a scary-looking Bulls team nudge past the 60-win mark. The Warriors Twitterverse will be far quieter without you, young man, and the win column will be a couple notches emptier, too.

Out Of Ammo

2010-07-17T15:01:00.000-07:00

While we were looking elsewhere, the deathbed-ridden front office let Anthony Morrow slip away to the New Jersey Nets, declining to match a three-year $12 million offer that seemed more than reasonable. This was not a crippling error, but it was an error, and it robs the franchise of one of its most likeable and statistically fascinating players.

The two recently departed Anthonys were a delightful study in contrasts. Randolph was all athlete; Morrow is all gym rat. He's not fast, long, strong or explosive, but he worked his way into an NBA career all the same. The speed and precision of his jumper, the running floater that he converts an improbably high percentage of the time... these are testaments to a shit-ton of good old-fashioned hard work. The kid wasn't supposed to get here, and he seems excited and grateful during every second of every game, whether or not he's on the court. No Warrior has ever been easier to root for than Anthony Morrow.

And no NBA player has ever shot like this. If he can keep his accuracy where it's been, sometime in November, Anthony Morrow will officially become the best three-point shooter in NBA history. His career percentage stands at .460... that's the equivalent of a guy shooting friggin' .690 from two-point land. A guy like that will help you win games even if he can't do anything else, and Morrow rebounds his position well and almost never turns it over. His net plus-minus totals in his two Golden State seasons were +3.1 and +4.1, and adjusted plus-minus suggests that warn't no fluke. He's a limited player, but a good one, and he and Courtney Lee will make a dynamite offense/defense combo at the two in New Jersey. Don't be surprised if Morrow sees the postseason before the Warriors do.

The mantle of "hardworking undrafted swingman" now falls to Reggie Williams, who seems poised to carry it well. The upcoming Warriors season should be a better one, but the absence of Anthony Morrow will hurt, both on the stat sheet and in the heart. Fare thee well, marksman.

FREEDOM

2010-07-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

Our collective sixteen-year fever is about to break -- Chris Cohan has sold the Golden State Warriors. A lot of fans are up in arms about the specifics of the sale, believing Larry Ellison to be a white knight that Cohan cruelly cast aside. Don't get caught up in that stuff, people. Ellison clearly bungled the negotiations, and is a douchebag besides... plus, the sixth-richest man in the world is not guaranteed success in a league with a salary cap. He shan't be missed.

The new ownership group of Joe Lacob and Peter Guber contains at least one douchebag its own self; if you like showbiz tales, "Hit and Run", the account of Guber and Jon Peters's idiotic demolition of Sony Pictures, will amuse you to no end. But we're getting a hands-off-gasbag vibe from Guber here. Lacob's the key guy, and as a (not-for-long) minority Celtics owner and a longtime Dubs season ticket holder, he passes at least an initial sniff test.

We'll have to see about these new fellas, but the story of the last fella is complete. And for Warriors fans, it's a story with a particularly unhappy ending.

Chris Cohan made out like a bandit here. He bought the team for $119 million, and sold it for $450 million sixteen years later... that is a nice tidy profit. Not all of Cohan's business ventures have panned out, and you certainly can't say he rates well on customer satisfaction, but for his purposes, ownership of the Golden State Warriors was a massive, massive success. He and Rowell soaked a loyal fanbase something fierce.

I don't know that any useful lessons spring from that. Cohan might've had a shorter and less successful reign if fan interest hadn't been so unconditional, but unconditional love is part of what makes the Oracle crowds what they are. Would we all trade the unparalleled quality of Warriors fandom for a better team? Would a 54-28 team playing 80% full arenas be more or less satisfying than the "We Believe" squad? We are all too loss-riddled to know.

All we know is that the games shall continue, and the circle shall turn; a centimillionaire jagoff is catcalled off the stage, and two more centimillionaire jagoffs enter to wild applause. A man that destroyed a movie studio is now being hailed as the savior of a basketball team. If you feel like Charlie Brown running towards another Lucy-held football, you're not the only one. But we may just get that kick off yet, and damn, it'll feel sweet if we do.

Fare thee well, Chris Cohan. You have plagued my leisure time for sixteen years, and I have only the vaguest sense of what you look like.

Hellos: Gadzuric, Bell & Dorell

2010-07-14T22:22:00.000-07:00

While Warriorland is seeing its share of activity these days -- the team's sale draws nigh, a marksman departs, an iffy draft pick grows ever iffier -- the tide of roster moves seems to have slowed for the moment. As such, it's a good time to greet the newly acquired Dubs, alphabetically and analytically. We'll stick with the three small-money guys tonight, and address the $80 million man tomorrow.

Charlie Bell
'09-10 Per 36: 10.3 PTS (48.6 TS%), 2.9 REB, 2.3 AST, 1.2 TO, 0.9 STL, 0.3 BLK, 3.0 PF
PER: 7.92 Win %: .334 WS/48: 0.060 2YR Adj. +/-: -1.21

Charlie is, it's safe to say, not the Bell many Warriors fan hoped to see slotted behind Monta this season. He's not entirely bereft of offensive skills -- he makes about 36% of his threes, and passes pretty well for a notional shooting guard -- but he's no kind of threat, and has to excel defensively to justify playing time. And while he's been an excellent defender at points in his career, he's now 31 and struggling with knee issues... plus/minus data doesn't suggest that he helps on that end anymore, either. There's nothing in the statistical record to suggest that he's a viable NBA rotation player. Charlie is salary cap ballast, and nothing more... every minute he gets over a young player is a minute wasted.

Dan Gadzuric
'09-10 Per 36: 10.1 PTS (44.0 TS%), 10.5 REB, 1.4 AST, 1.7 TO, 1.0 STL, 1.5 BLK, 7.2 PF
PER: 10.50 Win %: .408 WS/48: 0.077 2YR Adj. +/-: +1.67

Only a handful of NBA players scored both less often and less efficiently than Charlie Bell last season; scarily enough, Dan Gadzuric was one of them. He's the more useful guy, though, and not just because his contract is expiring. Gadzuric is a horrible offensive player, but a pretty good (if foul-prone) defender, and rebounds his position passably. While he'll be a below-average backup center, he won't be the worst one in the league, and his presence means Andris Biedrins will have a nice long leash with which to rediscover himself.

Dorell Wright
'09-10 Per 36: 12.3 PTS (56.7 TS%), 5.7 REB, 2.2 AST, 1.3 TO, 1.3 STL, 0.8 BLK, 2.3 PF
PER: 14.56 Win %: .502 WS/48: 0.137 2YR Adj. +/-: +6.20

Now this guy can play! Wright doesn't score often, but his efficiency's about average (thanks in large part to a recently-developed three-point shot), and he rebounds well (5.7 REB/36 is actually the worst mark of his career) and passes well for a small forward. Best of all, he's a genuine defensive asset, a guy who creates a lot of positive plays without drawing whistles, and whose plus-minus numbers check out just fine.

The Warriors of recent vintage have been overloaded with guys who 1) are too small for their positions, and 2) score and don't do much else. Dorell Wright's a welcome antidote. He 1) is a 6' 9" 210-pound small forward, and 2) rarely scores, because he's usually too busy doing other stuff. It's heartening that the Warriors have him, and even more heartening that they went to the trouble of going and getting him. His signing is a step away from Nellieball, which is a step in the right direction.

Two Wrights Make This Less Wrong

2010-07-10T14:37:00.000-07:00

...maybe I take it back, lame-duck chickenheads. The signing of Dorell Wright to a three-year, $11 million contract is a good one, and helps to answer some of the questions the Lee trade created.

Wright scores efficiently and rarely, he can score from distance (39.5% last year), and he's an actual by-God decent defender, with good length for a three. You could not design a more well-suited small forward for the needs of this team. I love Anthony Morrow like a sharp-shooting brother, but he's not as good as Dorell Wright, and he's not as good of a fit. Best of all, Dorell came cheaply enough so that re-signing CJ still looks like a strong possibility.

It'd be a stretch to call this a masterstroke. Wright is no star, and his arrival doesn't begin to erase the pain of Randolph's departure. But you can at least see a semblance of a plan starting to take shape here. If CJ re-signs, the rotation shakes out thusly:

PG: Stephen Curry, C.J. Watson

SG: Monta Ellis, Charlie Bell

SF: Dorell Wright, Reggie Williams

PF: David Lee, Brandan Wright, Ekpe Udoh

C: Andris Biedrins, Dan Gadzuric

There's more size, health, consistency and (potentially) defense here than there was last year. I don't think it's a playoff team... this lineup screams "38 wins", and far less than that if the league's worst coach manages to stick around another year. And the Warriors will now be spending more money for less upside, which is a ridiculous trade for a bad team. Still, the signing of Dorell Wright fills a hole and stops the bleeding. Good move.

To Morrow: Never Die

2010-07-10T11:50:00.000-07:00

To the recently traumatized citizens, the news that the New Jersey Nets have signed Anthony Morrow to a three-year, $12 million offer sheet provides a brief respite from the darkness. We got off easy! In a world where Kyle Korver gets $20 million, giving his fellow marksman $12M is an absolute no-brainer, and it should come as no surprise that the Warriors are expected to...

...not match?!

Trading talent and treasure for an overrated "All-Star" is one thing -- it's stupid, but at least you can make out the simian logic involved. Letting a cheap and valuable commodity go as a result? This would be the dumbest move in a summer that has already boggled the mind. For fuck's sake, you lame-duck chickenheads, match the offer. Do not piss another asset down the toilet.

Goodbyes

2010-07-09T14:38:00.000-07:00

Before we give Mr. Lee a closer look, let's take one sorrowful glance at the fellas we just gave up.

I vividly remember Kelenna Azubuike's first game... he was hastily called up the day of the DunMurphy Dump, as the not-yet-Steve-and-Al'ed Warriors needed warm bodies to fill out the bench (they also called up the comically overmatched Renaldo Major, whose only NBA game was one to forget). 'Buike played all forty-eight minutes, scored twenty-eight points and grabbed seven rebounds, and forged a stable career for himself on the spot. With a (large-nostriled) nose for the rim, a three-point shot that ranged between good and great, and a willingness to mix it up on defense and on the boards, 'Buike was a consistently solid player throughout his Warriors tenure, and a hot start to the '09-'10 season suggested he had the potential to be more than solid. A freak knee injury during Brandon Jennings's 55-point outburst changed all that... Azubuike won't be ready in November, and there's no guarantee that he'll ever recover the explosiveness that made him effective. But he gave this franchise 205 games of good lunchpail basketball (career per 36: 15.0 points, 6.0 rebounds, 55.7 TS%), and should be remembered as a good Warrior.

It won't be at all difficult to remember Ronny Turiaf. While he only played 2,568 minutes in a Warrior uniform, less than many players log in a single season, Ronny endeared himself to fans and teammates with some fierce rim protection, nifty passing, empassioned towel-waving and impressive hobo-bearding. One of the nicest and most likeable players in the league, Ronny at times risked getting more credit than he deserved for his Warriors efforts... his middling rebounding totals prevented him from being a huge asset. But an asset he was, as the Dubs performed better with him than without him in each of his two seasons in Oakland. The Knicks just got a fabulous bench piece and a ray of Martinique sunshine. Here's hoping they treat him well.

The previous gentlemen may have been my favorite two Warriors. Nevertheless, it is much more painful to say goodbye to Anthony Randolph than to either of them. Neither 'Buike nor Ronny was long for the Bay Area; conversely, the Warriors had control over Randolph for three more seasons, with a strong chance of retaining him for longer than that. 'Buike and Turiaf were fun to watch, but Randolph was downright magnetic: whether he was soaring or crashing, he was a spectacle that commanded your attention. Most importantly, while the former two were complementary pieces, AR was a lottery ticket, the Warrior with the greatest potential of all. Two comparisons will suffice.

1) In 2009-10, his sophomore NBA season, Anthony Randolph averaged over 18 points, over 10 rebounds, and over 2 blocked shots per 36 minutes... he was twenty years old. The NBA started officially keeping track of blocks in 1973. In the thirty-seven seasons since then, the list of players who averaged 18/10/2 as twenty-year-olds looks like this:

Shaquille O'Neal

Chris Webber

Anthony Randolph

2) Let's compare the per-36 stats of a pair of twenty-year-olds.

Player A: 16.2 PTS (54.7 TS%), 8.6 REB, 1.8 AST, 0.9 STL, 1.3 BLK, 2.2 TO, 2.7 PF

Player B: 18.5 PTS (52.1 TS%), 10.3 REB, 2.0 AST, 1.3 STL, 2.5 BLK, 2.4 TO, 4.4 PF

Player A shoots a little better and gets in foul trouble less often, but overall, you'd unquestionably rather have Player B, who scores, rebounds and makes defensive stops significantly more often.

If you've been paying attention, you should know that Player B is Anthony Randolph. Player A? You may have heard his name mentioned once or twice lately. His name is Chris Bosh.

The Warriors just traded away a player who has a not insignificant chance of becoming Chris Webber or Chris Bosh. There's a chance he could become Chris Washburn, too; a raw, emotional beanpole like Randolph comes with some obvious risks. But since joining the league, the kid has produced like a motherfucker. And next season in New York, with consistent playing time and a more attentive coach, he'll put up some performances that make you non-believers shake your heads in despair.

Yesterday, I compared this trade to the Webber/Gugliotta disaster. A reader named Matt thought I was overreacting. The truth is, this trade may be worse than that one. Lee is better than Gugliotta (though not by much), and Randolph's not the sure thing Webber was, but there are other variables in play here. Randolph was on a cheap rookie contract, while Webber's contract ($74 million over fifteen years) was downright monstrous for the era. Most importantly, the Webber trade netted the Warriors three first-round picks from a bad Bullets team, a huge factor; this trade has the Warriors adding in the extra chips. Golden State just spent $80 million on a power forward who puts up big numbers without seeming to help his team's fortunes. Anthony Randolph was doing that for a bargain price, and he's already a better defender than Lee.

There is no player, not Monta, not Lee, not even Curry, that has the potential to reverse this franchise's fortunes that Anthony Randolph did. You didn't even have to pay big bucks to the kid... all you had to do was play him, and watch, and hope. The Warriors weren't up to even that nominal challenge. Robert Rowell, Larry Riley and (especially) Don Nelson never gave Randolph a chance to prove himself, and now they've shipped him out the door. The road to hell is paved with bad teams that pissed away high-upside big men. The Warriors should know that better than anyone.

Fare thee well, young spaz... may fortune shine on you in the big city. And may God have mercy on the souls of the foolish Cohanians that fumbled you.

Disaster Strikes

2010-07-09T00:22:00.000-07:00

UGH.

Okay. Look.

The Warriors' big trade today -- Randolph, Turiaf and Azubuike (plus possibly others?!) for David Lee -- has the contours of a trade that makes sense. If you have a bunch of middling players, the best possible outcome is to trade several of them for a pretty good player. Azubuike and Turiaf, as fond as we Worriers are of them, are the exact kind of short-contract spare parts that should be moved for value. And while we'd personally love to cradle Anthony Randolph to our misery-wracked chests until the end of time, there is an argument for trading a high-upside, high-risk guy for a known commodity.

The problem is, the known commodity that is David Lee is known to... how do we put this politely... not help NBA teams win basketball games.

The 2009-10 New York Knicks were outscored by 4.1 points per 48 minutes when David Lee was on the court, and by 2.8 points per 48 minutes when he wasn't. To reiterate: this year's Knicks team played better without David Lee. The previous year? Same deal: the '08-'09 Knicks were outscored by 3.4 per 48 with Lee, and by only 0.7 per 48 without him. In the two years before that, Lee's net plus-minus was positive, but considering he was subbing for a gravy-addled Eddy Curry, that ain't saying all that much.

The more grizzled Warriors fans among you may remember a gentleman by the name of Troy Murphy. By many production-based metrics, Mr. Murphy is a borderline superstar: Dave Berri's Wins Produced, for example, rate him as one of the league's twenty best players. This, of course, is ridiculous, for Troy Murphy's teams are always bad, especially so when he plays... his gaudy rebounding totals stem from the fact that he selfishly pads his own stats, to the detriment of the Pacers' D and even the team's rebounding.

Well, David Lee is better than Troy Murphy. But the two share the same category: both guys boast gaudy counting stats that exemplify weaknesses as much as strengths. When Lee took the floor for the Knicks in the last couple seasons, they rebounded worse as a team and defended much worse. His individual stats suggest he's a borderline All-Star; his team results suggest that the Knicks might've improved upon their 29-53 record if he'd simply stayed home.

This is the exact type of player that the Warriors don't need. In fact, this is the exact type of player that the Warriors just dumped for Charlie Bell and Dan Gadzuric. On a shitty roster with only one healthy three and several high-upside young fours, why, exactly, would you dump $30 million worth of Corey Maggette and then trade real talent for $80 million of David Lee?

This is pointless. This is counterproductive. This is ridiculous. This team is now paying $33 million -- about 57% of the salary cap -- for Monta, Biedrins and Lee, three players whose teams failed to win 30 games last year. This is not how you build a team, nor how you sell one. If the Warriors' next owner looks at a trade like this and smiles, then run for the hills, people... a new day will not be dawning anytime soon. This shit is downright shameful.

Tomorrow, we will take one last look at Anthony Randolph, a player who possesses more upside than any current Warrior (yes, Curry too). Next week, we will embark on the ugly process of examining this newly Lee'd and freshly directionless franchise.

Worrying doesn't even begin to cover it at this point. Is www.goldenstatemourners.com available?

Disaster Looms

2010-07-08T13:17:00.000-07:00

Do not do this, Warriors. Just don't do it. Do not fucking trade Anthony Randolph, Kelenna Azubuike and Ronny Turiaf for David Lee and then sign David Lee to an $80-million deal.

People: call your friends and neighbors, your local representatives, your mail carriers, your travel agents. Sound the alarms... let hell roll through the streets of northern California. May the very skies shudder as we bellow these three truths:

1) The proper move after dumping an overpaid, no-D scorer is not to acquire an even more overpaid no-D scorer.

2) Now is no time to swell the payroll.

3) Rebuilding teams should not punt on Anthony Randolphs.

We're at the edge of a cliff here, folks. Here's hoping LeBron accidentally announces he's joining the Knicks, because this has Webber Dump: The Sequel written all over it.

Stay tuned.

Catchup: The Udoh Pick

2010-07-04T16:32:00.000-07:00

We Worriers are not big college basketball fans. Any sport that requires you to get to know an entirely new set of elite players every season is for suckers, and at the risk of Marxing out on the subject, it's hard to get jazzed about a multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry whose performers don't get a dime. Is the first weekend of March Madness fun? Sure. Does that one weekend a great sport make? Not from where we're sittin'. College hoops, no offense, but we're just not that into you.

Another thing we're not into: talent evaluation by online amateurs. Projecting an NBA prospect's potential from afar isn't as patently ridiculous as doing the same for a prospective NFLer or MLBer, but it's still pretty damn ridiculous. It's not that a fan can't speculate about John Wall's ability to play the point or DeMarcus Cousins's personality; it's that far too many people claim certainty on these subjects, when they have no idea what they're talking about. The transition into the world's strongest basketball league is a complicated one, and no, VonteegoDownToKokomo44, you don't know what's going to happen. Give them indignant capital letters a rest.

With all that said, let's do a by-God EXPERT ANALYSIS of the Warriors' latest draft pick!!!

Ekpedeme Friday Udoh is a 6' 10", 240-pound power forward from Baylor and, before that, Michigan. He is a native Oklahoman, the son of a radiologist and a nurse, both Nigerian immigrants. He has a freakish 7' 4 1/2" wingspan, one he uses to great effect; he led the Big 12 in blocks last season, earning himself the nickname "Nightmare" (which, sadly, doesn't seem to be catching on). And as this clip shows, he's a personable guy and a helluva dresser. The big smile, the crazy length, the mix of potential and bloopers... this guy's the newer, bigger Mickael Pietrus.

The selection of Ekpe Udoh with the sixth overall pick has been more or less panned by the Warriors fanbase and by NBA pundits at large. The condemnations can be summed up in three distinct arguments:

1) Udoh, at age 23, is too old.

2) The Warriors already have two promising young power forwards.

3) No scout, coach or analyst thought he was the best player available.

The first argument is pretty weak: while younger draftees are somewhat more likely to be more productive NBA players, they're not necessarily more productive over the lives of their rookie contracts. But the second argument is a pretty strong one, and the third one is outright damning. We Worriers are not "best player available" absolutists, but if you take a guy at a position you've already filled, you'd damn well better believe he's the cream of the remaining crop. Nobody outside of the Warriors organization saw Udoh that way on Draft Night. And how did the Dubs braintrust explain their thinking? Thusly:

Warriors general manager Larry Riley said that aside from all of the talents of Ekpe Udoh, he was impressed by the fact that the Baylor power forward showed up in a suit and expressed his desire to play for Golden State.

Take note, NBA hopefuls: if you dress like a grownup and don't actively express disinterest in playing basketball, the Warriors will draft you.

This was a bad pick. But there's a difference between "bad" and "Patrick O'Bryant". Most observers think Udoh will be a capable NBA defender pretty much from jump street... a big that can body a dude up is nothing to sneeze at, particularly for this team. There's at least a possibility that Udoh's more troubling college numbers (a 49.1 FG%, a high turnover rate) stemmed from his having to take an unnaturally large role in the otherwise punchless Baylor offense. The guy can hit a jumper, and he even had a pretty good assist rate. He had more issues with efficiency and consistency than you'd like to see in a 23-year-old, but an outright stiff he ain't. There's no reason to think he won't be a viable NBA rotation player.

And while you'd hope to get more than that out of the sixth pick of a draft, not all drafts are created equal... at first glance, there doesn't seem to be a high-upside guy taken after Udoh that will come back to haunt the Warriors. Would Greg Monroe have been a better pick? Almost certainly. Is he a future All-Star, a guy who could've materially changed the future of this franchise? Almost certainly not. The Warriors probably passed up a couple B-minuses for a C-plus. That's frustrating, but it ain't much in the scheme of things.

In fact, the selection of Udoh wasn't even the biggest draft mistake the Warriors made this season. That would be the 7-5 finish to a lost season, a three-week stretch of fun but pointless basketball that cost the team a draft slot. The lost prize here wasn't Greg Monroe... it was DeMarcus Cousins, a genuinely intriguing young talent that the Dubs could've kept or (more likely) traded for value. And the Cohan/Rowell/Riley/Nellie regime's final act of true incompetence was to piss that asset away, by bringing back Monta Ellis to sell a couple more tickets, by coaching to win at the worst possible time. The '09-'10 Warriors not only sucked, they sucked at sucking. The presence of Ekpe Udoh on the roster is a testament to that.

But with time, he may come to stand for more than just past incompetence. He's a defense-first guy and a true professional... both of those things are more than welcome. And while I wouldn't slot him ahead of Randolph or Wright, the Mikki Moore saga should've taught us that an extra capable big man is a nice thing to have. Ekpe Udoh only makes a confused Warriors roster even more so, but he is a useful addition nonetheless. And in November, when the madness of draft punditry has faded, Dubs fans may come to like the big fella.

Catchup: The Maggette Trade

2010-06-30T22:50:00.000-07:00

Take a breath, young basketball fan. Pull your eyes away from the glitz and glamour of the freshly underway free agency season; divert your thoughts from idle fantasies of superstars and fresh starts and hypothetical 73-win teams. Far below all the churn, far below where even the sunlight can reach, the Golden State Warriors franchise inches along, as unattractive and irrelevant as ever.

This repellent franchise has, however, made a rather interesting excretion in recent weeks. After a throat-clearing cash-netting second-round pick downgrade, the zombie FO sent Corey Maggette (and said downgraded second-rounder) to the Bucks for Dan Gadzuric and Charlie Bell. Maggette is a very good player coming off of a career year... by several metrics, he was one of the 25 most productive players in basketball last year, and he was certainly the most productive player on the Warriors. Gadzuric and Bell are scrubs, and bad ones. Maggette is a favorite of this blog; conversely, players don't get any more boring than Bell and Gadzuric.

Personally, I don't like this trade.

I love this trade. I would pick this trade up at the airport during rush hour. I would accompany this trade to "When In Rome", and like it. I would help put this trade through medical school. While this trade sits near the window, reading New Kings Of Non-Fiction, I would sit and stare at the sunlight glinting through the trade's auburn hair, with a dopey grin on my face. I am head over heels for this trade.

How do I love this trade? Let me count the ways:

1) Cap relief. About $15.6 million of it, to be exact (warning: not exact). As a result of this swap, the Warriors' payroll actually rises a bit this year, but shrinks by six million in '11-'12 and almost eleven million in '12-'13. More flexibility, less ballast for a prospective owner to take on.

2) The end of smallball. In the nightmare scenario where Nellie continues to coach this team, he'll be deprived of the weapon he most egregiously misuses.

3) No other talent lost. The Randolphs and Wrights of the world weren't needed to sweeten this deal... the Warriors didn't cost themselves any other chips here. (Okay, yes, the second-round pick. But a team that's been able to grab CJ Watson, Anthony Morrow, Reggie Williams and Anthony Tolliver from the free-talent pile shouldn't be leery of giving up a second-rounder. Let's all take a breath here.)

4) More playing time. Some have suggested that the Warriors now need a small forward... these folks may want to work on their counting skills. If anything, the Dubs still don't have enough minutes for Monta, Morrow, 'Buike and Reggie Williams, the latter of whom would have been buried on a healthy and Maggette'd Warriors roster. That would've been an idiotic waste of resources, given the polish Reggie showed last year.

5) Signs of sanity. After the relinquishing of Baron and the dumps of J-Rich, Crawford and Jack, you might've forgiven the front office for not wanting to be raked over the coals yet again by shipping a name out of town. But they stayed the course and did the right thing here, PR be damned. The impending sale of the team actually has the front office operating with a coherent philosophy for the first time in over a decade... these guys have committed to a fire sale, and the franchise will be better for it.

6) Greener pastures for Corey. Maggette now joins a rising Bucks team that he'll fit like a glove; between him and Drew Gooden, they've already done enough in this offseason to put them in the 50-win tier for next season. Corey Maggette's second trip to the postseason is just about assured.

When it happens, get ready for a raft of articles claiming that "Corey Maggette has finally learned how to win." When you see the articles, recognize them for the inane and simplistic nonsense that they are. Corey Maggette is not Jamal Crawford... he's not a guy whose teams have lost partly because of his presence. He's a guy whose teams have lost despite his presence, whose teams have been crappy enough to outweigh the contributions of one of the fifty greatest scorers the league's ever seen. Corey Maggette knows how to win, and always has. It's his teammates and coaches who haven't figured it out.

In his two years in Oakland, Corey Maggette played through a cascade of injuries, always with a smile on his face. He played out of position over 70% of the time, seeing more minutes at center than at his original position of shooting guard. He was a well-liked teammate, an energetic contributor in the community. Most of all, he scored often and efficiently... his .615 TS% last season was the best by any swingman. And yet, when he was traded for trash, the response of many Warriors fans was, "Good riddance: that bum doesn't know how to win."

Corey Maggette is now on a team with some talent, coached by a man that actually tries to earn his paycheck. In that environment, he will excel, both in the regular season and thereafter. And while many ignorant fans will never know better, here's hoping some haters recognize the truth.

It wasn't you, Corey... it was us. You deserved better. And I, for one, am glad to see you'll finally get it.

Catchup: The Front Office

2010-06-28T23:48:00.000-07:00

While some enjoy speculating about the insanities of the Golden State braintrust, we Worriers don't: it's depressing, and it's generally based on ephemera and the insinuations of those who profit from insinuating. More to the point, there's no party left worth rooting for. When Larry Riley, a replacement-level cipher of a GM, is your standout front office figure, you know you're in the midst of some dark times.

But this regime is (crossed fingers knocking wood) on its last legs, and we should stand ready for the autopsy. And when you're examining a rotting fish, it's best to start with the head. So let's look at what we know and what we think we know.

The Owner

Tim Kawakami has done a crackerjack job of following this stuation on his blog... an entry from June 21st sums up the state of play pretty well. Basically, Chris Cohan started soliciting bids for the franchise in late April, with the help of auctioneer/sports financier extraordinaire Sal Galatioto. Several groups submitted bids in late May. How many groups? Who were these groups? How much did they bid? Thanks to the usual Cohanic blend of secrecy, coyness and just plain bullshit, we don't quite know. But it's reasonable to assume that 1) Larry Ellison, who cleverly allied himself with the current minority owners, is still the guy to beat, 2) Ellison's in no real rush, 3) a group led by 24 Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov is still in the picture, and 4) Cohan isn't likely to get the record $400+ million dollar offer he was hoping for. Awww.

Until a sale finalizes (which could be months), the acting basketball folks are in as pure of a lame-duck position as you can find on the current American pro sports landscape. All of them will almost definitely be fired when a new owner takes charge (and thank the good Lord for that)... in the interim, they're tasked with the job of keeping the team looking all shiny and young and affordable. How're they doing with that task?

The General Manager

Say this for Larry Riley: he has taken every bullet that ownership's asked him to take. He's not only traded three big contracts for junk, but has come out front and center in defense of those trades, weathering all the lumps that another GM might've shunted upstairs. As recently as Friday, Riley was out there in an awkward situation, defending another salary dump and another unpopular draft pick. He folksied his way through decently enough.

As last autumn's neglect of the frontcourt and the deadline fumbles of expiring contracts made clear, Riley's not a good GM... he's not a details guy, and an NBA team, especially a bad one, needs a details guy. But on a broad level, Riley has done his job for this team: he's taken some of the stink off of both the books and the front office's approach to the media. He's a likeable fellow, and the rare GM who'll leave the Warriors no worse than when he found them. Good on ya, Larry.

His last few maneuvers have been especially satisfying, as the dump of Maggette and the selection of the defensive-minded Ekpe Udoh can't have been received fondly by...

The Coach

Nellie hasn't been around much, which comes as no surprise -- the big fella's always been pretty good at reading the handwriting on the wall. His $6 million contract for next season is already baked into the sale price of the team, so there's no incentive to keep him around... one of the first acts of the Warriors' next owner will be to fire the winningest coach in NBA history. If it strikes you as sad that the man's going to go out like this, remember that he'll have made over $16 million for two seasons of flagrantly bad and unprofessional coaching. Most legends like to retire with dignity, but Nellie never was one to do things by the book.

Outlook

Ironically, the current regime is handling its death-rattle far better than it ever handled the day-to-day running of the team. Cohan, outsized $400M dreams aside, has played things credibly so far... Riley's dumped a contract, retained all the prized young 'uns and kept on grinnin'... Nellie has finally retired his unconvincing "I'm a lovable passionate guy" routine. Everybody seems to realize that the ride is over. Cohan and Nellie are Butch and Sundance, and the Warriors fanbase is the Bolivian cavalry. Your robbin' days are over, boys. And it's gonna feel damn good to have you clowns in our rearview mirror.

Next up, we look at the jettisoning of a Worriers favorite. Don't go far.

REBOOT

2010-06-23T08:29:00.000-07:00

Jeez... you take a simple sixty-nine-day blogging sabbatical, and your downtrodden NBA franchise goes all squirrelly on you! Among the Warrior stories that have surfaced while we were off on assignment:

- The team is officially on the market, and while it's too early to name a frontrunner or take down the legions of shrill, blacklit anti-Cohan websites, there is what one would call sunlight on the horizon.

- New uniforms, and better ones, too!

- Kelenna Azubuike exercised his option, keeping him in, uh, white and yellow and royal blue.

- Ex-Dub and Nellie favorite Manute Bol passed away, depriving the league of one of its greatest spectacles and greatest people.

- The Warriors traded one of their best players away for garbage...

- ...and made perhaps the most-reviled pick of the 2010 NBA Draft.

What do we make of all this? Well, friends, that's a good question! And one that will be answered in the days and weeks to come. For we Worriers are BACK, and as long-winded as ever. Stay tuned.

Head-Shaking Record-Breaking

2010-04-16T10:35:00.000-07:00

The 2009-10 Warriors were not your garden-variety bad team... they set a number of all-time league and franchise records. As you can imagine, most of them aren't the kind of lists you want your name on. Nevertheless, this season will feature in the history books for some time to come. Here are just a few of the marks we saw broken this year.

• We started tracking this story four months ago, and it has indeed come to pass... the '09-'10 Golden State Warriors were the worst-rebounding team in NBA history. Their opponents grabbed 792 more rebounds than they did, an average of 9.66 a game... that disparity just edged the 789-board deficit racked up by the previous record-holder (Nellie's '89-'90 Warriors). The current team played at a slightly slower pace, to boot, so on a percentage basis, the gap is bigger. The '89-'90 Dubs grabbed 44.66% of all possible rebounds. The current crop grabbed only 44.42% of all possible rebounds. Just to reiterate: this team was worse at a core basketball skill than any NBA team has ever been.

• The Warriors fielded more starting lineups than any NBA team ever had, and not by a little, either. Larry Brown claimed this record four years ago -- in his nightmarish season with the Knicks, he used 42 different starting lineups. Nellie and Keith Smart used 49 different starting lineups this season. In fact, in his 72 games on the bench ("at the helm" would be overstating his level of engagement), Nellie used all 49 iterations of those lineups. Nellie did not use a single starting lineup more than three times.

• Monta Ellis recorded the highest Usage Rate by a Warrior in the 33 seasons for which that metric has been calculated, edging Purvis Short's '84-'85 showing.

• Monta's reward for all that gunnin'? A net plus-minus of -11.73, the worst net plus-minus by an NBA starter (50%+ of team's minutes) on record.

• On the bright side, Stephen Curry broke the NBA record for most three-pointers made by a rookie. Who says we've got problems?!?!?!?

2009-10: A Season Punted

2010-04-15T16:27:00.000-07:00

The Warriors' thrilling win in Portland last night capped off a 7-5 finish to the season, easily the year's most successful stretch. It was a fun closing run, with big moments and big performances from a number of guys -- in each of the Warriors' final six wins, a different player led the team in scoring. The players remained enthusiastic and chipper throughout the dying months of the season, something many bad teams, and many Warrior teams, have not done. It's hard to remember a group of players as likeable as the current crop, and you may well be feeling pretty good about them right now.

As the glow of those final games fade, however, you'll again be confronted with the cold realities of the team's ineptitude. In a season that was supposed to represent a bounceback from the moped miseries of the yesteryear, the Warriors regressed by three games. Their 26-56 record was tied for the fourth-worst in the league, was the Warriors' worst record since 2001-02, and was the tenth-worst record in the 64-year history of the franchise. (Actually, tied for tenth-worst: the Dubs also went 26-56 in '94-95,the year Chris Webber, Don Nelson and Jim Fitzgerald cruelly morphed into Donyell Marshall, Bob Lanier and Chris Cohan. Let's hope this year doesn't leave scars as lasting.)

This wasn't simply a bad year. This was a horrible year, a disaster, an unmitigated embarrassment. The Warriors got a hard-working and largely healthy year from Monta Ellis, a fabulous, career-best season from Corey Maggette, and an eye-opening rookie turn from Stephen Curry. They still couldn't reach the "heights" of the '08-'09 squad. Why not?

The franchise's various mouthpieces have already made it clear what they want the narrative to be: injuries, with a splash of ref bias. Poor team health was, indeed, a huge issue, and maybe we can chalk that up to pure bad luck (though that's probably a generous assumption). But even if you account for injuries, the Warriors still underperformed. As we've discussed in the past, injuries, even crippling ones, don't have to nuke a team as quickly and thoroughly as they nuked the '09-'10 Warriors. You could blame a 36-46 season on injuries. When you're 26-56, you've still got a lot of 'splainin' to do. As for ref bias -- the Fitz talking point that if Monta had gotten the star calls he deserved, if the league hadn't cheated the Dubs out of a win in Denver in January, the season might've gone a little differently -- it's an excuse that's too pathetic to even merit a debunking. Let's not be children, here.

Was lack of talent an issue? To be sure... the Warriors' talent level is not particularly high. But it's not particularly low, either, and given the energy and hard work displayed by the majority of the roster, it's hard to figure how you only eke out 26 wins in a season. The Pacers have an overrated star and a crap supporting cast around him, and they still managed 32 wins. The Pacers resolutely refused to tank, but then the Warriors didn't tank, either... the Warriors had more wins in their final twelve games than they'd had in their previous thirty games, and they even cost themselves a draft spot or two with a 5-3 record in April. If they weren't talentless, and they didn't tank, how'd they end up on the short list of the worst teams in Warrior history?

The answer is as familiar as it is depressing: complete and utter organizational apathy. The hands-on stewards of the roster -- Larry Riley, Don Nelson and their ilk -- showed no particular interest in fielding a competitive team, either this season or in the future. They didn't screw up their draft pick, and they were eventually able to dump a malcontent; beyond that, they didn't do anything for the Warriors' present, nor much of anything for the Warriors' future. The number of unaddressed problems and missed opportunities throughout the season simply boggles the mind, and the fact that the fanbase hasn't completely turned on the coach and GM only shows how low Bay Area expectations have sunk.

It wasn't simply that the Warriors were bad... we're all used to that at this point. It was that the team didn't make the slightest effort to avoid being bad. Stephen Jackson demanded a trade over the summer, and the front office's response was a confused shrug... by the time they finally bothered to jettison him, the team was already in a bad way. When Brandan Wright went down, the team was reduced to four total big men, one of whom (Mikki) was incapable of playing NBA-level basketball, two of whom quickly got hurt... it was over a month till this problem was even notionally addressed. Larry Riley didn't bother finding a better use for Devean George's roster spot than Devean George; Don Nelson didn't see fit to give Anthony Randolph as many nightly minutes as Vladimir Radmanovic. Nobody was expecting inspiring work from either Riley or Nellie, but some basic high-school-level competence would've been nice.

Coming into this season, the Warriors were a bad team, with an ill-fitting roster, a tuned-out coach and a burdensome ledger of future salary commitments. Going into next season, the Warriors will be... a bad team, with an ill-fitting roster, a tuned-out coach and a burdensome ledger of future salary commitments. Not a lick of progress was made this season. And if you're counting on a draft pick to turn things around, you'll be waiting a long time. This season saw the arrival of the best Warriors rookie in sixteen years, and he didn't make a damn bit of difference.

Warriors fans want Chris Cohan and Robert Rowell gone, as well they should -- it'll be a happy day when those two set sail. But Cohan and Rowell aren't the guys who most actively prevented the team from competing this year. Riley and Nellie are. And if you're interested in seeing this team compete any time in the near future, you should root for the ouster of the latter pair just as fervently. For this season was a failure, and the failure is theirs most of all. No franchise's braintrust has ever given up on a season so willingly.

#82: GSW @ POR 4/14/10

2010-04-14T18:16:00.000-07:00

Portland Trail Blazers

Record: 50-31 (t-9th) • Point Differential: +3.4 (t-10th) • Pace: 87.6 (30th)

Off. Efficiency: 110.8 (8th) • eFG: 49.8 (14th) • TO: 13.9 (3rd) • OReb: 28.3 (3rd) • FT/FG: 25.0 (5th)

Def. Efficiency: 106.9 (t-13th) • eFG: 50.1 (17th) • TO: 15.3 (t-14th) • OReb: 25.2 (7th) • FT/FG: 21.9 (t-13th)

PreThoughts

Another lamentable Warriors season ends in the City of Roses tonight, against a playoff team that may have surprisingly little to play for. If the Spurs lose their season-ender to the Mavs (they're currently down by twelve), the Blazers are locked into the sixth seed no matter what happens in Portland tonight. But Nate McMillan ain't the type to phone it in, and while Brandon Roy is sitting out, it's not like the Blazers' cupboard is bare. The Miller/Fernandez/Batum/Aldridge/Camby starting lineup they're likely to resort to doesn't have many holes, and at least two of those guys are much better than any healthy Warrior...this team excels at rebounding, and they very rarely cough up the ball. The Dubs have been playing with impressive (if ill-timed) fire of late, and there's no reason to expect them to start phoning it in just as the curtains close. But this is the second half of a back-to-back, on the road, against a good team that matches up well against them. Don't be surprised if the Dubs can't make this one a thriller.

Warrior To Watch: Stephen Curry. Put some nice finishing touches on that ROY portfolio, young man.

Blazer To Watch: Marcus Camby, just so you can remember what defense and rebounding look like.

PostThoughts -- Warriors 122, Blazers 116

Well, fuck a duck.

Thanks to this win, the Dubs ended the season tied for the fourth-worst record... if the Wizards hadn't edged Indiana last night, the Warriors would have sole possession of the fifth-worst record. This after holding a pretty commanding lead for the third-worst record mere weeks ago. This spunky finish to the season has, in all likelihood, cost the Warriors two draft spots. That's a pretty heavy cost to pay for some meaningless April fun.

Having said that, this game was a ton of meaningless April fun, and it's hard to be upset about ending on such a high note. We got to see four more iron-man performances, we got a massive exclamation point on Stephen Curry's fabulous rookie season, we got a rare and welcome glimpse of Curry and Monta meshing well on offense, and we got some roster shenanigans to remind us just what a clusterfuck this season has been. It's not the way I would've drawn it up, but then these Warriors aren't used to having game plans to follow, anyway. No complaints.

#81: UTA @ GSW 4/13/10

2010-04-13T18:07:00.000-07:00

Utah Jazz

Record: 52-28 (7th) • Point Differential: +5.5 (3rd) • Pace: 93.7 (9th)

Off. Efficiency: 111.0 (6th) • eFG: 52.6 (4th) • TO: 16.0 (t-23rd) • OReb: 26.8 (14th) • FT/FG: 25.3 (4th)

Def. Efficiency: 105.2 (10th) • eFG: 49.2 (t-12th) • TO: 16.1 (6th) • OReb: 24.7 (5th) • FT/FG: 26.9 (30th)

PreThoughts

The Warriors need a loss to keep pace with the Wizards and Kings in the Suckitude Sweepstakes. Happily, the season's final game in Oracle brings a Utah team that, having won 33 of its last 44 games and with improved playoff seeding to play for, should be more than willing to provide that loss. (If this sounds familiar, well, it should.)

There are few teams that present tougher matchup problems for the Li'l Dubs than these Jazz, but if the Warriors are hell-bent on competing tonight, the Four Factors data above suggests how they might go about doing it. The Jazz are above-average in every component of the game except for two: they turn it over a lot, and they send their opponents to the line more often than any other team. If Curry and Monta are aggressive in the passing lines and Maggette drives early and often, the Warriors could make this a game. Here's hoping they don't.

Warrior To Watch: Stephen Curry, natch. He's averaged 14 points on 12.5 shots and 6.5 assists against 7(!) turnovers in his first two games against the Jazz, and will be looking to excel against them for the first time.

Jazzman To Watch: Deron Williams, a down-ballot MVP candidate who figures to make that a tall order.

PostThoughts -- Jazz 103, Warriors 94

A well-timed brickfest for Los Dubs. It was pretty horrible to watch, but the result -- effort everyone can feel good about, and a loss -- was more than worthwhile.

Two amusing factoids:

1) Paul Millsap grabbed 24 rebounds, which tied the sixth-best mark by an NBA player this season. If you remove Millsap from the equation, the Jazz still outrebounded the Warriors 37-35.

2) Devean George's 21 points made him the tenth Warrior to lead the team in scoring in a given game. How long had it been since he'd led his team in scoring? Let's just say that the last time he did it, his point guard was Gary Payton.

This season has been quite the freakshow. The main tent closes in an hour...

#80: OKC @ GSW 4/11/10

2010-04-11T10:37:00.000-07:00

Oklahoma City Thunder

Record: 49-30 (10th) • Point Differential: +3.6 (10th) • Pace: 93.0 (13th)

Off. Efficiency: 108.1 (13th) • eFG: 49.2 (t-19th) • TO: 16.0 (t-23rd) • OReb: 28.5 (3rd) • FT/FG: 26.8 (2nd)

Def. Efficiency: 104.2 (8th) • eFG: 48.2 (4th) • TO: 16.3 (5th) • OReb: 26.6 (t-18th) • FT/FG: 22.7 (17th)

PreThoughts

Losing last night's game took some effort, but this one should be a piece of cake. The Warriors are performing the dreaded road-and-home back-to-back, returning to Oracle to take on a rested Thunder team that's won 25 of their last 34 games; OKC hasn't shown much interest in losing to the Dubs this year, and seeing as a loss would greatly increase their chances of playing the Lakers in the first round, these guys ain't hurtin' for motivation. If the outcome's in doubt when the fourth quarter starts, it'll be a surprise.

Since this is the last time we'll see the Thunder for awhile, it's worth pausing and marveling at their situation. They are, however you care to slice it, one of the ten best teams in basketball. They are the youngest good team in league history. Going into the summer, they'll have eleven players under contract (Durant, Westbrook, Harden, Ibaka, Sefalosha, Green, Maynor, Krstic, Collison, B.J. Mullens, D.J. White), two obvious and easily filled needs (a three-point specialist, a big banger), the reigning Coach of the Year, $11.8 million in cap space and five picks in June's draft. It's not simply that the Thunder have a brighter future than any other NBA team -- they have one of the brightest futures any NBA team has ever had. God, it must suck to be a Sonics fan.

Warrior To Watch: Stephen Curry has this distinction nailed down, with a 2010 that just keeps on truckin'. On New Year's Day, he was averaging a mere 11.5 points a game... last night's performance upped his season scoring average to 17.1. However, if he 's looking to increase his ROY chances today, passing, not scoring, is probably the way to do it. Curry's assist/turnover ratio currently sits at 1.92. If he can nudge past Tyreke and over the 2.00 mark, he'll allow voters to promote him as the superior passer and all-around player. The odds are very much against his doing this -- even if he only turns it over once in each of the last three games, he'll need twenty-five total assists to reach 2.00. But the odds have been against a lot of things Curry has already accomplished. At this point, the kid definitely bears Watching.

Thunderer To Watch: James Harden, one of Curry's fellow rookies and one of the most slept-on young players in the league. Don't be fooled by the low minutes (22.7 a night) and ugly field-goal percentage (.395)... this guy is a beast. His per-36 numbers -- 15.4 points, 5.1 rebounds, 2.9 assists, 2.2 turnovers, 1.7 steals -- reveal the well-roundedness of his game, and thanks to his three-point stroke and propensity to get to the line, his scoring efficiency is actually slightly above the league average. Most importantly, he is the rare rookie that rates as a genuinely good defender. Adjusted plus-minus lists Harden as the seventh-most effective player in all of basketball. He ain't that, but he's damn good, and the Thunder is the rare team that doesn't have to kick itself for having passed up Stephen Curry.

PostThoughts -- Warriors 120, Thunder 117

What a great game! What a fucking disaster!

This was one of the Warriors' most enjoyable performances of the season, and I'm not gonna hate on the players for still wanting to compete. Aberrantly good three-point shooting won the day, so it's not the team figured out how to play high-level basketball all of a sudden... still, they tried and persevered and outwitted a good young team, and the Oracleans loved it. There is a lot of good in all that.

But Jesus, that was a win the franchise didn't need. A loss here would've kept the Warriors in control of their lottery destiny -- as the third-worst team, they'd essentially be guaranteed a pick no lower than fifth, and would very likely pick fourth or better, in a draft with a quartet of top-tier guys. This win murked things up a good bit... if the Dubs don't land on a lottery ball, they'll have to flip coins with Washington and/or Sacramento to determine their slotting. This win might move the Warriors two notches down the draft board. Was that really worth it, people?

It was nice to see Monta out there again, and even nicer to see him contribute to a win. Ineffective though he's generally been, Monta has worked his ass off... he deserved to play a key role in a good home win.

The Warriors have won six of their last ten games. At no previous point in the season did they win even five out of ten. Nice timing, you clowns.

#79: GSW @ LAC 4/10/10

2010-04-10T16:24:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles Clippers

Record: 27-52 (23rd) • Point Differential: -6.5 (28th) • Pace: 92.4 (16th)

Off. Efficiency: 103.1 (28th) • eFG: 49.0 (t-22nd) • TO: 16.9 (29th) • OReb: 27.2 (11th) • FT/FG: 20.8 (t-24th)

Def. Efficiency: 110.2 (t-22nd) • eFG: 50.9 (21st) • TO: 14.0 (25th) • OReb: 26.2 (t-12th) • FT/FG: 21.5 (t-11th)

PreThoughts

The season's most important game is upon us, and we can only hope that the Warriors have noticed. A top-heavy draft class looms, a scrum of teams are still jockeying for position... both of these teams can help their standing with a loss here tonight. To the vanquished go the spoils.

It won't be an easy task for the Dubs, for as bad as they've been, the Clippers have been much, much worse: by point differential, they're the third-worst team in the league, and the fourth-worst team, Detroit, ain't exactly nipping at their heels. These guys stink on both sides of the ball, and the only thing they do decently is rebound (which makes you wonder if Blake Griffin will really be the panacea most people expect). These guys have lost their last seven games, by an average margin of 14.6 points, to boot. It's pretty hard to bet against them in a suckoff. The Warriors have been known to forget how to play on the road, though, so it could get a little interesting.

The Players To Watch are, of course, the starting point guards. While Stephen Curry surely realizes the upside of a loss here, he also knows that a big finish to the season could push him past Tyreke for Rookie of the Year... don't expect him to go half-speed. You shouldn't expect Baron Davis to go half-speed, either, but only because quarter-speed is more likely. His second year as a Clipper has been healthier and less bricktastic than his first, but his production is still worse than it was in any of his four seasons as a Warrior, and the departure of Mike Dunleavy hasn't perked him up one bit. The Dubs have made tons of mistakes in the last several years, but cutting bait on this guy probably wasn't one of them. At this point, Baron, as much as we all still love him, is no Corey Maggette.

PostThoughts -- Clippers 107, Warriors 104

A pitch-perfect loss. And it was fitting that Baron Davis was in attendance (and, until he got hurt, producing like the old days): in context, this was probably the biggest clutch performance the Warriors have come up with since "We Believe".

I attended this game live (thanks, Worriers reader JY!), and the most compelling figure on the court, by far, was Devean George. I'm not saying that the coaching staff explicitly told him to throw the game. I will say, though, that everything he did -- ill-advised twenty-footers, drives ending in airballs, an insistence on starting the half-court offense in the fourth quarter -- was both out of character and crippling to the Warriors' chances to compete. I will also say that on the two occasions that he hit a shot, Devean strutted down the court as though he'd just won the Masters, causing most of the assistant coaches to burst out laughing. I'm not saying this was tanking. I just don't know what else it could've been.

When you pair up two bad teams with mixed motivations, you're not going to produce a hardwood classic, and indeed, this game was bowling-shoe ugly. Each side had a couple of those mistimed backcourt passes out of bounds that good teams never commit. The defense on both ends was execrable as well, and live, you really notice how little lateral quickness Curry, Reggie and Morrow have. When the Warriors actually want to start winning again, that'll be a problem.

But they shouldn't have wanted to win tonight. And this three-point loss was about the best outcome you could imagine: Curry and the D-Leaguers can content themselves with a spirited road performance, while the Dubs keep sole possession of third place in the lottery. It's nothing a Lakers fan or Bobcats fan or even a Pistons fan would be proud of, but we needed this loss. In a bad world, this was a good night.

Great Job, Guys! Now Tank.

2010-04-08T12:59:00.000-07:00

Rooting for a clueless organization sometimes forces you to root for strange things. I was rooting hard for Nellie to pass Lenny Wilkens, not for his sake -- he's way too damaging of a presence right now for me to care about his legacy, and I don't really think he cared much about the record anyway -- but for the sake of the team's future. A franchise this stupid has enough trouble doing business in a vacuum, let alone in an environment filled with distractions. (The sad irony, of course, is that stupid franchises beget distractions, and thus the bulk of the season has been spent discussing the soap-operatic relationships between key figures, not the horrible product on the court.)

Nellie's record hunt, though ostensibly a positive distraction, was a distraction. Now that it's done, there's at least a chance that the Warriors braintrust will take a glance at the facts on the ground. If they do, they will come to two quick conclusions:

1) Jesus, we suck.

2) Now is no time to stop sucking.

The first point is both obvious and frequently made, but worth reiterating once more: this team is extremely bad, in a way that transcends injuries or luck. There are a number of variables in play here, not all of them reflecting an innate lack of talent: this roster is poorly constructed and execrably coached, and a few savvy trades and more competent on-court guidance could improve the team's results. Nevertheless, there is no reason whatsoever to think that this team has enough talent to compete for a playoff spot in the Western Conference going forward.

Which brings us to the second point, and the only stat line that matters.

Last night's win sank the Warriors into a three-way tie for the worst record in basketball, amidst a cloud of teams that have been sucking in earnest: the Clips, Sixers, Pistons, Wizards and Kings have a combined 18-80 record since March 1st. The Warriors, who've gone 7-13 in that span, could still finish with the league's third-worst record. They could also finish with the league's eighth-worst record; in fact, if they run the table, they could end up tied for eighth-worst with the Knicks, necessitating a coin flip to determined who would have the notional ninth pick in the draft. Which means that we Warriors fans have more perverse outcomes to root for.

Tanking is only advisable under the most extreme of circumstances, but these are those extreme circumstances. The Warriors have a severe talent deficit; they can affect their draft slotting by several places in the season's final week; there is a steep talent dropoff after the first four or five players. Warriors fans have been burned far too many times to find solace in a strong finish to the franchise's worst season in eight years... a couple more wins aren't going to fool anybody. This is is when you manipulate the system to your advantage. The Warriors absolutely have to lose their remaining four games. Any other outcome would rank as one of the biggest blunders in a blunder-filled season.

Happily, the Warriors' three final opponents are the Thunder, the Jazz and the Blazers. These are good, intelligent teams who are playing well, and while it might behoove one or more of them to get cute about playoff slotting, none of these teams has a coach who likes taking his foot off the gas pedal. These teams should beat the Warriors without much trouble; the Dubs should not have to "try" to lose these games. But Saturday brings a formidable challenge, in a Clippers team that 1) also sucks, and 2) also stands to profit from a loss. To be fair, Kim Hughes hasn't been benching starters with phantom illnesses or giving outsized minutes to scrubs... the Clips have more or less kept up appearances. They just haven't shown much interest in winning lately, dropping 16 of their last 18, and 11 of those 16 by double digits. And they've gotten very good at losing to the Warriors, getting outscored by 48 total points in the teams' last two showdowns.

Saturday's visit to LA is, simply put, the season's most important game. The future of this franchise will be more affected by that game than by any other this year; it's a game that could mean the difference between John Wall and Derrick Favors, or between Derrick Favors and Cole Aldrich. The Warriors need more talent, and they will never have a more clear-cut opportunity to increase their chances of getting than they'll have on Saturday. So they need to figure out a way to get this done. Whether it requires sidelining Stephen Curry with "flulike symptoms", or triple-teaming Rasual Butler, or mandating three tequila shots per player before tipoff, it's got to happen.

The celebration is over, and reality has once again descended upon the Warriors. That reality strongly suggests that a loss on Saturday would be a good idea... let's hope the Warriors confront that reality. After all, it shouldn't be too difficult for this team to lose some basketball games.

#78: GSW @ MIN 4/7/10

2010-04-07T16:42:00.000-07:00

Minnesota Timberwolves

Record: 15-62 (29th) • Point Differential: -9.3 (30th) • Pace: 96.1 (3rd)

Off. Efficiency: 101.6 (29th) • eFG: 47.7 (27th) • TO: 16.7 (28th) • OReb: 26.9 (13th) • FT/FG: 20.5 (27th)

Def. Efficiency: 111.2 (27th) • eFG: 52.2 (t-28th) • TO: 14.7 (22nd) • OReb: 26.2 (13th) • FT/FG: 21.9 (14th)

PreThoughts

So the Dubs pasted the Knicks in Oracle last week, and then kicked off their road trip in style, edging the Raptors in a sloppy popcorn thriller that got Don Nelson a share of the all-time wins mark. The stars were aligned for a record-breaking win in Washington yesterday. Nellie got some ink on ESPN.com, giving Marc Stein a long but characteristically blunt and charming interview. The Warriors even managed to get a tour of the White House, though not, as you might imagine, for their basketball exploits. In the nation's capital, against the franchise that drafted him, with three of his beloved D-Leaguers in the lineup... it sure seemed like Nellie's night.

Instead, the Warriors got throttled, in a game that served a reminder of just how small and clueless they currently are. A horrible Wizards team not only beat the Dubs at their own game, but embarrassed them at it, with castoff Cartier Martin serving witness. Instead of becoming the winningest NBA coach of all time, Don Nelson became the first NBA coach to give up a monster game to JaVale McGee. It doesn't matter how the stars align if you can't get a damn rebound.

Tonight, the Warriors play the honest-to-God worst team in the league, a team that sucks at almost everything. But the Timberwolves do not suck at rebounding. And if the Warriors get hammered on the boards, whether through shorthandedness or miscoaching, even these Wolves can make them pay. The Warriors do not fare well on the road, nor on the second half of back-to-backs.

Nellie deserves his record, but for reasons that have nothing to do with this Mickey Mouse outfit. Pray the waiting game ends tonight, but don't be shocked if it doesn't.

Warrior To Watch: Stephen Curry, who's wrapping up a likely silver-medal rookie performance. These Wolves passed on him twice, and he has yet to put in a signature performance against them to rub their noses in it.

Wolf To Watch: Jonny Flynn, a likeable guy who can't lace Curry's shoes.

PostThoughts -- Warriors 116, Wolves 107

A little diciness towards the end there, but a fine take-care-of-business win, and nice to see some smiles on the boys' faces.

The Warriors outrebounded the Wolves here, which was unsurprising for two reasons. The obvious one was Jefferson's absence; the subtler one was the alignment of talent that Nellie had on hand. When you dress three bigs and only one small guard, it's just about impossible to overdo smallball. On his record-breaking night, the big man was at least partially saved from himself.

This Stephen Curry is really starting to be somebody. Hootie hoo, what a game.

#74: GSW @ UTA 3/31/10

2010-04-01T15:20:00.000-07:00

PostThoughts -- Jazz 128, Warriors 104

While the Golden State Warriors will learn how to compete on the road again someday, that process just isn't going to start in Salt Lake City. This was every bit the drubbing that it looked to be when the season schedule came out.

Say this for the Dubs: offensively, their hearts were in the right place. They attempted 26 three-pointers and shot 42 free throws, and when you spend that much time in high-value situations, you're likely to win. The Warriors made only four of those threes, and didn't fare well from two-point land either... only Chris Hunter hit half of more of his shots, and he only took four of them. A teamwide cold-shooting night isn't a problem. The problem is that on a cold-shooting night, you have to do some other things -- defense and rebounding and such -- and the Dubs got outrebounded by 22 and let the Jazz record 37 assists.

The Warriors used their 45th starting lineup, extending their miserable league record. Also, that soft "click" you heard yesterday was the door slamming shut on Stephen Curry's ROY chances... his weak line, combined with Tyreke's 20/7/13 showing in Minnesota, has pretty much sealed the deal. Weep not for Stephen Curry, America. This team has several dozen bigger problems.

Back home tomorrow night for a sprint with the Knicks, and then it's off on the season's easiest road trip. The Warriors aren't likely to run the table and match last year's (thoroughly shitty) record, but winning three of eight and getting Nellie atop Mt. Wilkens should be more than doable. Of course, with three determined tankers nipping at their heels and a draft with a clear-cut top four, the Warriors might be well-served to crank up the suckin'. As tonight showed, they've still got plenty of it left.

Warriors SCORE Board, 3.30.10

2010-03-30T11:00:00.000-07:00

Previous Editions: 12.21.09 • 1.10.10 • 2.08.10 • 2.17.10 • 2.23.10

We have updated the numbers and links at left. (It had been awhile... Coby Karl was still in there. Ewwww.) Now, we update the storied SCORE Board, with one tweak to our statistical recipe.

SCORE = WARP per 3000 minutes + Wins Produced per 3000 minutes + Win Shares per 3000 minutes + PER + Net Unadjusted Overall Rating

82games.com, we love you like our electronic brother from another mother, but you just don't update your Simple Rating often enough. As such, we'll now be getting our dash of plus-minus data from the dogs at Basketball Value, who revise their numbers daily. We're going to stick with the unadjusted overall figures, as several Warriors have played too few minutes to merit adjustment. There is noise in these numbers. Hopefully, the other elements of SCORE will outweigh that noise.

Notes: the NUOR (ewwww) reflects efficiency differential, not raw point differential, so the unit of measurement there is "points per 100 possessions", not "points per 48 minutes". Also, the Wins Produced data (we're using Bradford Doolittle's Wins Produced, not the Berri flavor) are oddly inflated this time around... that metric currently seems to think that every NBA player is amazing. We could toss their numbers, but the system makes a good point -- NBA players are amazing at basketball! Plus, we didn't want to have to mess around in Excel more than was necessary. For now, WP3K, you get a reprieve.

To reiterate: the proper way to interpret these results is to have complete faith in their validity and wisdom.

To the Board!

That rascally Reggie Williams has pushed Corey Maggette from his long-held perch. It's not like Corey has cooled down, either... while his minutes have decreased, he's shooting a blistering 56.1% in March, even better than he did in January. Corey has been everything one could have hoped. Reggie, of course, has been something else altogether, providing peak-Peja-esque numbers since being plucked off the waiver wire.

Stephen Curry fares pretty well across the board (Win Shares isn't overly enamored, but they seem to be giving him short shrift for his positive effects on the offense). His slow start keeps his overall numbers from being elite, but his last three months have indeed been stellar. Anthony Tolliver rode the finest month of his career to the finest SCORE showing of his career. He doesn't rate better than mediocre by any production-based metric, though, and to become somebody, he'll need to improve his efficiency inside -- he's hitting just 46.2% of his twos, and getting blocked 13% of the time he shoots from close range. Chris Hunter, like Tolliver, combines pedestrian-at-best production with excellent plus-minus numbers. This shouldn't be regarded as an endorsement of these two guys so much as an endorsement of using bigger players in general. Heresy, I know.

The likeable bench trio of CJ Watson, Ronny Turiaf and Anthony Morrow clocks in next... a metric's opinion of these guys depends on how highly it values usage, as all three of these guys score efficiently but rarely. The order seems about right: CJ's been the most effective of the three, while Morrow's had several long rough patches. Devean George has amassed some good plus-minus numbers in his patchwork appearances, but his production has been about as poor as you'd expect.

Monta Ellis brings up the rear in our latest go-round, and while this is largely due to his historic plus-minus crappiness -- if you removed NUOR, he'd place fourth -- WARP and Win Shares both remain unimpressed by his performance. Simply put, what Monta has done this season hasn't worked. This doesn't necessarily mean he has to be traded or even blamed. But it's a point that must be acknowledged and accounted for. No other "star" player would finish in last place on his team.

Messy results for a messy team... next time out, we may try another plus-minus variety. Thanks, SCORE!

#73: GSW @ LAC 3/28/10

2010-03-30T10:11:00.000-07:00

PostThoughts -- Warriors 121, Clippers 103

A ROAD win?! Sweet jumpin' fuck! The Dubs snapped a thirteen-game losing streak outside of Oakland in this one, and posted their first road win against a non-Nets/non-Wolves team since November.

That cold night against Dallas sure didn't seem to stick; the Warriors resumed their layup line here, and the Clips bricked a few too many to keep up. This game was very much in keeping with recent trends, as the Warriors got badly outrebounded (53-38), but scored (53.4 FG%) and passed (2.27 A/TO) with extreme efficiency. Was Monta's absence a positive? Hard to say... his net plus-minus results haven't been bad lately, and he's been around for many of the slickest offensive performances. But at the very least, one can safely say that he wasn't missed here.

Both Turiaf and Tolliver had more than twice as many points as shot attempts, which is the kind of complementary work you've gotta love. And while our man Reggie is still flying far south of his previous efficiency -- 25 points on 22 shots ain't nothin' to write home about -- seven assists against one turnover buys you a lot of goodwill around here. Curry had the kind of quiet, foul-heavy, good-but-not-great game we saw a lot from him in the season's first couple months. Given the crushing number of minutes he's received as a rookie, he's held up admirably.

As odd as it is to say about a team that's 5-30 outside of their building, the Warriors have a chance to grab another couple road wins before the season wraps up. They'll lose in Salt Lake City tomorrow, but Sunday brings a road trip replete with patsies (the Raptors, the Wizards, the Wolves, these Clippers), and the Warriors' final game is against a banged-up Blazers team that will almost certainly be resting up for the postseason. A mini-run to end the year is very possible. On a strategic level, it'd be the exact wrong time to start winning, but it'd be nice for the players to feel a little sunshine on their faces, and it'd be nice to wrap up this Nellie fiasco once and for all.

#72: DAL @ GSW 3/27/10

2010-03-30T09:50:00.000-07:00

PostThoughts -- Mavericks 111, Warriors 90

A wild streak of high-quality offense came grinding to a halt here, with eight of nine Warriors shooting below 50% and Reggie and CJ netting a mere 13 combined points off of 28 attempts. On some level, it was just one of those nights... when Rodrigue Beaubois goes 9-for-11 from long distance, all you can do is just tip your hat to him and move on. But this game should serve as a grim reminder of the risks of predicating your attack on jump shooting. (Incidentally, the ninth Warrior did not shoot 50% or better: Ronny didn't attempt a shot in his 19 comeback minutes.)

Anthony Tolliver had an eye-popping 21 rebounds here, including an other-eye-popping eight on the offensive end. It's hard to see much upside in him, but every now and again, he has a game that makes you wonder. In a mere seven minutes, Chris Hunter contributed three rebounds, a block and a team-best +4 plus-minus, extending his strong results in the latter category. Hunter is the only Warrior who's seen the team outscore its opponents during his time on the floor this season; whether anyone in the organization is aware of that is an open question.

This was the first time the Warriors got blown out in Oracle in four months, and you never like to see your dogs go down hard at home. But when you're outstroked, you're outstroked. Hardly the most frustrating loss of the season.

The Ultimate Warrior

2010-03-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

Last time out, we documented the Dubs' recent transition from a high-scoring, no-D team into, well, a really high-scoring, no-D team. The average Warriors game in the last three weeks has been a 124-122 loss. Several teams haven't scored or given up that many points in a single game all season... the Warriors are living there right now. The league hasn't seen a team put up numbers like those since the freak-show Nuggets of the '80s and early '90s.

Pace isn't the issue here, either. The Warriors continue to play at a league-leading pace, but their pace (100.3 possessions per contest) hasn't actually quickened lately; they're not playing faster than they were earlier in the season. The scores of Warriors games are rising because they're featured unbelievable offensive precision on both ends. The Warriors aren't shooting more often, they're making shots more often... their opponents are doing the same, to say the least.

That this streak has coincided with the rise of Reggie Williams can not be considered a coincidence. Because, make no mistake: to date, Reggie Williams has, on a per-minute basis, been one of the most effective offensive players in the league this season. His simple per-36 minute averages -- 21.2 points, 5.3 rebounds, 3.2 assists -- are nice, but they understate the quality of his contributions by a significant degree. Firstly, Reggie's True Shooting Percentage is a laughable .664... only two guys, Blazers Nic Batum and Jeff Pendergraph, rate ahead of him, and neither scores nearly as often as he does. In fact, his combo of scoring frequency and scoring accuracy is damn near historic... only ten guys have posted a .650+ TS% and a 20.0+ Usage Rate in 300 or more minutes, and six of them are named Barkley, Dantley, Gilmore, McHale, Nash and Stoudemire. Secondly, Reggie's 3.2 assists come at a cost of a mere 1.5 turnovers. The only Warrior who boasts a better assist/turnover ratio than Reggie's 2.07 mark is CJ Watson.

Essentially, Reggie has played like a more efficient Corey Maggette who can pass. And metrics that rely heavily on offensive production have noticed: Reggie's 21.0 PER would place him 22nd in the league (just ahead of Maggette, ironically enough), and his Offensive Rating of 128 (per Basketball-Reference) is higher than that of any player with enough minutes to qualify. The Dubs score 115.8 points per 100 possessions when Reggie's on the floor... only four guys have totals that high in big minutes, and they all play for Phoenix.

It's not like Reggie's just outperforming Anthony Morrow on offense. He's outperforming everybody on offense. No current Warrior -- not Curry, not Monta, not Maggette -- has ever posted across-the-board production this good. Reggie has not just been a good scorer... he's been a big-impact offensive player, a guy who systemically improves his team's offensive ability when on the floor. That's not bad for a call-up, and it suggests he'll be a big asset going forward, as long as he's not the worst defensive player in NBA history.

Sadly, we can not yet rule out that possibility. The Warriors have given up 120.3 points per 100 possessions with Reggie on the floor, an eye-poppingly horrible number... the next-worst mark on the team, Devean's, is miles behind at 113.8. No full-time NBA player has a mark worse than 115.8 (the three worst finishers, as you might imagine, are all Raptors). And thus, for all of his offensive magic-making, Reggie has not made a big impact on the team's ability to compete. In the thirteen games since Reggie signed, the team has been outscored by 4.1 points per 48 with him on the floor and by 6.5 points with him on the bench... the current Warriors are a little better when he plays, but only a little, and still well south of good. Because some of the offensive pixie dust he sprinkles on the Warriors lands on the other team, as well.

When Reggie Williams is on the floor, everybody can make a shot, and nobody can make a stop. Putting Reggie Williams into a Warriors game is like pouring gasoline on a grease fire. He's like the dudes at the end of "Desperado", the guys you call in when there's no other option but to burn the village to the ground. He has shown himself to be the living embodiment of all that the franchise loves... he is the most Warriory Warrior to ever walk the face of the earth. All hail Reggie Williams. All hail the ultimate Warrior.

Catchup: Games #65-71

2010-03-25T09:29:00.000-07:00

Apologies for the recent radio silence. Look, sometimes fantasy baseball just happens. You've been there, dog... don't hate.

It hasn't been an uneventful time; like a bleary-eyed and recently shot Agent Cooper, we are a bit overwhelmed by the flood of news emanating from Oakland. Don Nelson has tipsily claimed he wouldn't mind coaching summer league. Raja Bell has finally relinquished his inexplicable hold of a roster spot. Stephen Curry has finally broken his "injured Warrior" cherry. Chris Cohan has finally acknowledged an interest in ending our long regional nightmare. And to top it all off, the good guys have played some more basketball games! Since we last checked in, they have

• beaten the Raptors 124-112, on a rare night where both Curry and Monta excelled;

• lost a 124-121 heartbreaker to the Lakers with a classic mix of heartening and head-scratching play;

• topped the Hornets 131-121 behind a trio of career nights from D-League alums;

• gotten stomped 147-116 by the Spurs, making their 24th straight loss in San Antonio one to remember;

• lost a 123-107 snoozer in Memphis, extending their road losing streak to 13;

• been edged 133-131 by the Suns, with a bone-rattling Amar'e dunk summing up the season nicely, and

• won a 128-110 semi-laugher against the Grizzlies, making Memphis the first good team to lose to the Dubs twice.

This was an absurd stretch of basketball, with scads of highlights, lowlights and moments of interest, and had we not been so busy assembling a juggernaut of an f-ball squad (Lincecum, Greinke and Johan --we'll talk later), we'd have very much enjoyed putting these games under our usual nerdy microscope. But time keeps on slippin' into the future [synthesizer solo], and we mustn't dally overlong in the past. So let's examine this heptet of games as a block. What did the Warriors do well? What did they do poorly? What trends are worth noting?

Team Offense

As you might imagine, this end of the floor hasn't been a problem. During this seven-game stretch, the Warriors averaged 122.6 points a night, shooting exactly 50.0% from the field, 42.0% from long distance and 83.6% from the line... those numbers not only exceed the Dubs' overall '09-'10 averages, they exceed every team's '09-'10 averages. The Dubs have continued the long-distance barrage we were hoping for: they launched 26.9 threes a night in this time period, a rate exceeded only by the Magic overall. And the Dubs' passing numbers have been video-game good: the Warriors averaged 26.0 assists against just 12.0 turnovers in this stretch, posting a point-guard-esque 2.17 A/TO ratio as a team.

This wasn't simply the Warriors amassing big point totals due to their breakneck pace. This was a stretch of jaw-droppingly, historically effective offensive basketball, and it'd have taken some real assy D for the Warriors not to win at least five of seven here...

Team "Defense"

...you know how this story ends. The Warriors' opponents scored 124.3 points per outing, with the Grizzlies' 110-point showing last night representing the lowest output by anyone. Last night's game was also the only one of the seven in which the Warriors held their opponents below 50% shooting from the field. Their opponents shot an aggregate 53.9 FG% in this timespan -- only the '84-'85 Lakers shot that well over the course of a season -- and recorded even more assists than the Warriors (27.7 to 26.0). The Dubs continued to grab a lot of steals, but that proved no more effective an overall defensive strategy than it has all year. In these seven games, the Warriors played like one of the twenty best offensive teams in history and one of the ten worst defensive teams in history. That formula will put a lot of butts in the seats, but it won't get you anywhere fast.

The Warriors' defense has been horrid all year, of course, but this stretch represented a new low. Why was the Dubs' D so super-double-extra-bad here? Occam's razor, girlfriend!

Size Matters

Warriors opponents averaged 47.4 rebounds a night in this stretch. While that may not sound like an aberrantly high figure, remember, the teams in these games haven't been missing very often. When you notice that the Warriors averaged just 35.0 rebounds in this seven-game swing, you start to smell the problem. There've been 66 NBA games this season in which one team grabbed 47 or more rebounds and the other team grabbed 35 or fewer... in those games, the outrebounded team has gone 8-58. This should come as no surprise: the Warriors have played the role of "team that gets outrebounded 47-35 or worse" an embarrassing eleven times, and lost all eleven of those games.

Another sad consquence of the Warriors' recent bout of Lilliputianism is the gruesome number of points in the paint they've allowed. On the season, the Warriors have allowed 48.9 points in the paint, the league's worst figure. In these past seven games, however, they've allowed 60.3 points in the paint per contest. They gave up ninety fucking points in the paint to the Spurs, a total that (though I haven't yet been able to confirm this) absolutely has to be a league record. And to complete the picture, the Warriors have continued to fecklessly slap at their larger opponents. Their opponents have shot 31.6 free throws a night in this timespan, a number that -- you guessed it -- is higher than the season average of any NBA team.

This should come as no surprise: this team's central problem is not poor late-game execution or inexperience or lack of moxie or even defensive ineptitude. To compete in the NBA, you need to compete near the rim. And until the Warriors are willing and able to do that, they will always be a joke, no matter how entertaining their style of play.

Nelson Eddy

The team's health woes and stumbling lurch towards a meaningless record should not obscure the fact that this guy is still coaching an eager young roster down the drain. Bob and Jim can lament the fact that Chris Hunter is the team's only available center all they want... when you're only playing said OAC 22.4 minutes a night, during a stretch where lack of size is your defining problem, you're not actually making a good-faith effort to win basketball games. You can argue that Nellie shouldn't be trying to win basketball games, but you can't argue that he's bringing a single thing to the table right now. With the amount of effort he's currently putting in, I'm not actually sure that he'd be the best coach for the Warriors' summer league squad, let alone the real one.

Rotation Rumblings

The fascinating ascendance of Reggie Williams (something we'll discuss in detail soon) has seemingly pushed CJ and Morrow to the curb; if you throw out the two games Curry missed, they've respectively averaged 18.8 and 16.0 minutes in this timespan, despite an absurd tilt towards smallball. Neither guy is signed for next season, and it's frankly a bit hard to see why they'd want to stick around. The team seems more than fine with the idea of CJ departing, but Morrow was a favorite son as recently as a month ago, and Riley and Nellie are signaling that they'll push hard to keep him. Which makes sense. After all, you're gonna need at least six or seven offense-only swingmen to compete in this league.

Holy fucking moly. You can't accuse this regime of going out quietly... strictly in terms of on-court product, this may be the weirdest team in the history of a thoroughly weird franchise. The freakshow continues Saturday against Dallas.

#64: POR @ GSW 3/11/10

2010-03-12T18:19:00.000-08:00

PostThoughts -- Blazers 110, Warriors 105

In some ways this was a typical loss, the kind we saw all too often in December and January: death by smallball, an open-and-shut case of bad coaching. In other ways, though, this broke the mold of Warriors futility we've seen in recent years.

As Kevin Harlan et al helpfully reminded us, the Blazers had not won in Oracle since 2004. Through the good, bad and ugly of the past six seasons, the Warriors had held serve against Portland; the offensive talent and home court advantage were always just enough to keep a decent team at bay. And that looked to reman the case through the first three-and-a-half quarters last night. As it turns out, however, this Warriors team is bound for even lower depths. Oracle is not the salve it once was... the few bright spots are winking out, one by one. This team is fucking AWWWWful.

The key numbers from last night: 43 minutes total for non-perimeter players, a 53-36 rebounding deficit, 2 poor performances from the supposed team leaders, 31 fouls (24 by the starting lineup alone), 6th straight loss, and an attendance of 17,308 and dipping, dipping, dipping.

Ladies and gentlemen, your Golden State Warriors. Pity the collegian that has to wade into this swamp next fall.

The Warriors and Truthiness

2010-03-10T12:04:00.000-08:00

This weekend saw the largest edition yet of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytic Conference, an annual gathering of the nerds that provides a rare high-profile moment for APBRmetricians. Many of the people whose work we've linked to -- Hollinger, Simmons, Pelton, Paine, Sill -- were in attendance, as were former Dub Avery Johnson and noted Barry son Brent. Not in attendance? Anyone currently affiliated with the Warriors. Some attendees estimated that as many as 16 of the 30 NBA teams (including most of the best teams) sent representatives to the conference; no one saw any sign of an envoy from Oakland.

This is not surprising, but it is nevertheless dispiriting. Given the wealth of geek talent in the Bay Area and the storied successes of Billy Beane's analytic work just down the road, there is no team that should have cottoned to advanced statistics more quickly than the Warriors. Instead, they continue to languish in ignorance; while most intelligent front offices were keeping an eye on Cambridge, Larry Riley and his comrades twiddled their thumbs. And so, on the day that BP's Kevin Pelton announced he was now working as a consultant for the Pacers, the Warriors lost their third game in a row. On the day that the conference itself took place, the Warriors lost their fourth in a row. And on Monday, while the basketball cognoscenti buzzed over the statistical insights of the weekend, the Warriors lost number five.

This goes beyond the little on-court efficiencies that statheadedness can add. For a franchise as rudderless as this one, a refusal to reckon with the realities of the statistical record is a refusal to deal with reality itself. And indeed, we have seen some decision-making and signaling from Oakland that evokes all the intelligence and clearheadedness of the previous presidential administration. Every day, this team drives home the lesson that you can't spell "Warriors" without "W".

Let's take a trip down Memory Lane here in Worrierville and revisit some of the team's more harmful '09-'10 delusions:

1) That Stephen Curry is a great point guard. This is not a debate about what he will become... this is a debate about what he currently is. Right now, Stephen Curry is a guy whose 1.80 assist/turnover ratio is tied for 45th-best among the 49 NBA point guards who've played significant minutes, and worse than the ratios of Anthony Tolliver and Devean George. On a good-shooting team that features a host of players with above-average passing numbers for their positions, Stephen Curry's numbers are flat-out bad. You'd think that'd merit the occasional "he's got a ways to go" or "he's still getting the hang of things", but no. Both Nellie and Riley repeatedly claim that Curry is already a great point guard, when even a token awareness of statistical realities suggests otherwise.

2) That Monta Ellis has played at an All-Star level. Even the most Monta-friendly metrics like PER don't feature him among the 80 best players in the league. By Win Shares, Monta has been no better than the eighth-most helpful Warrior, this despite his massive amount of playing time. By both raw plus-minus and its adjusted variants, Monta has been one of the most ineffective players in the entire league. And yet the front office is tickled pink about him.

3) That smallball is effective. Through March 5th, the Warriors had spent 12% of their minutes featuring a three-guard lineup (indicated by Monta's being listed as a small forward). That alignment has been outscored by 10.8 points per 48 minutes, comfortably south of Nets territory. Does anybody actually believe we've seen the last of that alignment?

4) That Mikki Moore was useful. The Dubs, avec Mikki, were outscored by 15.4 points per 48. Only injury pulled him from the starting lineup.

5) That Raja Bell is a big part of the team's future. At least they got the player right -- Raja was a very effective two a couple years ago. Since then, he has gotten 1) worse, 2) injured, and 3) about halfway into the 34th year of his life. This is not a guy on whom you should affix a two-year deal, let alone your hopes and dreams. (That's not even getting into the Warriors' more basic statistical mistake -- an inability to count how many swingmen they already have.)

A greater understanding of and reliance on statistics will not magically fix the Warriors; analytical ignorance is not the only thing even the main thing afflicting this team. But it is an affliction, and a harmful one at that. For the numbers tell a story that can not be spun or denied or papered over. You can not stare the advanced metrics of this team in the face and claim that injuries are the only problem here... you can not Fitzgerald your way past the ugliness of the Warriors' dysfunction.

There is truth in numbers. It is a limited, partial truth, but it is truth nonetheless. And this franchise will not be able to handle the rigors of an NBA season until it again learns how to handle the truth.

D-cisions, D-cisions

2010-03-09T15:45:00.000-08:00

This summer, whilst sifting through the wreckage of the season, the Golden State braintrust will have to fish or cut bait on several players, by either extending a qualifying offer (if not something more generous) or by letting them walk. The Warriors will clearly work to keep Anthony Morrow in hand, and will at least make an effort to keep C.J. Watson around. More interesting, if less important, will be their decisions on the D-League dudes. To hear the always-brilliant Hoopdata tell it, the Warriors would need to spend $1.25 million to retain Anthony Tolliver and $1.03 million to retain Chris Hunter. Reggie Williams is still on his initial ten-day contract; if the Dubs lock him up for the year, he'd be in line for a similar $1+ M qualifying offer.

Let's screen these scrumptious scrubs. Who should the Warriors retain? Who will they retain?

Chris Hunter

Per 36: 12.1 points (.501 TS%), 7.6 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.2 turnovers, 0.5 steals, 1.7 blocks, 6.8 fouls

Positives: Hunter's been able and willing to mix it up underneath, on a team that's sorely needed that -- his shot-blocking numbers are solid. His foul frequency is not necessarily a negative, as he's been explicitly deployed as an enforcer at times; if any Warrior should have a high foul rate, it's Hunter. He's passed pretty well for an inexperienced big, and he gets to the line decently often given how rarely he shoots. He seems like a prince of a guy. And his on-court/off-court stats and his RAPM showing indicate that the Warriors have been more effective on both ends when Hunter has played...

Negatives: ...in minutes too scant and context-dependent to draw any conclusions with confidence. Things we can conclude with confidence: Hunter is neither a frequent nor an efficient scorer, and he's a significantly below-average rebounder for a center. That's not a combo you like to see.

Should They Re-Sign Him? Probably not. The plus-minus data suggests that he may be a bit better than his production, but no bigs with production like this ever rise to the level of "good". It wouldn't be a tragedy to plant him at the very end of the bench... there are worse players in the league. There are also better ways to spend a million bucks.

Will They Re-Sign Him? Doubtful. Expect his bench big spot to go to a vet, for better or (in the case of another Mikki type) for worse.

Anthony Tolliver

Per 36: 12.5 points (.502 TS%), 7.5 rebounds, 2.2 assists, 1.1 turnovers, 0.7 steals, 0.8 blocks, 2.9 fouls

Positives: Tolliver is a stretch four, an extremely valuable type of player in the current NBA. Like Hunter, he seems to be a well-liked and high-character guy; like Hunter, he fares quite well by plus-minus. And he boasts some surprisingly good results in small areas: he's done an impressive job of avoiding fouls for a big man, and his 1.96 assist/turnover ratio is the second-best on the best behind CJ's. Tolliver is a piece that seems to fit the Warriors well.

Negatives: Trouble is, he's really not much of a piece; even with his occasional big games, he posts scoring and rebounding numbers that are essentially identical to Hunter's (though as a four, the rebounding bar for Tolliver is not quite as high). Tolliver would need to be an elite three-point shooter to be really interesting, and with a .333 mark in college, a .371 mark in the D-League and a .338 mark in the NBA, there's no real indication that he is one.

Should They Re-Sign Him? An unenthusiastic yes. Floor-stretching bigs, even bad ones, have their uses.

Will They Re-Sign Him? Yes. And given the risk that he'll get playing time over superior players in Randolph and Wright, it may be a re-signing Warriors fans come to despise.

Reggie Williams

Per 36: 19.4 points (.595 TS%), 4.6 rebounds, 4.6 assists, 1.5 turnovers, 0.6 steals, 0.3 blocks, 1.8 fouls

Positives: THIS GUY'S FUCKING AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!

Negatives: It's only been five games. There's no indication that he can play any defense whatsoever. The Warriors have over eighty other swingmen, all of whom can score.

Should They Re-Sign Him? Without question. All of the quibbles above are relevant: the sample size is tiny, he looks to be a horrible defender, and he plays a position that's already laughably overstocked as it stands. But bad teams need to stockpile assets, and Williams, a guy who has excelled and over-achieved at every level in Curry-like fashion, looks for all the world like an asset. The Warriors should lock him in for next season and worry about the details later.

Will They Re-Sign Him? Probably... he plays the style that the team (over)values. However, we can't rule out the possibility that the front office will idiotically refuse to renounce the rights to Devean George or Raja Bell, forcing Williams back into the minors (and, in short order, onto another NBA roster).

#63: GSW @ NOH 3/8/10

2010-03-09T15:25:00.000-08:00

PostThoughts -- Hornets 135, Warriors 131

A blast of a loss. That's not to say these losses don't hurt... it would've been nice to see the guys' effort be rewarded with a win at some point during this road trip. But in the scheme of things, with Wall and Turner looming ever larger, an outcome like this is damn near optimal. Morrow, Devean and REGGIE~! all had comically effective games. Curry did not, and has quietly posted five poor performances in his last six outings... however, the kid's gassed beyond belief and receiving more defensive attention than he ever has, so it's probably nothing to worry about.

Given the all-around hot shooting and decimation of the front line, it's forgivable, but worth noting all the same: the Warriors' total of 23 rebounds was the lowest total by any NBA team in a game this season. And if you're wondering, yes, dem Dubs are again on pace to be the worst-rebounding team in league history, edging Nellie's Warriors of twenty years ago.

Winless though it was, this was probably the Warriors' best-played road trip of the year: four competitive performances against good teams, with the only dud coming in one of the three or four least winnable games of the season. Thursday brings a four-game homestand that looks breezy in comparison, with three beatable opponents (Portland, Toronto, these Hornets) and zero back-to-backs. Even with lottery balls in mind, it'd be nice to see the Warriors take two of these four games. The players and fans deserve a few smiles, even if Cohan and his cohort do not.

#62: GSW @ CHA 3/6/10

2010-03-06T15:36:00.000-08:00

Charlotte Bobcats

Record: 29-31 (20th) • Point Differential: +0.4 (15th) • Pace: 90.6 (27th)

Off. Efficiency: 103.6 (t-25th) • eFG: 48.8 (t-21st) • TO: 17.3 (30th) • OReb: 25.9 (20th) • FT/FG: 25.8 (t-3rd)

Def. Efficiency: 103.1 (6th) • eFG: 49.5 (t-12th) • TO: 16.9 (3rd) • OReb: 25.4 (8th) • FT/FG: 20.0 (t-3rd)

PreThoughts

The Warriors' road record is what one might call "gross" -- at 4-26, they're exactly one game ahead of the Nets. Winning away from home is no easy feat for a young and undermanned team, but if you ever want to be worth a damn, you've got to break through and beat the odds every now and again. Today, against a flawed and slumping Bobcats team, seems as good a time as any. Last time the Dubs came to this building, Jamal Crawford lit 'em up for fifty.

On the other hand, the Warriors' last game against these fuckers was none too pretty. The 'Cats are a game out of eighth, and will be plenty motivated. And they excel at coaxing turnovers and fouls out of their opponents, two things the Warriors have been all too happy to relinquish. Plus, you've got to figure Jack wouldn't mind clowning the Dubs again in front of his new fanbase. The Warriors will need a very big night from someone to pull out a win here.

This game features an interesting X-factor: Curry and Morrow grew up in Charlotte. Morrow got eight shot-free minutes in the Warriors' visit last year, but both will essentially be appearing in their hometown as established NBA players for the first time. Will they excel in front of their loved ones, or buckle under the pressure?

Warrior To Watch: Stephen Curry, who has again wrested this label away from all comers for a bit.

Bobcat To Watch: Tyrus Thomas, a Randolphian enigma who has profited greatly from his recent change of scenery. We can only hope that our skinny shot-blocking goofball will not require the same transition.

#61: GSW @ ATL 3/5/10

2010-03-05T16:05:00.000-08:00

Atlanta Hawks

Record: 39-21 (6th) • Point Differential: +4.8 (t-5th) • Pace: 90.8 (26th)

Off. Efficiency: 111.3 (4th) • eFG: 50.2 (t-11th) • TO: 13.0 (1st) • OReb: 27.6 (t-6th) • FT/FG: 21.9 (t-20th)

Def. Efficiency: 106.0 (13th) • eFG: 49.8 (16th) • TO: 15.7 (12th) • OReb: 27.0 (19th) • FT/FG: 20.5 (t-6th)

PreThoughts

Let's see here... on the road, against a good team that's playing well and sore over losing to the Warriors two weeks ago? Yeah, this'll be a long one. At least we're likely to get some more sweet Reggie Williams action... Maggette may be back, but doesn't figure to play much.

Warrior To Watch: Stephen Curry, who has yet to put up a really effective game in this sans-Monta go-around. With Mike Bibby and Jamal Crawford guarding him, that could easily change tonight.

Hawk To Watch: Joe Smith, just for a nostalgic chuckle.

PostThoughts -- Hawks 127, Warriors 122

Color me stupid! A very fun game, and a good showing from the good guys. Curry's game was far from perfect -- too many cute passes that were easily intercepted, pretty horrible D both in the zone and in man coverage -- but the kid is starting to look like a star, something I had not expected. Excellent work from Ronny and CJ as well (CJ's newfound love of driving is an exciting development), and it was good to see Maggette back and looking comfortable. Also good to see Tolliver's three-point stroke improving, both for his team's sake and for the sake of his career.

Of the 86 rebounds the teams combined to grab, 33 were offensive. You won't see that very often.

A commendable loss. Thus far, the Warriors have nothing to be ashamed of on this trip. They're doing what they can do.

#60: GSW @ ORL 3/3/10

2010-03-03T12:44:00.000-08:00

Orlando Magic

Record: 41-20 (3rd) • Point Differential: +5.8 (3rd) • Pace: 92.7 (t-15th)
Off. Efficiency: 109.3 (9th) • eFG: 52.6 (3rd) • TO: 15.3 (12th) • OReb: 23.6 (26th) • FT/FG: 25.0 (t-6th)
Def. Efficiency: 103.1 (4th) • eFG: 47.7 (t-3rd) • TO: 14.1 (26th) • OReb: 22.7 (t-1st) • FT/FG: 20.8 (8th)

PreThoughts
As poetic as we've been waxing about the current Warriors lineup, there's just no way to forecast a competitive game here. The Magic are 23-6 at home, and only one of those six losses came at the ends of a sub-.500 team... the Wizards caught them on a Caron Butler buzzer-beater in a wacky game last month. These guys don't wreak much havoc on the offensive boards, but they do everything else very well. And since both Atlanta and Boston are within three games of catching Orlando for the second seed in the East, the Magic still have plenty to play for. The Warriors would need monster shooting nights from both Curry and Morrow to take this one, and even that might not do it. Tonight, the Magnificent Eight are simply outgunned.

Warrior To Watch: Chris Hunter. Someone will need to man up to Dwight Howard, and Ronny just doesn't have the beef to do it. Hunter does, and he's shown a willingness to smack big intimidating dudes. Look for a nice hard first-half foul to get the Warriors fired up.

Magician To Watch: Dwight Howard. He still isn't good at hitting free throws and passing out of double teams... that's an attackable combo. But the Warriors don't have enough bodies to play Hack-A-Howard, so he could have a pretty monster night.

PostThoughts
Brutal, as advertised. I'm liking this Reggie Williams action, though.

The Magnificent Seven Ride Again?

2010-03-03T10:18:00.000-08:00

The few Golden State fans that are masochistic enough to watch every game witnessed an unexpected treat last spring -- some competitive play from an unheralded and undermanned group of guys. Azubuike, Crawford, Kurz, Morrow, Randolph, Turiaf, Watson... these were not names that struck fear in the hearts of men. And yet this heptet, with occasional help from more ballyhooed guest stars like Monta and Biedrins, keyed a three-game winning streak and an inspiring win in Salt Lake City before running out of gas with two games left to go. These guys moved the ball well, they defended gamely, and they functioned well as a unit. They exceeded expectations, and were damn entertaining in doing so. Bay Area media wags dubbed this ragtag bunch The Magnificent Seven.

Something similar seems to be brewing on this road trip. Curry, George, Hunter, Morrow, Tolliver, Turiaf, Watson... it's another punchless-sounding lineup, even with a ROY contender in the mix. Combined, these seven guys make 11.1 million dollars, barely more than Monta Ellis makes by himself. But these seven rate as the most effective court presences on the team. These guys have been successful in their limited time on the court together. And last night, in a season marked by near-historic incompetence on the road, these guys were a few bricks away from toppling a likely playoff team in their building. The most fun stretch of '09-'10 Warriors basketball may be unfolding before our eyes.

In addition to the loveable CJ/Morrow/Ronny trio, this unit has four key traits in common with the Magnificent Seven of yesteryear:

1) Nobody Guns. None of these guys are going to gum up the flow of the offense with selfish play... CJ and Ronny, in particular, are contagiously unselfish. The ball moves quickly and effectively. (Anthony Morrow did take 22 shots in Miami, but because the team got him 22 shots, not because he was just in the mood to take that many.)

2) Everybody Shoots. Conversely, there are no Biedrinses that are actively shying away from the ball. In a free-form offense like this one, every player need to be at least somewhat willing to score. All seven of these guys can hit an 18-foot jumper...

3) Threes Aplenty. ...and five of them can hit from beyond the arc. As we've mentioned before, the easiest way for a bad team to pull off some upsets is to launch some threes and hope for the best. To this point in the season, the Warriors have seemed largely unaware of this fact. This unit seems to get that.

4) More Bigs Than Guards. Another point we've made before: this team has better success when shorthandedness prevents Nellie from dicking around with smallball. With two guards, two swings and three big men, he has to field conventionally sized lineups more often than not... he's basically unable to affect the game with his coaching. And that's a good thing.

None of this guarantees success or even consistent competitive play. A road trip that includes five games in seven games will exhaust any team, and especially one whose players are forced to spend so many minutes on the floor. Curry, Turiaf and Hunter are all prone to foul trouble. And unlike last year's overachievers, this group doesn't have a single strong rebounder; the 15-rebound deficit last night was every bit as critical as the misses from downtown. This heptet is probably not as threatening as the one that preceded it.

But this heptet does have an X-factor. Last night, Reggie Williams scored assertively but not selfishly... he found open men... he hit both threes he attempted... he even grabbed five rebounds in twenty minutes. He showed genuine savvy out there, and like Morrow last year, he's a guy that opposing teams won't be preparing for. If he can take on the minutes of Devean George, who's easily the new-look Seven's weak link, the Warriors' offense may have enough firepower and dynamism to outweigh the weaknesses on defense and the boards.

It's ridiculous to expect a call-up to make an immediate difference in the fortunes of an NBA team. But that's the thing about these underdog outfits: they do a lot of things you might not expect. And whether they win or lose, this group will be worth watching, something that can't be said for much of the Warriors' season to date.

#59: GSW @ MIA 3/2/10

2010-03-02T15:42:00.000-08:00

Miami Heat

Record: 29-31 (18th) • Point Differential: +0.7 (14th) • Pace: 90.2 (28th)
Off. Efficiency: 105.5 (21st) • eFG: 48.9 (t-20th) • TO: 14.4 (t-6th) • OReb: 26.0 (19th) • FT/FG: 21.8 (22nd)
Def. Efficiency: 104.8 (10th) • eFG: 48.2 (7th) • TO: 16.0 (t-8th) • OReb: 25.1 (6th) • FT/FG: 25.8 (25th)

PreThoughts
The Heat have lost four in a row, and have fallen into a virtual tie with the Bobcats for eighth in the conference... this is a must-win game for them. The Warriors are 4-23 on the road. The available Golden State roster tonight consists of Li'l Stephen Curry, a banged-up Ronny Turiaf, a long-dead Devean George, and five players the Warriors have acquired either from the D-League or the waiver wire.

And yet, this game could be interesting. For if you managed to slog through our previous post, you may have noticed something: besides the debuting Reggie Williams, the seven Warriors suiting up tonight are the team's seven most effective players, according to regularized adjusted plus-minus. And the most likely starting lineup tonight -- Curry, CJ, Morrow, Tolliver, Turiaf -- has been monstrously effective, outscoring opponents 147-101 in its 57 minutes of court time to date.

Now, there's some flukiness in those numbers, to be sure... a Curry/CJ/Morrow/Tolliver/Turiaf lineup probably won't average 123 points a game long-term, and especially not against a rock-solid defensive team like the Heat. There's no real reason to expect a win tonight. But the guys that will be playing during this road trip have played very, very well together. Don't be surprised if the Dubs are more competitive on this road trip than they've previously been.

Warrior To Watch: Reggie Williams, who, with Curry, gives the Warriors the leading scorers in college basketball from each of the last three seasons. He'll get plenty of minutes from jump street... can he show enough to earn himself a job somewhere in the league next year?

Heatperson To Watch: why, it's Dwyane Wade, you silly goose!

PostThoughts -- Heat 110, Warriors 106
A loss to a struggling Miami team should not obscure the fact that this was one of the year's most intelligent Warrior performances. These guys moved the ball around and found open men as advertised. They continued to take truckloads of threes, a welcome development... the Dubs' three highest long-distance attempt totals have come in their last four games. They defended willingly, if not well. If not for some uncharacteristically poor shooting from the line and from three-point land, the Warriors might've eked out their second impressive road win of the season. Kudos, boys.

Props are also due to WTW Reggie Williams, who looked skilled, smooth and ready to help. It's just one game, but he seemed for all the world like a guy who should take Devean George's place in the rotation, and probably his place on the roster, as well.

No rest for the undermanned -- the Dubs play in Orlando today. Let's see what this unit can do for an encore.