Okay, scanning the boxscore and watching the game, I see the Heat 9 and 9 and the W's 5 and 13. The Heat play Chalmers (34th pick?) 30 mins and he gets 12 pts, 6 assists, 1 TO. Beasley takes the 2nd to last shot in reg. that Haslem rebounds and puts in to tie. Beasley plays 24 mins. and gets 19 and 6 rebs. Randolph (#14) gets 6 mins. How is that? Two rookies are a key to the Heat win (I know there's this guy Wade) but Belinelli is a DNP and Randolph is barely there. Oh yeah, and the Warriors lose because no defensive rebounding and cannot get a ball inbounds. The Warriors rebounding problems are because of Nellie's insistence on small ball. That's coaching.
Steinmetz or Kawakami or someone should really start taking it to Nellie and ask him what the deal is. In fact, all Warrior beat writers should start asking the players, the front office, the coaching staff, the cheerleaders, the pizza giverawayer dudes...EVERYONE. Let's get to the bottom of this and see if we can crack Nellie's stubbornness or stupidity...what have you.
And Randolph had a good game too. Also, Brandan Wright had a really nice game for about 2 and a half quarters, then disappeared onto Nellies bench for most of the rest of the game.
Chalmers and Beasley are the Heat's best or at least better players. The players that Nelson plays are typically the Warriors best players. So it is kind of the same rotations used as far as I can see. Don Nelson can't go on the court and box out an opponent for his players. He can't go in there and grab a rebound for his player who has good position. He can't bring a fire to Azubuike or Maggette to all of a sudden grab every rebound like a mad-man (or like Biedrins). He can't make the inbounds pass for his team. Anyway if you are referring to last night's game, I thought Nelson played a lot of the lineups with the two bigs, as far as I could remember. I do think Nelson screwed up with not having Biedrins in the game to close out the 4th. That was a big mistake there. I don't think he made that big of a mistake about not playing the young bigs. Wright is an inadequate rebounder for his size. I think he had 4 rebounds last night, one which was off his own shot from point-blank distance (this all in 30+ minutes). Which direction are the Warriors headed? From the personnel moves and the coaching it seems to be in the direction to compete, and due to the fact that this is the youngest team in the NBA, it is to develop players. I think Nelson has done a fine job doing both. You can only play 5 at a time. Which player are you going to take time from to play the younger player(s)? The Heat, I believe are playing their best players; so is Nelson. Nobody is stepping up though. This has to be one of the worst 4th quarter teams in the league. Or maybe sometimes it is 3rd quarter. I think that is more due to the loss of Baron than anything else.
No, but he can bench their asses when they get lazy on defense or rebounding, or take bad shots with no ball movement. Unfortunately, he never does this to the veterans, so there's no accountability or repercussions. If your dog starts chewing on your baby's leg, you'd better give him a little whack on the snout with a rolled up newspaper or he won't get the message that it's not OK. Maggette can sit there are chuck turnaround 20-footers all night long and Nellie will never punish him for it, so what's the disincentive? He yells at rookies for mistakes, but I never see him do that to the vets. Maybe he thinks they just automatically know better, but obviously they don't.
This is just like Monty ball, no accountability for guys like Fisher ruining the momentum. Fisher used to kill me, but I can live with Sjax and Mags taking stupid shots so long as we got a pair of bigs to support their shot selection and a pure point guard to run the show to keep us from wasting possessions. We can get inside/outside ball movement and get better defensively if we just get bigger. The first 4 guys that don't include the center should never be about the same height. We got guys 6'10 and over. Use em, Nelly, you blind old fart! Length and prototypical big man skill is important to fulfilling the team roles that help us control the tempo on both ends of the floor. Use Wright/Randolph close with Biedrins/Turiaf, Nelson. Tell the a-holes who don't look to move the ball first to take a seat. Inside/Outside play + control of the tempo and we win. We start losing control of the tempo when our shot selection gets worse because of no post threats, we lose control of the glass, we show no halfcourt strategy, and no solid passers who can get guys involved in easier plays. It's a mess because Nelson doesn't play big men and we have no point guard. We're so f-ed from all directions. Oh and our front office is really bad too.
