Im sorry to say that the warriors will never make the playoffs until they get a strong inside presence. Most/All playoff teams have a strong inside presence from the PF/C position. Watching murphy just jack up 3's and long jumpers isnt gonna cut it. Hope Diogu is something special or were out of the playoffs again.
I think we very well could make the playoffs without an inside presence. Look at Seattle of last year, they didnt have anyone to post up, at least we have Baron and J-Rich. Diogu should be able to at least get to the line alot. I would love to have a reliable offensive post presence but right now we just have to be patient to see how Diogu, Taft, and Biedrins end up.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting Run BJM:</div><div class="quote_post">I think we very well could make the playoffs without an inside presence. Look at Seattle of last year, they didnt have anyone to post up, at least we have Baron and J-Rich. Diogu should be able to at least get to the line alot. I would love to have a reliable offensive post presence but right now we just have to be patient to see how Diogu, Taft, and Biedrins end up.</div> Seattle also had good rebounders, lots of good offensive rebounders. Nick Collison has some inside game btw so that keeps defenses honest somewhat. Jerome James was a decent scorer, as far as centers go, when motivated to play up to his size. The reason why the W's lost the clippers game is because Dunleavy sr. knew how to play the Warriors' weaknesses. They were shooting 20% from behind the arc and they were having problems containing Elton Brand and getting out on hot perimeter shooters. They didn't need dribble penetration or anything because they had some nice ball movement and they recognized the hot hands. Our backcourt shot a high volume of shots at 30% each and we were missing layups. Our forwards showed up, but unfortunately not our backcourt. That's unfortunate since Dunleavy had a decent game and Murphy had some spectacular inside plays. I guess any game on the road against Bill Spooner and his crew means instant loss. I'm not too suprised we lost against the clippers, they've got a lot of ingredients that we don't have to be number one. The only thing that kept me from hyping them up is they've had a lot of teams in the past that looked good on paper but they had no chemistry. This team I thought looked pretty awesome at one point pg Andre Miller sg Corey Maggette sf Lamar Odom pf Elton Brand c Michael Olowakandi 6th man: Quentin Richardson
I think the W's could make the playoffs since the playoffs are kind of up for grabs. Things can change very quickly depending on how everyone else does and how healthy players in the league stay. But yes, we are lacking several ingredients. I'm glad we fixed our defense, but our unorganized perimeter style of streaky offense is not going to help our case for the playoffs. Jrich can't be shooting 1 of 6 from the three point arc. He's simply not good off the dribble in shooting threes. Same with others who decide to start launching like we did last year. In the beginning, we had some nice two man games with the give and go, dish off the drives, type of plays early on, but that just all went away when the Clippers zoned out on us. I don't think the team knows how to play through a zone just yet. You can still use an intermediate range game and probe weaknesses against a 3-2 zone and attack from the weaker side by getting defenses to rotate out on the mismatch. We don't get the other team's feet moving that much. It's like in football, run those routes and make the defenders chase you around. If you stand around and only one or two people are moving, well that makes it real easy for defenses to react to the guy that will be receiving the pass and shooting it. The warriors and a lot of other teams just don't play smart basketball. They rely too much on athleticism or the three ball to make things happen and that won't always work all the time. This loss was a good lesson on things we need to work on. If we keep on winning, we can't ever work on fixing our weaknesses. We need to assume that the W's will play without an inside presence if Ike Diogu isn't an impact player in his first year. We need to remember all those losses. For instance, if we kept on winning or think we will win by just being us, our team defense would still probably be still poor and today's game we might have left a lot of points at the foul line. Improvements? I think we did well in those two things that made the Warriors initially an overrated team.
Against the Spurs the W's perimeter game was awful,our most reliable guys,Baron and J Rich had unusual bad games-but Murph and Diogu delivered some inside presence and Zarko added a few highlights in a game that otherwise looked like crap. Ike clearly needed about 5 min of "NBA experiance" before finding his game. After that he seemed to score efficiently,rebound well too. Adapting to D in the NBA may be harder. I lost count of the backwards calls I have seen. The refs sometimes seem to have special fun confusing rookies,so a player can play perfect textbook D and still get whistled twice a game. Strange enough,but then the refs also will call some charge fouls wrong too. Makes it tough to know what the rules REALLY are. I don't expect Ike to score 10+ for his whole rookie year,but he can. I don't see murphy scoring 20+ all the time either,but I do think the team has got the message that they need to get more inside,high % shots.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting REREM:</div><div class="quote_post"> I don't expect Ike to score 10+ for his whole rookie year,but he can. I don't see murphy scoring 20+ all the time either,but I do think the team has got the message that they need to get more inside,high % shots.</div> Don't forget free throws. You have to love the guy that changes the game because they put the team in the bonus. Also, it's really easy for a perimeter based team to attack the basket when the other team is over the foul limit or have subbed in some other guys. Ike could be artillery to soften up the defenses, before Baron/Richardson leads the charge. I really like Ike's fundamentals and the fact for a guy of his size he stopped on a dime on that one play where the Spurs were hoping to draw a charge. Also yeah, I think they was a rookie official in the game and they were giving Spurs the benefit of the doubt on everything (like a Zach Zarba type). They fell asleep because the game was pretty much over for everyone by second half, even the fans probably left. Dunleavy did have a nice pass to Ike in the game. It was Mike n' Ike. Why do I bring up Dunleavy so randomly like Jim Barnett? Because I plan to say at least one nice thing before I bash him until he starts playing up to his rookie contract. He didn't even play up to his original rookie contract, let alone his draft position. How the hell is he going to play up to his 9 mil a year deal if he couldn't even play up to his 3rd pick overall rookie contract? I know forget what he's paid, but think of other players that would benefit the team in a much larger way for a price of 9 mil a year and with our budget.
