<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'></p> The Golden State Warriors are the NBA's mystery team.</p> They might be America's mystery team.</p> The Warriors are like Frosty the Snowman. It has long been speculated that Frosty came to life when a magical top hat was placed on his head, but the autopsy and other scientific tests were inconclusive. Millions of other top hats placed on millions of other snow people heads have failed to produce Frosty-like results.</p> The Warriors' return to life after a decade of cold snowmanship is similarly difficult to explain.</p> On Sunday, the Warriors opened a five-game road trip by getting absolutely crushed in Detroit. No mystery there. The Pistons are a quality team with a core of outstanding players who have been bonding since about 1955.</p> The mystery is why the Warriors' Sunday fizzle is a rarity, why they're not only in just about every game, but are finding crazy and creative ways to win a lot of them.</p> The Warriors are the least-explainable good team in sports.</p> One theory is that the Warriors' top hat is Stephen Jackson. The team came to life last season after Jackson and Al Harrington joined the crew. And the Warriors came to life this season after Jackson returned from a seven-game suspension.</p> One quarter of the way into the season there is even a minor buzz that Jackson, if the season continues to unfold like this for him and the Warriors, would have to be considered a candidate for league MVP.</p> This is a player who missed those seven games because of bad behavior, who probably won't be invited to the All-Star Game and who isn't even the most valuable player on his team.</p> Yet he's the guy whom former San Antonio teammate Tim Duncan supposedly referred to as "the ultimate teammate."</p> When the Spurs played in Oakland last week, I asked Duncan about that quote. I thought he might qualify it, or say it was taken out of context. Duncan has played with some pretty good teammates during his run of four NBA championships: Tony Parker, David Robinson, Manu Ginobili. Can Duncan really consider Jackson, who was a part-time starter for one season (2002-03) with the Spurs, the ultimate teammate?</p> Did Duncan really say that?</p> "Absolutely. Absolutely," the Big Fundamental said. "He's all for you, he's all for what the team is about, he's all for being a part of the team. I think in that (ultimate teammate) quote, I said that's what got him in trouble in the past and that's what makes him as good a teammate as he is.</p> "He's a guy that does make a team better. It is a little surprising that he has made the effect that he has (on the Warriors), but in that system, he's the kind of player who can do that."</p> Spurs coach Gregg Popovich agreed.</p> "He was wonderful," Popovich said of Jackson's brief run with the Spurs (he also played 23 games in the 2001-02 season). "He brings a lot of pizzazz, a lot of energy, just a competitiveness. He's a lot of fun to be around, a great teammate."</p> Popovich said Jackson and Baron Davis have infused the Warriors with a defensive pride, spirit and toughness. That helps explain the difference between a team being mildly entertaining and wildly competitive.</p> For sure, the Warriors are a team that isn't going to win games on cruise-control.</p> On Sunday, they kept it together for a quarter, then sputtered and died. And it wasn't like the Pistons had a huge home-court advantage.</p> From TV, it looked and sounded like there were about 140 fans scattered in the Palace of Auburn Hills. It felt like the old Warriors' home games, when you clearly could hear the players talking on the court, and the PA man didn't need a microphone.</p> That Detroit team is locked-in. The Pistons win 50-plus every season because they're really good players who play really well together, and play hard. The Pistons' success is no mystery.</p> The Warriors are a mystery even to their coach. Don Nelson gave up the team for lost last season, before the crazy blitz. The fan excitement carried to the start of this season, but Nelson expressed grave reservations, and the Warriors opened 0-6. Then they became the league's hottest team, which surprised Nelson.</p> Nelson is part of the mystery, of course. He always has had the gift for mixing, matching and motivating, but never before in his career has the product been quite this unexpectedly successful.</p> You get the impression that Nelson has no clue where this runaway train is going to stop.</p> It's a team held together by cosmic glue, and you know how unreliable that stuff is.</div></p> Source: Scripps News</p>
Small ball has a chance to beat big ball, especially when you have Don Nelson running the show. But lately he has just been overplaying it and that's where the mystery gets solved. There's really no magic in how he wins because he's all about beating teams with quickness. That's something that opposing big men can never match unless they're the focal point of offense and they're crushing the warriors on the offensive glass. Everyone knows that small ball is a double edged sword and that you sacrifice offense for defense when you give up the size/strength match-up ability. This especially poses a problem when a team starts to miss outside shots, can't convert inside, and can't even rebound. When there's no honest inside presence and the perimeter shots aren't falling, the defense can just dare somebody to shoot, which causes many of the players to stand around trying to shoot their way out of the zone rather than trying to move + spoof defenders into going away from their coverage. Ideally, Don Nelson wants his team to force defenses to collapse on somebody so that one guy is left open for a high % shot. He wants side to side ball movement, inside-outside ball movement, just like any other offense, but I think the players generally try to keep it more simple by just going isolations in 1-on-5 ball. Then there lies the problem with awful shot selection and guys not intimidating the other team with "where the attack will come from". It's the only explanation why this team can be so bad on moment and other times play like they're the globe trotters. It's just that mentality that keeps them from playing as a team from time to time. Then the other side, is that Don Nelson doesn't address the problem that lack of size poses... He just goes smaller. I just wish that Don Nelson either tried to play some post guys over 6'9 once in a while or we actually got something ready enough to play at power forward and center. Biedrins should be ready enough, but what gives? Don Nelson at times just flies in the face of all logic by refusing to match up a position with the proper player. The most efficient player at times (Biedrins) is left on the bench in favor of some small forward that can't rebound or isn't shooting well... I also agree that Sjax is definitely the player we needed. We need not only a leader to run offense (Baron Davis), but we also needed a guy to take the lead defensively and secondarily get players involved and take the big shots. Imagine... if we can just get another version of Clif Robinson and we'll have a top post defender, another good passer, and guy who can take big shots. There's our problem right there... Outside of Biedrins, who is a really good passer and defender at the power forward and center spots? We can't get good ball movement if those other positions besides pg, sg, sf become blackholes for whatever reason.
Stephen Jackson is an amazing player. It's always amazing to see such a great player on a team...and then to see the team without him: 0-7. Things like that always show just how important and just how good a player is to a team.
