Wow, Maggette is such crap. Just when I think he can't get any worse. I was only half watching the game and I saw him shoot 3 airballs, there may have been more. I wanted to wait until after Monta came back, but trade his sorry ass NOW. Or ASAP (Dec. 15 I think?). And Randolph needs to stop shooting. When you go 3-9 and your FG% goes up, that's just downright embarrassing, rookie or not. Very few positives to take away from this game. Watson looked pretty good and s did Brandan Wright, of course he only gets 20 minutes.
Supposedly the Warriors played great basketball early. I didn't get to see that. When I started watching everything started going downhill. It was like watching the Warriors in the last couple of years screwing everything up and having no idea what to do when Baron Davis went to the bench. The bad thing about today is that there was no Baron Davis to come in and try to turn things around and control the game. Maggette and Jackson were horrible tonight and there was just nothing happening with ball movement or off the ball movement to really get anything going. I don't know if this is because of the trade and players aren't sure what they are supposed to be doing and Jackson and Maggette are just being hogs, or what. But basically it was very ugly, in particular the 3rd quarter. It was interesting how Randolph started the second half. And yes, 3 airballs from Maggette and I believe I saw one from Jackson. Biedrins looked out of it as well. Ilskauskas, the Lithuanian, totally tore Biedrins to bits. He even beat Biedrins down the court one time. The players just played horribly individually from the top three guys and without continuity.
Ugh. On a brighter note Richard Hendrix put up 31 pts, 14 reb, 3 blk in the D-League opener today. Demarcus Nelson also put up 20 pts, 6 reb, 4 ast, 4 stl, but 5 TO. Bakersfield Jam Box Score
Maggette tried to go toe-to-toe with LeBron for some reason and started shooting dribble-crossover-fade-away-airballs. That was horrendous. Mags + Jax = Black Holes
They are definitely not point guards. I think the team will be better and these two in particular will be better when they have a point guard to run things. Sometimes, but not always, CJ Watson steps up and is that player that takes charge of things when they aren't going well and turns them around as the point. I have not seen enough of Crawford to determine if he's that type of a point guard, though he has had some decent assist numbers so far.
Why the fuck did Turiaf get a technical when big Z was pushing him? If anything, it either should have been called on Z or a double technical. Refs were bad.
The Cavs announcers called Maggette *Air Mail* after he sent the three air balls. Ouch. Oh yeah, I could hear the clank from Randolph's shots from outside even if I had the sound off. On the positive side, I've never seen a big man bring the ball up so fast like he can and he was playing some D. Once the Cavs figured out they can stuff small ball inside and then fast break the other way for easy layups and scores, this game was over. Nelson didn't have any too many moves to counter their size inside except Randolph, Wright, and Turiaf, but the Warriors did not have any inside presence at all. The Cavs had JJ Hickson come off the bench with keep that small stuff out of here.
Loving what I see from Randolph when he's not shooting. Why not play all 3 of them together? I would love to see that. Those 3 players are all in the NBA top 8 in rebounds/48 of players playing 10+ minutes per game, it would be fun to watch. Let Wright score. Turiaf and Randoph: no jumpshots. Anyway, the more I think about things, the more depressed I get. I don't think this team is ever going to succeed with the likes of Jackson, Maggette, and Crawford. And the more I think about it, the more I think they really do need to try getting a true superstar in here, beyond even Ellis' and Biedrins' (and Baron's) abilities. A collection of pretty good players is not going to win a championship, or likely not even make the playoffs. You need star power. We need our Amare or Bosh or whatever. We have no "go to" guy. By default it's kind of Jackson right now, which is not good. I like a lot about Jackson, but he's not that guy who can just will your team to win, and can turn in consistently impressive performances day after day after day. You look at LeBron and CP3 and KG and the true superstars, they are machines. They rarely just don't show up. All of our players have nights where they just disappear or look tired or disinterested or whatever.
Weren't there lineups earlier with Andris, Wright, and Randolph in there at the same time? I wouldn't mind seeing more of that. Or just replacing Andris with Turiaf would still be interesting as well. Turiaf and Wright are superb shot-blockers. They are just not that big with their presence. Also Jim Barnett and Bob Fitzgerald were making good points about Nelson's defense. He seems to rely too much on the bigs to cover too much ground. Recently it has led to the defense looking horrible; both for the bigs when the post player on the opposing team can get right next to the hoop and score easily, and also when someone from the perimeter is driving to the hoop and there is no one there on the help side. I thought Nelson was more versatile on the defensive end, being known to use zones and other schemes to actually get something working. The defense right now is not working.
Jax used to be a defensive stopper. Now? I don't even know where his defense is. A guard last night (Delonte West I think) got the ball on the fast break, with Jax in front of him, at about mid court. Jax had his back to the guard, and lazily ran half-ass towards his own hoop as if to be a part of the defensive play. But he never even turned around to contest the man with the ball. He just ran with his back to the guard the entire lenght of half court as the guard made a lay-up easily over Jax's shoulder. It was a sad show.
