Sure, we've gotten blown out the last couple games but I guess that's expected with the injuries and whatnot. Excuses, excuses, right? Well, everyone has been ragging on Nellie and the Warriors offense...how it's stagnant, no ball movement, just ISO plays with Jackson, Crawford, or Maggette. It looks like that has been cured with a dose of Nellie making it a point that ball movement is critical. You gotta give it up to Nellie and the players for actually executing that...I mean, there's no excuse why they shouldn't, but given the Warriors awful season, I'll take any improvement as indication of hope. Now onto reality. The Warriors are shooting HORRIBLE. When CJ Watson and Rob Kurz are your best shooters, you're in trouble. Jackson has been pretty bad...I don't know if it's his wrist or if he just lost motivation, but his body language wreaks no confidence. Crawford's shooting came to life, but I've been unimpressed with his overall game, other than him keeping the ball moving (for the most part). Belinelli lost some of the fire from the games against sub-.500 teams, but his decision making and defensive effort have been good. Unfortunately, he got burned pretty bad on a couple plays against the Nuggets tonight. But, the effort seems to be there and his shot seems fine. The game against the Rockets, he must have had a dozen or so that went in and out of the rim. Morrow is inconsistent and I think it's mainly due to his inexperience which translates to him hesitating. He has a lightening quick release, so why doesn't he just shoot it when he catches? He's more valuable when he does that instead of catching, pump faking, taking it to the hole (with a high dribble) and taking it into trouble where he's forced to take a bad shot or pass. Anyway, I guess my point is, ball movement is great, but FG% has been horrid. Baby steps.
I don't know, I thought the game was prety unwatchable. I tuned out most of the second half. Very strange about Crawford, his line looks really good but I didn't feel he was playing well at all during the game. And the Clips beat the Rockets tonight too, that's depressing.
Maybe tonight's game is an exception to the above, but I did notice the guys are trying to keep the ball moving. But, we had nothing going in tonight. Even layups. Ball movement can only get you so far. Other than that, the D was pretty bad too.
This game was hot garbage tonight. Jackson = team cancer. Oh how I wish we could trade him. He should be ashamed of the way he let his teammates down time and time again on defense tonight. Not to mention his 1-13 selfish shooting. But honestly, at this point I don't think Jax is capable of feeling shame. I used to be one of his biggest fans, but it feels like he was just putting on an act to get the big contract. Now that Baron is gone, this year it's like the mask came off and now we see someone completely different than the good teammate, relentless defender of the past. Now, he just looks like he doesn't even care. It really truly looks like he just doesn't give a shit. That's all I can say. Is there any way to trade Jackson? I think he is the main reason why this team is dog shit. I think his attitude is cancer and that's no bueno in a supposed captain. IMO, he is dragging this team down with his negative energy. I would trade his ass for filler right now. I don't know if anyone around the league would be stupid enough to take his contract, though... Man, I've never wanted two players less than I do Maggette and Jackson, and yet here they are! Both of them! Right here on the team I used to love...
I don't think the shooting last night was that bad (if you look at each player's FG% individually). It was very bad because you have one player that goes 1-13. If you take out Jackson, the shooting percentage goes up to over 46%. Similarly, if you take Jackson's shots out of the Houston game (2-14), the team percentage goes up to 44%. The game before that against the Bucks, the team shot almost 49%, despite Jackson's 7-23 shooting. In the game that Jackson didn't play, even though it was against the Thunder, the team shot over 50%. I think with this trend, Jackson either needs to take fewer shots until his wrist (or wasn't it like a finger?) gets better or he just needs to take a game or two off to heal that hand. The ball moved decently against the Nuggets. It has moved much better in recent games. There were just a lot of lazy passes in last night's game. Furthermore there were a lot of passes made where the ball handler needed help, no one was really moving toward him to get open to help their team-mate out - they were in fact on their heels - which just opened the opportunity for the Nuggets player to walk in and grab the ball from the lazy looking pass and take it the other way. The Nuggets' broadcaster, though he seemed pretty annoying (a lot of these broadcasters love bashing Don Nelson too; it's incredible) made a good point in that all you have to do to see the difference in defense between the Nuggets and Warriors is look at how focused one team is at denying the first pass in each defensive possession. Against the Nuggets, they play hard man-to-man defense where they work hard to deny players from getting the ball; whereas the Warriors pretty much let you pass it anywhere on the perimeter and most of the court, to get easy buckets. This may be more of a result of the Warriors having poor man-to-man perimeter defenders who need all the help they can get - thus they don't play strong up man-to-man defense. But I thought it was an interesting observation. Finally, Crawford is no Baron Davis. He may not be Jason Richardson, in terms of standing out in games. But he did get 5 steals, shot a good percentage. He just hasn't been getting his 3 point shooting rolling. Somehow this season when he was in New York through eleven games he shot 45.5% from 3 point land, and through eleven games with the Warriors has only shot 25% from that same place. Three pointers can really bring some momentum back to a team, especially on a team that can't play great defense consistently like the Warriors. Everyone, even those who had consistently shot well from that range is just not doing it this year for the Warriors. They are like 29th in the league in FG% from that range. Maybe the difference is not having the Boss or someone like Chris Duhon?
I think Jackson had a ton of value at the beginning of the season. He has a relatively small contract, at a little more than 7 million per year over the next couple seasons I believe. The contract extension really blows out a bunch of his value though. It's amazing that the Warriors decided not to build around long term with players like JRich and Baron Davis, but decide to do so with Jackson and Maggette. I am with you AO; it really does suck. No flexibility, no future first round draft pick. We are in pretty much a similar position when we had Murphy and Dunleavy stuck here with big contracts, and hardly anywhere to go. But this time, we don't even have Baron Davis.
Ball movement did improve, and at least, we are not seeing one-pass-then-jumper for 10+ consecutive times. Ugh, those were really unwatchable. If you remove Jackson's 1-13, many of them shot reasonable shooting %. And of course... we got blown out, and that really made me wonder about our talent level. Sure, injury has something to do with it, but even if we get everybody back, this is not a PO team by any stretch of imagination. Maybe 35 wins at best. Shut Jackson down till his hand is OK or something. Let Maggette pad his stats, so that we can hope some dumb GM will take his contract. I know it's long shot at best, but at this point, we can only hope. Or, seeing how Jackson got an extension, Maggette is probably working on his 15 years extension in this offseason. BTW, I read the article that Maggette was indeed Rowell's move. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=sheridan_chris&page=dealssheridan-081213 I really didn't think no GM would be worse than Twerdzik till I saw Mullin's early work. Then, I really didn't think nobody can top Mullin's early work. Sigh... I guess this world is full of surprise...
Let's give Sjax the benefit of the doubt. He's injured and it was on a back-to-back in Denver. He seemed pretty fatigued and mentally out of it. Again, it's no excuse for our supposed "team leader" but it is what it was. What he really needs to do is not complain to the officials when a play doesn't go his way. When he does that, he makes the Warriors play 4 on 5. It's not fair to his teammates. If he can learn to just STFU and play...
I agree, but to me, that behavior does not warrant the benefit of the doubt. That's just quitting on your teammates. That's like a defensive lineman who has a wide-open tackle on 4th-1 at the end of a close game, and then purposely stands aside and lets the RB run for a touchdown because he wants to throw a temper-tantrum instead. If Jax were on the 49ers he'd be exiled by now. How can an NBA coach really allow that type of behavior? It's a slap in the face of the other 14 Golden State Warriors. It's saying, "Sure, Ronnie Turiaf, when you get in the game you better dive for every loose ball, but me? I'm Captain Jack. I don't have to do shit. so f**k you Turiaf. Go get me that loose ball so I can jack up another three." If I were a part of this organization, I'd be flat out embarrassed that there was a player behaving the way Jackson's been behaving. It's even more disgusting because he's supposed to be a team captain. The fact that Nellie doesn't bench him when he shits on his teammates like that is beyond me. Right now, this whole franchise is straight up dysfunctional.
Well, the difference between the NFL and the NBA is pretty drastic. The schedule and the roster. There are 16 games in the NFL. I think adjustments are made on a week to week or game to game basis in the NFL. That's why we're seeing these drastic changes made by Singletary. I think Nellie understands the NBA schedule is long and grueling. You can't make drastic changes too soon. Sometimes you need to let things play out. If he just singles out one player, a player he named captain, it might make a bad situation worse. He could set an example by benching him immediately after he does something like complain to the refs, but I think Nellie is allowing Sjax to grow a little. Perhaps to a fault. Or, he could just be a bozo and not knowing what he's doing. Maybe Nellie and the staff preaches to Sjax to not do exactly what he does during practice so they don't want to duplicate their efforts because why should they? He's an adult and he should listen and apply. I think there's a lot of gray area that's not disclosed to the general public when it comes to disciplining a player, one that's been labeled the team's leader and captain. There's probably a lot of politics involved making it a much more complicated issue than we think. Then again, f*** politics. Someone should throw a shoe at Rowell though like that reporter did to Bush.
