He's still listed as day-to-day. Lots of possibilities tonight, even though Jackson is out, Wright and Turiaf may both be available, no one is saying for sure yet. If Howard is out and Wright and Turiaf play, I think the Warriors have a chance. Otherwise, forget it. I'm not so sure they'll miss Jackson that much with his 3-21 shooting in the last 2 games. I would start Biedrins | Wright | Randolph | Crawford | Watson, then bring Turiaf in for Biedrins or Wright as needed, keep the front line big. Sub Azubuike for Randolph, and Belinelli and Morrow for Crawford, leave Watson out there as the PG for big minutes because he's one of few Warriors who is consistently knocking down jumpshots right now (he may actually be the only one doing it consistently). UPDATE: The Orlando Sentinel is reporting, as of 3:37pm ET, Howard is unlikely to play in tonight's game. Very good news for Warriors if true. Of course the fact that Orlando just beat Utah, in SLC, without Howard does not bode so well.
This could get ugly if we aren't playing good defensive players and we're not getting the types of guys that can identify open/hot shooters. I worry about playing Crawford at times. As good as he is at dribbling the ball and taking threes, he's a pretty weak defensive player. His playmaking ability is probably about average (hot/cold). I would like to see Azubuike start passing more. The guy has the court vision of a mole
More of the same old bullsh*t. Why Wright and Randolph don't even get into the game until late in the 4th quarter only Nelson knows. Jackson still thinks he is Larry Bird and can hit from anywhere, anytime. Warriors top 3 volume shooters in this game (for the season, but they also took the most shots in this game) are the same 3 with the lowest shooting %, yeah that makes a lot of sense. Atrocious defense. Warriors are dead last in the league in points allowed and it's not even close to #2: Warriors 111.6 Knicks 106.8 Kings 106.1 It's hard to know where to even start a criticism when 3 out of every 4 possessions is a total trainwreck. What garbage. I'm seriously close to giving up on this team, they are just not fun to watch at all.
Nelson doesn't seem to know about chemistry. You don't put Sjax at PF and then get him and Azu/Mags + Crawford calling their own plays. It should be like this: PG: CJ Watson SG: Belinelli/Sjax SF: Sjax/Azubuike PF: Turiaf or Wright C: Biedrins Bench: Crawford, Azubuike, Morrow, Anthony Randolph, Kurz CJ doesn't need the ball to be effective, he does other things to help the team like knock down his open shots. Belinelli and Sjax seem to look for players, which makes it ideal in locating the open scorer, especially the big guy. Putting in an extra big next to Beans makes it easier to get the offensive rebound and to get the defensive rebound. Crawford is on the bench because he's a combo guard that really has no business running a starting offense. He's like Harrington in a way. Gets numbers, not the best defender or glue guy, he's stuck in between positions to be really effective at a full time position. He's best served as a combo guard that lights things up and provides explosiveness off the bench whenever pg or sg is needed. Azubuike should come off the bench. He's much too selfish to do anything involving feeding inside players unless Sjax and CJ Watson are running the show. Morrow is a nice plug and play type of guy if SJAX is struggling. Randolph and Kurz is the best option we have at backup power forward and center. Would have liked to use Randolph at SF with Kurz at PF. But this is our situation... It would have been nice if we kept one center from our drafts... But Nelly is like WTF is a center? If Nelly does any combo of this at the same time, we're just asking for pain... (Crawford, Azubuike, Mags, Sjax + name your big man.) That's a lot of high volume shooting chaos right there. No chemistry unless Sjax is the center of everything with Crawford in 2nd. Still very sketchy, plus very very weak defensively. It's something that Nelson would probably do with a healthy lineup. That's why I hate Nelson's style.
And if we did all big ball, a cool lineup would be: pg: Belinelli sg: Sjax sf: Anthony Randolph pf: Brandan Wright c: Andris Biedrins. We'd own the glass and Belinelli and Sjax have enough skill and big steps to get around quicker defenders and shoot over the smaller ones. If we had more size and quick size, we wouldn't be letting some guy named Gortat get half a dozen offensive rebounds over us. Nelson thinks he still has Matt Barnes/Mickael Pietrus in his lineup.
I don't mind this lineup but I'd put in Crawford at SG and move Stack over to SF, put Randolph on the bench.
Why didn't Wright get in the game until late 3rd/early 4th quarter? Yet another horrendous game against a team without their superstar.
And when he did get in, he scored immediately. This whole Wright thing is baffling. I thought Wright would get more of a chance than Marco and look at Marco now. Maybe Wright is next to bust through into regular playing time.
Could be. A lot of people are ripping Nellie hard for his development of the young talent or lack thereof but do we really think we know even a fraction of what Nellie does when it comes to developing players? Look at Belinelli. He had to work his ass off 100% for a year and a half on the team and he just started getting burn. Yeah, he rode the pine for a long time when he could have been getting playing time and yes, a lot of the players playing ahead of him were scrubjays who were undrafted, D-Leaguers, etc. But hes turned into an all-around player for us now. Dudes turning into a prototypical SG- obviously he can stroke it, he can create a little, handle, pass, drive, finish, and defend. Who ever thought Belinelli would become a good defender? I think we all assumed it was a foregone conclusion that he would forever be terrible but Nellie even got him to learn to D up. Nellie made Beli put in the work that those undrafted guys and D-League guys put in to make it in the league. Nellie always has his pet players who can do whatever they want and still get burn (Baron, Jack, Barnes, Monta) but everyone else is pretty much treated the same. And if you're an Al Harrington, Ike Diogu, POB, etc. who won't put in the work and effort that the Matt Barnes's, CJ Watson's, Kelena Azubuike's , Anthony Morrow's, Rob Kurz's, etc. will to make it then Nellie's not going to like you. Marco is the lone bright spot on this team right now. Hes putting together all of those skills that we knew he had when he was drafted. The shooting, handling, vision, flashiness plus hes playing defense and manning the point as well as Watson or Crawford (probably better last night). One season + 20 games isn't that long to be riding the pine really and look at how its turned out- we've got a quality player. Marco's averaging nearly 14 ppg in the last 5 games on great shooting %'s. Wright is still struggling to earn consistent minutes in the rotation so we can only hope that he'll earn his way in like Beli did. I think Nellie is making it clear that he doesn't believe in throwing players into games at random just for the sake of getting them playing time. Seems like he wants them to become NBA contributors through practice and off court work and then once they're good enough to actually do something in the games they'll get their playing time.
Yeah, this echoes my post I just wrote here but better I think Nellie actually knows what he's doing.
Well, I was with Nellie when it came to Marco. Last year, his body didn't look NBA ready to me. Still had some baby fat, and moved a little slow for a guard. I didn't really think he deserved much PT last year and that was fine. This year, he looks much better physically, and I think he definitely does deserve the PT he's getting. With Wright, he's already shown how effective he can be during meaningful minutes. This isn't some unknown rookie who is untested. He's been given meaning full minutes in meaningful games the last two years and has done very well in many of those opportunities. We know he can play and that he is ready. In fact, not only do we know it as fans, but Nellie knows it too. He's gone to Wright in some key situations in certain games and gotten big production. So that's the conundrum... We know he can play, it's obvious the team could use what he can bring, yet instead we put Corey Maggette or stephen Jacskson on guys like Luis Scola and they have a great game. It's different with Wright because he's not an unknown. But, he will be if we don't play him + resign him. He'll be known by another team like the lakers or Spurs...
I can't really agree with your assessment of Wright vs. Belinelli, BJM. Wright has had many good games and leads the entire team in FG%, including Andris, by a large margin. Sure we don't know everything that Nellie does, but what I do know is that I'd rather have Wright out there shooting 8-13 than let's say Jackson shooting 2-14, or pick any other player you want. No one on this team plays a lick of defense so that should not even be a factor. No one on this team can put the damn ball in the hole and I am sick of it. One of those who can do that is Brandan Wright, and he pretty much proves it every time he gets in the game. Look at Wright's last 10 games: 2-3 5-6 6-9 7-13 2-3 3-5 1-4 5-6 5-7 That is one game in his last 10 where he has failed to shoot over 50%, and with only 5 shots in that game. He's also pulling down an average of 3.4 boards in less than 17 average minutes during that span, which is not spectacular, but not terrible either, and almost certainly better than anyone else Nelson plugs into that spot. Now I don't want to take away from Marco, because I've really enjoyed watching him play lately and he's done very well for himself. But, it's only about 5 games and a lot of garbage time, so it's hard to tell if he can sustain those kinds of numbers over time. Morrow couldn't do it. The point is I think it's ridiculous to suggest that somehow Marco has earned his minutes and Wright hasn't. Wright makes mistakes on defense, but I've seen some dreadful lapses by Belinelli in that department as well. He tries hard on defense, but he is not a good defender. Both are pretty good offensively when they get chances and both are much better than the veteran garbage that Nelson keeps throwing out there.
The only thing I can come to is that Nellie sees something in Wright that he doesn't like that we fans can't see.
I see it. He loses focus. It's like what he used to do with Webber way back when. If CWebb shot a 3, he'd be benched. Go back and watch the video. Whenever Wright plays lazy zone D, or if he fails to seal off his guy, he goes straight to the bench... and gets an earfull each time. I agree about Jax. I think he should be sitting until his hand is healed. But Wright knows everything that he has to do in order to stay on the court. He's just too aloof to stay focused.
I'll watch for this next time Wright plays; I did see it one game last week (forgot which one) where Wright got benched immediately for not boxing out his man and Nellie let him have it (I think it was in the 4th quarter and we were winning). I guess if we want to be truly ambitious about this, Nellie is nurturing Wright while building character and accountability. If this is what he did with Marco (and presuming Marco continues to play well), then I don't have a problem with it. Hopefully Wright is up to the task. He seems to have a good attitude.
Nellie is brilliant when after the game he says "you know we needed to go small and their small lineup beat our small lineup; that's the way its been." Uh maybe that's a clue to go big.
