TV: CSNBA, CSNBAHD Radio: KNBR 680 Bummer, looks like Biedrins will be out tonight with a sprained wrist. If the Ws aren't shooting lights out tonight, so much for the "win streak". C.J. will be available though, apparently.
Pretty much the worst display of team basketball I've seen in Oakland. It was all one on one for the vast majority of the time. They scored 38 pts from the FT line, which came from inidividual play. The 6th grade girls at halftime showed better ball movement and passing. Thunder pass the ball and get easy looks at the basket, whether 3s, open jumpers or layups. On the other hand the Warriors survive based on pure 1 on 1 and contested pullup jumpers. I am going to hit Maggette hard because he is the essence of individual play. His idea of a pass is giving it up at halfcourt to a guard. Unfortunately this only occurs about 35% of the time because the rest of the time he's dribbling up and then looking to go. Worst play of the night, right in front of me on the left side he gets beat by Green going baseline, however Turiaf comes over and makes the block, great, Maggette will get the rebound and fast break the other way right? Um....no, where's Maggette? Picking up Turiaf's man? Nope, he's already leaked out looking for the cheap bucket nearly to halfcourt, so instead, Collison or Kristic gets the rebound and the Thunder score an easy layup. Dreadful. And that's your 2009 Warriors in a nutshell.
What do you expect? It's a roster full of D leaguers and undrafted rookies. Even the drafted guys don't know how to play basketball (Belinelli excluded). 5 guys injured yesterday too. What an ugly game it was. The announcers were talking about how exciting it was in the first half. The team gave up 70 points. Not my idea of exciting...Unreal. My dream would've been to resign Baron move Monta, Wright, etc for Amare, etc and held on to a starting lineup of Baron Bellinelli Jax Beidrins and Amare. Let the expiring contracts expire and see what they could've gotten in free agency. I just don't know what this front office is doing. It really makes me sick, because the Warriors are going to be a bad team for years to come.
All I knows is if Amare didn't even want to be drafted by the Warriors, I doubt he'd come here. Baron was probably one of the few near-franchise level guys that actually wanted to play for us and he was pretty optimistic. We couldn't even get Elton Brand! But I'm sure that was because of the coaching style. Brand would probably be played as a center which is retarded because he's a prototype power forward. It would have been nice if we could have gotten Baron and Brand. Maybe Brand underneath the basket would help Baron in the shot selection department. Then we trade Crawford for Harrington. Suddenly the roster would look like this: (which is not bad even though injuries) C: Biedrins PF: Elton Brand SF: Sjax SG: Jamal Crawford PG: Baron Davis Bench: C: Rony Turiaf, 10 day contract PF: Brandan Wright, Anthony Randolph, Robert Kurz SF: Kelenna Azubuike, Anthony Morrow, Anthony Randolph SG: Marco Belinelli, Anthony Morrow, Kelenna Azubuike PG: CJ Watson, Marcus Williams We're still thin as hell at center, but I'm sure Nelly being Nelly would find a way to go without one. What we have now isn't insanely bad on paper as a starting lineup, but we need more depth and we need to play defense when it counts. There's no way to win if we can't make stops because we sure as hell don't dominate inside or outside yet.