Stephen Curry's big day turned into a long night, and the Golden State Warriors turned to Carl Landry to escape with a season-opening victory over the rebuilt Phoenix Suns. Landry scored 12 of his 17 points in the fourth quarter and the Warriors beat the Suns 87-85 on Wednesday in Phoenix's first game of the post-Steve Nash era.
Ugly game. Lee and Curry were trying the "hero" route without much success. Warriors only won because Suns decided to let Beasley and Telfair jack up long jumpers rather than go to Scola in the post where he was killing the W's. Very nice to see Landry help us rather than kill us. Why do the W's, much like other teams, go small late and ignore getting killed on the glass? Notice too that ball movement stalls and there are not a huge number of fast breaks anyways late in the 4th? Go Ezili/Landry late if Landry > Lee.
Not a fan of Landry? I never quite got why people bash him. Hes can be a bit of a black hole but that's acceptable for a big man who can score inside like he does IMO. Especially off the bench. Defense and rebounding is mediocre but I did notice that he switched onto Scola late after Lee got bent over on consecutive possessions and he denied Scola the ball and in doing so blew up the Rockets' called play. IMO hes an excellent bench player. Agree about MJ going small late. We found out later that he had a minutes limit for Bogut and burned the majority of it in the first half and the remainder in the opening sequence of the first half. He still had Festus though and could have thrown Rush or Barnes in there to battle PJ Tucker, who was killing Klay on the glass.
