We need Speedy bad. Look at him. He does so much for us. He is the only Warrior that penatrates as his first choice. He can also play great D against the toughest PGs in the league. Also he has a good jumpshot that he can use. I know it is early to say this, but Speedy is a vital part to our team. When we have Fisher starting we are choking due to Fisher throwing up threes and saying "I don't want to penatrate" Also when we have Fisher starting, Dunleavy is our second option to play. Come on! Flores is already showing that he can be better than both Fisher and Dunleavy if he gets time. Right now is his time to prove himself. And really, Fisher is a shooting guard in the body of a point guard. We need to play Flores as our starter right now. How we are playing them, they are set to be the next Darkos. Really, Biedrins and Flores both have great potential, they just need the opprotunity to start at least once this year.
Flores is also a shooting guard in a point guard's body. But I see what you mean. Flores has looked good in limited minutes and I want to see if we have a Juan Dixon combo guard or player who actually has some playmaking skills. I certainly would like him as a defender.
I say the new starting line-up should be as follows: 1) Dunleavy 2) Flores/J-Rich 3) J-Rich/Pietrus 4) Murphy 5) Robinson(Unless he is still hurt, then in place of him Foyle would start)
I'd give anything a try, the pieces we have do not fit unless we have a legit center to protect the lane and pound the ball inside, a legit outside threat, or a point guard that can make fastbreaks incredibly easy (nobody wants to run). If Mullin thought this was the roster that would take us to the playoffs, he must have been not watching basketball for the past decade to know how tough it is in the West and that we have a team that doesn't master any aspect of the game. What's really bad is the Suns who were almost dead last last season, used their spending money wisely on impact players and talent are now top of their game and the Sonics who were dead last in the last season, hardly made any moves, got more rebounding help to protect their shooters and started giving more minutes to playmaking point guard, Luke Ridnour. The W's have to try things that work and not shoot themselves in the foot with crummy contracts that will come to haunt them when it comes to signing our future picks. BTW Dunleavy is not a point guard but he might be okay if he's being fed the ball in the post. J-rich won't be really effective at small forward since he can't beat up on weaker players at that position unless he's going up against somebody like Dunleavy who always gets beat up. Flores is kind of unproven. He could be the next flavor of the month after Pietrus.
We did see a stretch when Dunleavy and Pietrus shared the small f+point roles last year and it worked by being a tricky matchup. Foyle ought to get the major role at C. Cliff scores but doesn't rebound an is undersized,bulk-wise. Biedrens and Flores can benefit from playing time while Robinson,Davis and Cheany are not going to get better,and may not be here next season. True the Warriors spent more than is wise to get Fisher-after letting Boykins exit without an offer. It is the Warrior way
Dunleavy's "Natural" position is PG ... He played PG all throughout HS ... His dad's a coach so he has a lot of the fundamentals a PG should have ... he's a very versatile player ... that's why you see him playing PG sometimes
You know AZGS. I'll give Dunleavy a chance. You said his natural position is point, so for him to make a splash on this team, he will have to play like one. His passing is good so he can get the passes to Murphy, J-Rich, and them and can chip in to get points. I think if he plays like that he won't get booed so often because his inconcistency on scoring is why he gets booed. However if he can be a good point passer and can score inside instead of shooting threes, he can be good. A starting lineup that would be good there would be PG: Speedy Claxton/ Luis Flores/ Mike Dunleavy SG: Jason Richardson/ Derek Fisher/ Mickael Pietrus/ Calbert Cheany SF: Mike Dunleavy/ Mickael Pietrus/ Zarko Cabarkapa/ Eduardo Najera PF: Troy Murphy/ Cliff Robinson/ Eduardo Najera C: Adonal Foyle/ Andris Biedrins/ Cliff Robinson/ Dale Davis Why? Well, I think the Cliff experiment was a good one, but it didn't help with the things we needed so we put Foyle at center to give us low post bulk and good low post D. Flores gets the second job at point and we move Fisher to his real position
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting BALLIN IN AZGS:</div><div class="quote_post">Dunleavy's "Natural" position is PG ... He played PG all throughout HS ... His dad's a coach so he has a lot of the fundamentals a PG should have ... he's a very versatile player ... that's why you see him playing PG sometimes</div> Dun actually plays point guard a lot of times because we have no choice but to use him (he's the most unselfish player with vision of the court wider than 20 degrees and probably our most accurate passer ... sometimes). Claxton is so injury prone that he could make Marcus Camby look like Bruce Willis' character from Die Hard. It's too bad Dun hit that growth spurt because he could have gotten slower because of it. I mean his old man was pretty quick wasn't he? How the heck did Dunleavy evolve into a sloth? Anyway, not to pick on Dunleavy's poor physical skills, he's good as a point forward if you have the right components on the team. He is however pretty useless to the team unless people are moving around and he's got that one dominant defender that can cover the point guard and have lots of help defenders. It also would help if he could shoot the ball as well as a guy like Wally World. Wally maybe the most one dimensional one-time allstar, but his shooting touch is uncanny. He'll get like 60% shooting for an entire month. I like the fact that Dunleavy has great passing especially because chest passes are tricky to do especially when bouncing it fast and hitting the guy right in their hands. His passes will come when he's initiating a fastbreak or when other people are moving off the ball and he passes from the high post. He can't take defenders off the dribble no matter how good his ballhandling skills are (not quick enough). He's not a one on one player unless he's doing the triple threat position using his big first step like Murphy does. It doesn't make sense to have two players that play the same quality of defense due to "not getting there in time" and similar types of offense (I'd say Dunleavy's D is worse because he plays softer than anybody in the league right now and Murph has made more impact since he's bulked up). We can either let Dun walk (truly wasting a 3rd overall pick by not getting anything for him), or we convince, resign him for the minimum qualifying offer and try to trade Murphy two years from now with a post game (most teams will not trade these players and there is usually a catch like they suck on defense or they can't rebound or they are lazy - Eddy Curry/Zach Randolph). Dun is not worth 4 mil a year, but he may think he is and we simply don't want to lock up more unproven talent that nobody in the league really cares to trade for. Dun hasn't really shown that much potential as let's say Murphy/Jrich have shown in their rookie years and maybe Pietrus (he was pretty good last year). Personally, I'd rather have Murphy off the bench two years from now if we somehow wind up with Biedrens or someone who happens to be a low post threat, good passer out of the kickout and a defender. But Dunleavy? Unless we kick Murphy or Jrich out or he starts hitting his perimeter shots off the catch, he's kind of useless for what we need him for. We need him to score and play defense. It's really Mullin who made it this way because with Murph and Jrich locked up, Dun doesn't fit anywhere in the starting lineup but the bench.
