Golden State Warriors

By Doc319@yahoo.com (David Friedman) Kobe Bryant scored a game-high 31 points on 9-15 field goal shooting and had a game-high four steals as the L.A. Lakers defeated the Golden State Warriors 130-113 on Sunday. Golden State Coach Don Nelson, who won five championships while playing for the Boston Celtics and has earned three Coach of the Year awards, believes that the Lakers are the best team in the NBA and he explained the primary reason that the Lakers enjoy that status: Kobe now has a grasp on the game like no other player and he controls it when he wants to. He makes the players alongside him succeed and he is a real leader out there. He has the whole package going for him; he is not just the best player in the league but probably the best leader. He could get 50 any time, I'm sure."   [read the full post]

By noreply@blogger.com (David Friedman) The L.A. Clippers added Baron Davis and Marcus Camby but subtracted Elton Brand, who missed most of last season due to injury. They will obviously improve on last year's win total and could make a run at the last playoff spot if everything breaks right--mainly Davis and Camby staying healthy. The Golden State Warriors' all-offense/little defense style was an entertaining novelty in 2007 and they certainly stunned the Mavericks in that year's playoffs, largely because the Mavericks stubbornly insisted on trying to slow the game down. However, the Warriors fell just short of the playoffs last year and hardly figure to be improved after the departure of Baron Davis and the serious injury suffered by Monta Ellis.   [read the full post]

By noreply@blogger.com (David Friedman) If he remains healthy, Brand certainly fills the 76ers' glaring need for an effective low post scorer, a deficiency that became painfully--and fatally--obvious during last season's playoffs when they pushed the Pistons to six games but simply could not score enough points in the half court set to keep pace when the Pistons slowed the tempo down and limited their turnovers. The Sixers have several young, talented players plus a very underrated point guard/floor leader in Andre Miller. However, it does not take a basketball mastermind to figure out that unless the Sixers also improve their outside shooting that teams will be able to feed Brand a steady diet of double teams without worrying about getting burned. Still, this is no doubt a m...   [read the full post]

By noreply@blogger.com (David Friedman) Baron Davis led the Golden State Warriors to one playoff appearance in three seasons and he has been injury-prone for most of his career, so the Warriors understandably declined to offer him a long term contract extension--but they inexplicably are reportedly willing to pay more than $100 million to pry Gilbert Arenas away from the Washington Wizards. Fortunately for Golden State fans, the Warriors apparently will not have a chance to overpay for Arenas because the Wizards and Arenas have reached a verbal agreement for $111 million over six years (contracts cannot be signed until July 9 when the precise amount of next season's salary cap is calculated). If that deal goes through it will be the sixth largest NBA contract signed since th...   [read the full post]

By David Friedman(noreply@blogger.com) Does that mean that the Clippers are wrong to sign Davis? No, not at all. The Clippers desperately need a top notch point guard, whether or not Shaun Livingston completely recovers from his devastating injury. It appears that they will renounce their rights to Corey Maggette and then re-sign power forward Elton Brand. Assuming that Brand and Davis stay healthy, the Clippers now have an All-Star caliber low post scoring threat and an All-Star caliber point guard. Their potential starting lineup of Chris Kaman, Brand, second year forward Al Thornton--a beast in training--Davis and Cuttino Mobley is quite potent. The main questions for the Clippers are their health, their dedication at the defensive end of the court and the lack of depth on...   [read the full post]

By David Friedman The Score: Washington 109, Philadelphia 93 The Key Stat: Gilbert Arenas produced 20 points, seven rebounds and five assists in 25 minutes off of the bench, his best performance since coming back from knee surgery. He shot 7-14 from the field--including 4-9 from three point range--and had a game-high +21 plus/minus rating. The Score: Golden State 122, L.A. Clippers 116 The Key Stat: Stephen Jackson (28 points on 8-17 shooting) and Baron Davis (25 points on 10-21 shooting) broke out of their recent shooting slumps as the Warriors took a 42-26 first quarter lead and held on for dear life. Fortunately for them, they were playing the Clippers at home, not the Jazz on the road. The Score: Sacramento 94, New Orleans 91   [read the full post]

By David Friedman The final Thursday of the 2007-08 regular season featured a role reversal for two teams who are very familiar with each other. The Golden State Warriors eliminated the Dallas Mavericks in the first round of last year's playoffs but the Warriors' loss to Denver last night helped the Mavericks clinch a berth in this year's playoffs while putting the Warriors' postseason hopes in serious jeopardy. Meanwhile, the Lakers took care of business versus the Clippers in an "away" game at Staples Center, setting the stage for a dramatic home game versus the West-leading New Orleans Hornets at Staples on Friday night. The Lakers finish the season with a three game homestand and are still very much in contention for the number one seed in the West.   [read the full post]

By David Friedman The Bottom Line: Will somebody please pull the plug on the "Stephen Jackson should have been an All-Star/is the best player on the Warriors" campaign? Baron Davis leads the Warriors in scoring (21.9 ppg) and assists (7.6 apg). Monta Ellis is averaging 20.1 ppg on .533 field goal shooting this season and in the last four games (including this loss) he increased those numbers to 23.8 ppg and .575. Meanwhile, with the Warriors' playoff hopes in serious jeopardy, Jackson--who has the same scoring average as Ellis but the worst field goal percentage (.406) of any player in the Warriors' main rotation--scored six points on 3-11 shooting from the field (including 0-6 from three point range), grabbed one rebound, passed for eight assists and committe...   [read the full post]

By David Friedman Webber and Sprewell in the barbershop Nike contacted Barkley before they made the barbershop commercial and he was cool with the idea. As he regularly shows on TNT, he does not mind having a laugh at his own expense. Still, as a competitor you know that he did not enjoy getting dunked on like that, so matters could not end in the barbershop. Fast forward to that year's playoffs. Barkley's Phoenix Suns enjoyed a 2-0 lead over Webber's Golden State Warriors in a best of five first round series. Golden State Coach Don Nelson decided to not double team Barkley--and the rest is history: Charles Barkley Versus the Warriors, Game 3, 1994 Playoffs Thanks for the memories, Chris Webber.   [read the full post]

By David Friedman While O'Neal only played 14 minutes versus the Warriors, it would not be correct to say that he had no impact. He scored nine points and had four rebounds in his limited action. More significant than O'Neal's individual numbers is the fact that the Suns outscored the Warriors by nine when O'Neal was in the game. In other words, O'Neal was able to be productive and effective even against a team that really pushes the ball. The two teams that made it to the Western Conference Finals last year--San Antonio and Utah--are often thought of as half court teams but they both showed the ability to successfully play at different speeds during their playoff runs; that is why San Antonio was able to eliminate Phoenix and Utah was able to eliminate Golden Sta...   [read the full post]

By David Friedman Warriors' small forward Stephen Jackson shot just 1-6 from the field to start the game, with most of his misses coming on long jumpers, so Golden State Coach Don Nelson ran a play for Jackson to catch the ball in the post. Jackson was fouled and made both free throws. Barnett noted, "They took the ball out of his hands on the perimeter so that he would not launch a three or go one on one...Don Nelson is not upset with him; he's just saying, 'I'm going to make it easier on him' and put him in a position where he has a chance to succeed, not fail, because he had been struggling." That subtle move by Nelson paid dividends later on, because Jackson shot 6-9 from the field the rest of the way and he made several big shots in the second half to help the Warriors hold off...   [read the full post]

By David Friedman Wanzer led the NBA in free throw shooting in 1952, becoming the first NBA player to shoot better than .900 (.904). He also ranked in the top ten in field goal percentage four times; the field goal percentage numbers from his era don't look great to today's eyes but there are several mitigating factors to consider, as I explained in a previous post: "The early NBA played its games in poorly lit arenas and dealt with travel and lodging accommodations that NBA and WNBA players of today could not even imagine. Also, forget 'no blood, no foul'—it was more like, 'no first degree assault, no foul.' Players did not dunk in games because leaving your feet was an invitation to a maiming—and yes, players back then could dunk the ball, as shown on old Minneapol...   [read the full post]

By David Friedman Anyone who visits this site regularly knows that I have repeatedly insisted (most recently in this post) that teams should not be afraid to run against the Golden State Warriors and that the Dallas Mavericks could have avoided their upset loss to the Warriors in last year's playoffs if the Mavericks had pushed the ball up the court instead of trying to slow the game down. These truths were once against confirmed in Dallas' 121-99 win over Golden State on Wednesday night. Dirk Nowitzki scored a game-high 29 points on 9-16 shooting, adding eight rebounds, six assists and three blocked shots. Nowitzki had a game-high plus/minus rating of +25. Five other Mavericks also scored in double figures, including Josh Howard, who had 19 points and a gam...   [read the full post]

By David Friedman The Warriors are second in the league in scoring (108.5 ppg) but just 15th in field goal percentage (.448) and 22nd in defensive field goal percentage (.460). However, as the Dallas Mavericks found out in the first round of last year's playoffs, it is not so easy to score against the Warriors in the half court and the Warriors are very good at converting steals and defensive rebounds into quick scores. If you run against the Warriors, then you are betting that your team will make better decisions and shoot higher percentage shots than the Warriors do--and the numbers show that this is indeed a good bet; if you try to slow the game down against the Warriors, all you are doing is slowing your own team down: miss, make or turnover, the Warriors will be r...   [read the full post]