Warriors have never played better in a loss this season

Posted on February 7, 2015 by Steinmetz

All right, here’s my quick thought after seeing the Warriors lose to the Hawks 124-116 on Friday night.

This feels like the first time the Warriors played perfectly fine — and yet lost. We’ve come to expect that when the Warriors are pretty good, they win. And pretty good is going to do it most of the time for them, no doubt. But not all the time and certainly not all the time against good teams.

It’s kind of weird, but the numbers say the Warriors were quite solid against the Hawks.

Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson combined for 55 points, made almost half their shots and half their 3s together. Draymond Green got a double-double (and we all know his double-doubles are better than David Lee’s, right?), including 20 rebounds and a bunch of assists. Harrison Barnes chipped in, made half his shots, despite a miss or two from beyond the 3-point line.

Those are all numbers you take from Golden State’s core guys — and numbers that we have seen — in countless Warriors’ victories. In addition, the Warriors dominated the glass, 51-38, and didn’t turn the ball over a crazy  amount (14). They finished shooting 46 percent from the field and 36 percent from 3-point range.

So, why did they lose? It’s easy to say the officiating and the free-throw disparity, but let’s go a little deeper, shall we? My first thought was that as good as each Warrior played, the guy he covered may have played, in general, just a little bit better. But I’m going to leave it there.

In order to go a little deeper, gonna have to sleep on it, watch the tape and give it a minute.

Hey, I didn’t say I knew why Warriors lost, I just said I was gonna tell you what I was thinking in wake of it. In meantime, feel free to tell me why you think Warriors lost tonight.

 

 

 

 

 

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Warriors playing Nellie small ball, but it doesn’t mean they’re small

Posted on February 5, 2015 by Steinmetz

The man who’s so big he’s got three names, Ethan Sherwood Strauss, wrote a real nice piece on the Warriors and the evolution of their defense. Here is it: http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/12273986/how-golden-state-warriors-built-nba-best-defense

In Part 1 of an 11-part breakdown detailing the team’s improved defense, there’s a quote from assistant GM Travis Schlenk. In essence, Schlenk said one of the big things the Warriors value most and look for in a player is length.

That would make sense. Schlenk’s worked under some guys — Pat Riley, Don Nelson, Chris Mullin — who value it in a big way.

What’s interesting about the current Golden State Warriors is that they’ve got some similarities to the “We Believe” Warriors of 2007, and Schlenk was along for that ride beside Nelson on the bench. And, yes, we’re talking small ball here.

The reality is the Warriors are playing plenty of small ball these days, it’s just a touch more camouflaged than it ever was under Nelson and it’s described as something else. What’s amusing about small ball is that many believe it means going to a small lineup. That’s not entirely true. To me, it mostly means going without a traditional center.

In fact, one of the biggest misperceptions about the “We Believe” team was that it was a small team. No, it wasn’t. It was a team, though, that often played without a center. But if you go position by position, and look at their personnel that year, you’ll realize that it was actually a pretty big and long team.

At point guard was Baron Davis, who at his best was a dynamic two-way point guard. He was big, strong and physical and yet he would oftentimes be the quickest player on the floor. He used his size to bother opposing point guards on the defensive end, sometimes smothering his opposite number while all his teammates overplayed and prepared to pounce. And as for the offensive end, well, Davis was someone the Warriors frequently went to in the low post. Why? Because he had a size advantage most of the time. In other words, he was big.

On the perimeter for that team were players such as Jason Richardson, Mickael Pietrus, Stephen Jackson and Matt Barnes. Each and every one of those players had good size for their positions. Richardson was 6-feet-6 and strong and Pietrus wasn’t quite as big, but he was wiry and definitely long. Stephen Jackson was an awfully big three when he played the small forward, and when he had to play power forward, his reach and wingspan served him — and Golden State — extraordinarily well.

Jackson’s size, length and quickness solved the Dirk Nowitzki riddle in that first-round playoff series, going a long way toward that monumental  upset. Even Andris Biedrins, at that time still effective and contributing, was a long and lanky player with terrific reach. When Biedrins was playing well, he could rebound outside his area and was a terrific help defender.

True, when the Warriors went all the way “small,” they often took out Biedrins and had Al Harrington at center. So, yes, the Warriors lived with being undersized there, but Nelson always figured he’d take his chances with that against a limited offensive center — which is most of the league.

The bottom line is that through the years I’ve heard Nelson, Mullin and Schlenk all talk about that “We Believe” team and the one thing they all agreed on was that few appreciated how “big” that team actually was. And that’s been a theme and focus ever since.

Which brings us to this year’s Warriors. We all know that because Andrew Bogut is not reliable, the Warriors are going to have to figure out what to do at that position. Mo Speights is obviously going to get some of those minutes, but if you’ve noticed, we’re starting to see David Lee playing some center. David Lee at center is code for small ball.

But again, look at the Warriors by position. Curry ain’t exactly a beast, but he’s grown into his body and he’s 6-3 with a solid frame. Klay Thompson has great length at the two-guard, and that length — along with his quickness and instincts — allows him to guard three positions.

Andre Iguodala is long, Harrison Barnes is pretty long and Draymond Green has a freakish wingspan. Green, for example, is considered a tweener and undersized and he might be both. But make no mistake: When he’s defending a three, he’s got a big-time size advantage most of the time and when he guards power forwards his strength and length make him tough to score on.

So, let’s just say you’re the Warriors and you’ve got a lineup of Curry, Thompson, Iguodala, Green and Lee. Well, you know what, that’s small ball — because you’re playing without a center and you’ve got multiple players capable of handling the ball. But are the Warriors really small?

Not on the perimeter, they’re not, which is exactly the way the “We Believe” team was.

 

 

 

 

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Another imprint game by Bogut

Posted on February 4, 2015 by Steinmetz

If you want a peek at how important Andrew Bogut is to the Warriors, take a look back at the first quarter of Tuesday night’s game against the Sacramento Kings — A game that wound up a very casual 121-96 win for the Warriors.

When you see a margin of victory that large, the inclination is to think there was no key element, no critical  juncture, no overly meaningful stretch that determined the outcome. And sometimes that’s true. But not on this night.

Hard to believe/remember, but this game started out with the Kings taking a 20-10 lead. Ben McLemore was scoring and the Kings looked awfully confident and comfortable. As you would figure, the Warriors would ease themselves back into the game, and then some, and it was Bogut who was most responsible.

Curry would rack up the points on the offensive end, but it was Bogut who fueled it all.

Here’s a snippet of some — emphasis: some — of what Bogut did in the first 12.

Bogut blocked a Rudy Gay dunk three-plus minutes into the game, with the Warriors already down 9-4, which got a fastbreak going; he stopped a dunk when he took a hard, no-highlight foul on McLemore midway through; he stood tall and forced a DeMarcus Cousins miss with 2:10 left in the first quarter, which led to two Curry free throws at the other end; he did just enough to intimidate Quincy Miller on the next possession and caused him to miss a peeper and the Warriors scored at the other end; with 48 seconds left in the period, he blocked Jason Thompson at the rim and it was a score the other way.

By the end of the period, the Warriors were up 29-22, stability had been restored and they played from ahead for yet another game.  Besides all that documented stuff above, Bogut was the man primarily responsible for Cousins’ 1-for-6, three-turnover first quarter.

If you want to look past the first quarter, the theme still continues. When Bogut went out with four fouls in the third, Cousins began to do some damage. But still, this game was about the first quarter and the tone Bogut helps his team set.

Rim protection for the Warriors is huge because one of the keys to their defense is an ability for several wing defenders — Klay Thompson, Andre Iguodala, Draymond Green, Harrison Barnes, Justin Holiday — to switch everything on the perimeter. But the Warriors don’t just like to switch, they like to pressure out there, too, trying to take advantage of their length.

That sometimes leaves them vulnerable to penetration. But Bogut has done an incredible job this year of turning that vulnerability into a strength. And I say strength for a reason: Because often those defensive plays by Bogut at the rim lead to transition, and that’s the absolute strength of this team: to play uptempo and in the open court.

What Bogut does, essentially, is turn a disadvantageous situation — one in which the opposing team appears to be poised for an easy score at the rim — into exactly the thing the Warriors are fantastic at: running a fastbreak. The win over the Kings was just another game that solidifies the notion that the Warriors might be able to win some games, maybe a series without Bogut in the postseason, but they likely aren’t going to win the whole thing.

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