OPEN THREAD: Warriors @ Denver - Yea. This one is big.

Hopefully Harrington stays hot and keeps stretching the D with his threes.

Hopefully Buke keeps up his recent play.

Hopefully Monta can find that automatic mid range touch again, it makes the game so easy for him.

Hopefully Baron recovered from that flu.

As long as the Warriors play like underdogs, we'll be in good hands. But I'm kind of hoping for an early double digit deficit, because we always play our best after those.

Otherwise, welcome to the Western Conference, where 5 teams are within 1 1/2 games of the top spot, where 3 teams are within 1 game of each other for the bottom 2 spots, and Utah, who was sitting pretty before, has Denver eyeing them at 2 1/2 games behind.

Every game counts!

JR Smith scares the crap out of me. Didn't he get 25 in the fourth a couple games ago? The Warriors are known to leave shooters open, so he'll definitely get his shots.

ITS THE ROCKETS GAME ALL OVER AGAIn!!!

can we get the warrior moms to come to the games?

Harrington and Barnes continue not to produce in big games. I had hoped Barnes minor altercation with Najera would fire him up, but the sad reality hit me when instead of stepping up, he just backed down. I have lost all hope of him turning his season around. The best we can hope for is a mediocre 3 point specialist.

Azubuike was playing scared. Sure he made some nice tip ins and lay ups but even when you are hesitant you can get those to go down. I don't know if he made a single perimeter shot.

Ellis made many inexcusable errors. Careless passes that we haven't seen all season, and many bad shots. There were plays were he got the ball down low and instead of evaluating his options he went up with the shot.

Biedrins is good for tip ins but his post game is terrible right now.

Besides the Jack, Baron, Biedrins, and occasionally Ellis, the Warriors were playing scared. None of them had confidence in their shot, and this should have been a blowout. The only reason it wasn't was because Jack kept bailing us out with 3 pointers in the second quarter. The Warriors could have had better shot selection, maybe they were scared of Camby but they definitely didn't get as many easy baskets as they needed.

Not only that, but it is infuriating to watch Smith, Kleiza, Najera, and Martin consistently produce while we can't get anything. They consistently hit shots even in the 4th while anything we got from our role players came in the middle of the game.

I laughed when Barnett said the defense had been superb. The Nuggets were getting to the rim every time they made one extra pass, some of the shots we gave up were ridiculously easy. It was just that sometimes they screwed up the easy shot and sometimes one of our players would come up with a miraculous strip.

People say the Nuggets don't play any defense, but compared to the Warriors they are the fucking Spurs.

People also might say that the Warriors just had an off game but that doesn't cut it. In these games, the role players have to step up, the silly turnovers have to be decreased, etc., no excuses. We can't be missing layups and just say that 9 times out of 10 we make those. Execution is critical in the big games. If we can't execute, then we aren't a playoff team.

If Baron and Jackson weren't hitting all types of shots, this game would have been a blowout, which would have indicated better how the Warriors besides the players previously mentioned played.

The team has been playing bad lately. The game against Houston, I don't know what it was, but they never looked better than Houston besides the very beginning of the game. The game against the Lakers, well, without Gasol and Bynum the Lakers are essentially the team they were last year, which is a 42-40 team, so looking back we kind of underachieved by having two close games against them. The game against the Blazers, the Blazers went absolutely ice cold besides Blake after the first quarter. If it wasn't for Blake, the Warriors would have had a big lead after the second quarter. That's how I felt we played tonight, with Baron and Jackson barely keeping us afloat before the Nuggets took it for good.

I was tivoing it, which is why my reaction comes so late. Even though I said I thought Denver would win, I only said that not to jinx it. Now tomorrow  is a make or break game in the Warriors season. If we play scared tomorrow, then we might as well miss the playoffs and get a better pick because I don't see how we can succeed in the playoffs with three players playing well.

BUT...Buke.  3/15?  Really?