The Zorgon - Fab Daily Warriors Blog: What happened in Charlotte? 03.07.08

Hello everyone, my name is Fabrício. Zorgon and I have decided to create a daily diary here on GSOM to bring you all the latest Warriors news, stats, rumors, gossip, game previews and reviews plus our own analysis and view of the game. The diary will be called "The Zorgon - Fab Daily Warriors Blog". I will write one day and Zorgon will write the following day and so on and on.

We will try to always post a mind provocative article so that everyone gets involved and share their thoughts here. WE WILL NOT BE POLEMIC AT ALL! We just want everyone to have a good read, have fun, get info on the Warriors and say what they think about the subject that we will bring to the table each and every day.

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Good read everyone... now off to the first article:

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What happened in Charlotte??  03/07/08

Well, that was a costly lost for the Dubs as they fell 118-109 to the Charlotte Bobcats.  They didn't play any defense allowing JRich to explode for 42 points (tying the Bobcats franchise record) on 15-32 FG plus 7 rebounds, 7-7 FTs and 5 made 3s. Raymond Felton (22p, 6a) and Earl Boykins (12p, 1 shy off his season high) tortured Baron and Monta all night long. Even rookie forward Jared Dudley    (he kept almost every ball alive after a Bobcats missed shot) had a double double with 10 points and a career high 18 rebounds. The Warriors really missed Andris Biedrins inside presence and rebounds tonight and didn't have any bench production.

The game started very well for the Ws as they shot 14-24 from the field with 4 made 3s and scored 38 points in the 1st. Baron with 8 points, Monta with 8 points and Captain Jack with 12 points led the way as usual for the Warriors combining of 28 of the 38 points. At one point the Warriors held a commanding 36-20 lead and ended the period up by 13 with the score of 38-25. They played their up tempo game, forced the Bobcats to a lot of mistakes and controlled the action from start to end.

In the second quarter things started to go very wrong as Baron was resting for the first minutes of the period. Without him, they didn't have any floor leader and played very sloppy. They had 6 TOs in the 2nd. Don Nelson tried to stop the game a couple of times and make some substitutions but nothing quite worked and Jason Richardson led a furious Charlotte comeback to take the lead almost for good mid way through the second. The Bobcats scored 34 points (which is a lot for a team that averages just over 95 PPG) and won the quarter 34-19 going to halftime with a 59-57 lead over the Dubs.

The second half started just like the first ended, with Charlotte in command, the Warriors playing sloppy and allowing Charlotte to open a 9 point lead mid way through the period. Richardson was on fire and had 12 points in the 3rd almost matching Monta´s 14. Things were getting a little better but Jason just wasn't going to let Charlotte go away and again the Warriors were outscored 34-29 and entered the 4th trailing by 7: 93-86.

The 4th quarter was the wildest one, each team making huge runs and attacking each other. The Cats got their biggest lead of the game at the 8:06 mark with a Okafor putback at 103-93. Baron Davis got a rest until the 7:21 mark and right after he re entered the game the Warriors, led by Baron himself and Monta Ellis made a 13-2 run and got the lead 106-105 after a Baron driving layup. Then it was all Bobcats as they made a 13-3 closing game run and ended up winning the game by the score of 118-109 and again winning the period by 25-23.

The Warriors are now 8-5 on the back end of BTBs, still a very good mark for any playoff-level team, especially considering last year's dreadful 5-17 mark in that category. The biggest problem tonight wasn't defense or Biedrins absence (although that made a huge influence), it was the bench production: 12 points on 4-15 FGs, 4 TOs, 12 combined rebounds and no defense, no hustle, no clutch shots from Pietrus and Azubuike...it just ain´t gonna do it, specially when the opposing team has an unstoppable player who scores 42 points and lights up all of his other teammates. The Big Three did their thing scoring 83 combined points although Monta didn't play defense at all and missed crucial free throws, Baron had just three assists (which made his season average go below 8 for the first time this season) and 6 TOs (all on unforced errors that led to easy buckets at the other end) and Jackson didn't play his usual defense on Richardson, allowing him to hit all kinds of shots ( I also tip my hat to him for hitting tough shots like off-balance 3-pointers and pretty reverse layups in traffic.) and score 42 points (he is averaging 31.8 PPG in his last 4 games).

I don't know what you guys think but in my opinion the Warriors are much more deadly when Baron becomes a pass first Point Guard and gets everyone involved. Take the game against Atlanta for example... in the first half he had 0 assists... that's right... ZERO assists and the Warriors weren't playing good basketball and were down by 2 at halftime even though Baron had more than 20 points. In the second half he had 9 ASSISTS... and they outscored Atlanta by 19 and won the game and he had like 10 points or something. Tonight he wanted to do it all by himself and was selfish and look what happened... we lost! If you check his Splits Stats, you can see that when we win, he averages 8.6 APG and when we lose he averages just 7.0 APG (he has a lot of 1, 2, 3 and 4 assists games in the 23 games we lost), so what happens, he forces more threes, commits more turnovers and gets everyone out of sync. I think that from now on he needs to become more of a passer rather than try to beat the opponent by himself. Specially now that Monta Ellis has emerged and is hitting like 60 or 70% of shots... why don't they give him the ball more... I bet we are going to win more games if Ellis gets a little bit of Baron's shots!

Check this quote by our good ol´ pal JRich after the game:
 "I think the first time we faced them, being back in Oakland and seeing all the fans, the No. 23 jerseys, I think I was just overhyped. This time I was more relaxed and in a much more settled environment. I just wanted to go out there and try to get the win. This wasn't a revenge game. It wasn't anything personal, it was just a game that we wanted to win."

I think that the draft day trade will end up being very good for our future because it gave us a good financial flexibility and gave us a good big man in Brandan Wright to build our future along with Andris and Monta, but man.... I miss Richardson... I don't know if we would be any better with him, but tonight I really missed him because he is such a fearless player and has a big heart and desire to win ball games. I was watching the game with my old #23 jersey and at least enjoyed watching a player putting on a show... I think we all knew what would happen when he faced us this season... even Baron knew that: "We knew that he wasn't going to have two bad games against us, we knew he would come out doing what we knew he could do."

Biedrins would have been a savior because he would be able to box out Jared Dudley, defend Emeka Okafor (who had 11 rebound, 16 points and shot 18 free throws because the Warriors didn't have anyone to defend him and opted for the Heck-a-Okafor tactic every time he was wide open for a layup or a dunk) and grab some offensive rebounds, block some shots, and be an inside threat for the Bobcats who scored a lot of points on layups. We also really missed Al Harrington's contribution tonight, he had just 6 points on 2-6 FGs, all threes, that shows that he wasn't trying to do anything else like penetrate, try to get some contact, go to the line... he just settled for the 3 and committed 5 fouls in 24 minutes of action... well, at least he didn't have a turnover tonight.

This one was a total Must-Win game because Charlotte was also playing the back end of a back to back, was missing one of their biggest weapons in Gerald Wallace and in fact they are a very weak team. This loss will probably hurt our chances to go higher in the West Conference standings and also our desired 50 wins plateau. To make it even worse, Denver destroyed the tired Phoenix Suns (they are now 3-5 after the Shaq trade) and got back to within 1 game of the Warriors for the 8th and final playoff spot. Now the next 2 road games are crucial (against Miami and Orlando, again on back to back on Friday and Saturday) for the Warriors if they want to keep the last playoff spot and gain some separation from Denver before "their tough schedule gets even tougher", using Bob Fitzgerald words.

Well guys that's it for now. I hope you enjoyed the read and please don't forget to check tomorrows debut diary for Zorgon. It will be a lot of fun!! Don't miss it. Unfortunately the Dubs lost tonight on Zorgon's birthday but hopefully they will get the their 38th win of the season on Friday against the Miami Heat (knock on wood because we NEED this game at all costs!).

For Zorgon, I´m Fabricio, so long everyone! Hope you liked!!

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Here are some links for more Warriors stuff:

http://www.charlotte.com/140/index.html  (Charlotte´s side of the story)

http://www.rotoworld.com/content/clubhouse_news.aspx?sport=NBA&majteam=GS  (Warriors Fantasy News)

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/teams/gsw/stats;_ylt=AokP_5WiWxIng2xNLb2.FvJ90bYF  (Warriors complete team stats)

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/teams/gsw/photos;_ylt=AviCpGiOLUfEQQt07YxCrg190bYF  (Warriors Pics)

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/boxscore?gameId=280305030  (Game Boxscore)

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/players/splits?playerId=194  (Baron Davis Splits Stats)