The Story Of Our Season

Totally agree. Problem is, Monta still seems to fancy himself a PG, and Nellie seems loath to convince him otherwise; moreover, we probably don’t have the PG we need, as Curry just is not showing signs of being a good playmaker.

This is an important issue, maybe our most important going forward. We need to figure out how to use our star in a way that leads to wins. But thus far, the team has not only not figured out how to do it, they have not even indicated that they realize there’s a problem. It’s troubling.

Another explanation for Monta’s drop off from 2 seasons ago is that he may have simply had one of those outlier hot shooting years.

I think that’s more than possible… I said before the season that I didn’t really expect Monta to ever equal his ‘07-’08 efficiency. His efficiency that year was as good as you’re ever gonna get from a small slashing two guard who doesn’t shoot threes, and he’ll be hard-pressed to match it again.

Having said that, Monta’s not even scoring as efficiently as he did in ‘06-’07, either… his efficiency is below his career average, not just that of his career year. Even if he just had a fluky-hot year that year, he ought to be able to come within two or three wins of it in terms of effectiveness. Instead, most metrics have him six or seven wins behind. That probably was his peak year for efficiency, and that’s probably part of the story here. But it’s not the whole story.

yeah, but the dubs were 8-33 on the road last year. most bad, young teams seem to win 1 in 4 or 1 in 5

I’m not a big fan of the coaching job we got last year, either, so that doesn’t suggest much to me one way or the other. And you’re right that many bad young teams do horribly on the road. But a lot of those bad young teams are bad partially because of their coaching… teaching your kids to play with composure on the road is one of the most important ways to improve. Memphis was younger than we were last year, and had the same 8-33 road record we did. This year they’re 7-13 on the road, and still younger than us; the only change to their team was the addition of Z-Bo, who, though he’s been great, didn’t exactly bring a winning tradition along with him.

The young Grizzlies are figuring out how to compete on the road. The young Blazers are .500 on the road, despite their injuries. The young and miserably untalented Knicks are 7-12 on the road. I’m not saying that competing on the road is easy for a young team, but I’m saying if that we were actually being coached decently, we’d be doing a little more of it.

(There’s one young team that I think is being coached well that’s been as horrible on the road as we have: Sacramento. But unlike us, they’ve played a viciously difficult road schedule, as 12 out of their 16 road opponents have had a winning record; they haven’t yet gotten to play in New Jersey or Philly or Detroit or Indiana. It’ll be interesting to see how they fare when they head East; I’m guessing their road record will soon outpace ours pretty comfortably.)

i don’t know that that is an auto win if healthy. dubs actually held their own on the defensive glass (71+% which is above their average even with Andris in). they sucked on the offensive glass, but that’s traded off with the fact that was a Curry, Watson, Monta, Maggette line up that kept them in that game in the 1st place. would they have forced 22 TOs though playing bigger? on the other hand, Moore, Randolph & Hunter were so laughably bad that it might have been a win.

Anthony Randolph did indeed play badly in his 14 minutes. He’d played well, however, in the previous four games; he played well in almost every game after this one, before hurting his ankle. And yet in the one game where he struggled, Nellie punted on him and we grabbed 25 rebounds all night.

As for whether it was an “auto win”, or whether we needed smallball to compete that night… well, I think you’re overestimating the Pistons a little. This was a mediocre-at-best team when healthy that was missing Ben Gordon and Tayshaun Prince, and a team that lost its next thirteen games after beating us here. Did we really need a lot of creativity to win that game? And even if you wanted to play smallball, don’t you think Randolph as the smallball center would’ve given us a better chance?

typo? 65 min.

You’re right… my bad.

Turiaf’s stint saw them fall behind a point every minute

…mainly because the Blazers’ perimeter players were hot when he was in. Plus-minus has zero relevance in sample sizes this small; unless it syncs with a guy’s production, there’s no causal relationship to be drawn.

AR’s a point every 1m48s (though he played well individually and was the only tall to do so).

“Well” doesn’t begin to cover it. Randolph scored 15 points on 11 shots, grabbed eleven boards, had an assist, two steals, a block and zero turnovers… in twenty minutes. Randolph was, by a mile the best Warrior on the floor. Now, he also had four fouls in that game; it wasn’t like Nellie could’ve gotten forty minutes out of him. But when a guy’s dominating like that, at least get your six fouls’ worth out of him. Nellie didn’t bother.

having the rebounding battle go from 36 to 43 to maybe 39 to 40, probably wasn’t going to erase a 16 point deficit.

This is an important point.

It’s not that we could’ve cut our rebounding deficit to one. We could have outrebounded them by ten. Easily. No question. The Blazers fielded the smallest, weakest frontcourt we’ll play all year, and through smallball, we let them outrebound us by seven.

that game and the dubs 89 points was more about their struggle to score (which at least doesn’t seem to be helped when they go with their regular height line up – maybe statistics will prove me wrong).

On a general level, our offense has been better with Randolph than without him, both because he’s helped our offensive rebounding a lot and because, like, Maggette, he helps us get into the penalty. And indeed, in his twenty minutes against the Blazers, he grabbed five of our eleven total offensive boards. I think it’s safe to say more Randolph would’ve helped our offense that night.

You know who didn’t help our offense that night? CJ and Morrow, who combined to shoot 3 for 19 in 67 total minutes. They were ice-cold and getting burned all night, and yet Nellie kept both of them for most of the fourth quarter (a quarter we started only down by five points, keep in mind). The little Blazers badly outplayed them, to the surprise of no one, and we lost the fourth quarter by eleven.

The Blazers’ only chance to win that night was with smallball; their little guys were and are pretty clearly better than ours. Our ideal game plan could not possibly have been simpler — I and others delineated it before the game. Go in there, crush them on the boards and beat them down. Sure, they’ll get by you a lot, but you’ll still come out on top. We needed to pound them into submission with size, the way so many other teams have been doing to us. Instead, Nellie went small, and we lost.

Can we at least agree that that wasn’t a very good coaching performance?

that KMart stretch goes over 8 games (50%, career 48%). so not that big of a stretch.

“Another explanation for Monta’s drop off from 2 seasons ago is that he may have simply had one of those outlier hot shooting years. I mean how often does a guy shoot 60% for an entire month?” — homer simpson

K-Mart has played nine seasons in the NBA, most of them for a Nuggets team that plays at an extremely fast pace (fifth this year, sixth last year, first two years ago). He has never averaged 18 points a game. He has never averaged ten rebounds a game, let alone eleven. He has never averaged three assists in a game. In his nine seasons, he has shot over 50% exactly once. And yet based on eight games, you’re claiming that if he were a Warrior, he’d be an 18/11/3 50 FG% guy. There is no basis for that, whatsoever. If he’s capable of play like that, the Nuggets ought to sue the dude, because he’s been holding out on them.

i agree AR should play more, just pointing out that right now Kenyon Martin is a better player and yet a lot of dub fans would disagree with that sentiment.

Every statistic you can find would disagree with that sentiment, too. Martin is the better defender, but Randolph is better offensively, and that’s the larger gap. On a per-minute basis, Randolph is not only the better player, but the better player by a pretty big margin. Martin is a more reliable commodity, and his lower foul rate allows him to stay on the floor for longer… there’s value in those things. But the case for Kenyon Martin being the better player is thin.

You may admire K-Mart’s veteran savvy; I do, too. You’re suggesting that Warriors fans tend to overrate our young guys; I agree. But on this particular point, you’re off the mark. Anthony Randolph is not like Stephen Curry or Marco Belinelli or even Brandan Wright. The stats say that Anthony Randolph is a genuinely good NBA player, right now. I know it sounds crazy, given how he sometimes looks, but he is enough of a physical freak to survive his mistakes and then some.