RECAP: Golden State Warriors 97, Detroit Pistons 102 - Sigh...

I was very frustrated by yesterdays loss. Not a game we should be losing. Some of my frustrations:

Smart’s rotations. Why does Vlad get so much PT? He’s a pretty not good basketball player. On top of that – I dislike Vlad at the 3. I dislike seeing Vlad play PF more than I dislike seeing him play SF. I dislike seeing him play C much, much more than I dislike seeing him play PF. Why would you ever put him at C, Keith? I’ve now seen it multiple times, and I truly do not understand it. Second, I really don’t like the way Smart seems to play his backups all at one time. It’s much easier to hide a liability (not to name names or anything….Charlie Bell) with starters. When Steph, Dorell, Lee and Biedrins are out there, we can hide Charlie Bell and just let him sit around on offense and only take open 3’s (something he can do at an acceptable rate), and do his thing on D. When we’re playing Reggie, Vlad, Bell, and Carney together….I just don’t get it. You’re asking them all to do more than they’re capable of doing effectively. I forget the specifics of our rotations last night, just that as we’ve been doing, we definitely played the backups in a big group. I hate that strategy, and I think it’s been costly thus far. I’m already getting frustrateg with Smat, especially given what we saw out of him last year. I really hope Vlad is not this year’s Mikki Moore.

Monta is still trying to do too much. I’m worried about this. That’s not the role I want him in, it’s not the role he excels in, it’s not the best role for him for our team to win as many games as possible….I don’t want Monta creating off the dribble as often as he’s trying to, and I don’t want him among the league leaders in scoring. If he is, I think it means something has gone wrong and I think it will mean our team is not a real playoff contender. His performance thus far screams “regression towards the mean”. That he had a couple of good games to start the season off doesn’t necessarily mean we’re seeing a whole new player. That said, I am encouraged that a much higher percentage of his hoops are assisted on (if I’m reading it right, it’s at the highest point of his career?). He’s good off the ball. When he’s not getting those shots off the ball, though….we have better options. Lee and Curry, especially, with some shots for Dorell and Andris mixed in. I expect/hope for Monta’s scoring totals to go down some, which is fine.

Lee – I expected more on offense. I’m going to chalk it up to sample size fluke thus far, but a dude scoring as many points as he did last year as efficiently as he did has skills. Where did they go? I’d like to see him being more aggressive – like the move he put on Ben Wallace. More of that, please.

Dribble penetration – we’re still bad at stopping this. Honestly, I thought Biedrins was a one man wrecking crew while he was playing last night. He was our entire D because we were letting up dribble penetration at will, and it was basically 5 vs Biedrins….and what happened? Biedrins was challenging shots all over the place effectively AND cleaning up the glass at the same time. Awesome performance. And for those who think Biedrins can’t play D, I’d say either you didn’t watch last night, or you simply don’t know what you’re watching when it’s on. That said, the main point is we can do better at preventing dribble penetration, and we need to, especially when we aren’t forcing turnovers.

Bottom line, we should have won last night. Heck, a couple more shots fall, and we do win. That’s not enough, though – Detroit is a pretty bad team, if you want to see what a mid-20’s win team really looks like (since we’re much better than that), just look at them. They flat out aren’t good, and even on nights where we shoot poorly, even on the road we should win fairly often against teams like that.