RECAP: Warriors 112 Nuggets 127 - Where did we find this guy? How much is he getting paid?

30 free throw attempts (the amt this season) is enough to derive an fairly confident average free throw percentage.

It’s 25, and what are you basing this on? Do you have standard deviation numbers, and what average are we talking about here? 45%? 50% We know Biedrins is a bad FT shooter. We also know he’s not nearly as bad as he’s been this year. I’m quite confident his biggest problem, this season, relative to his career, is sample error.

as Nellie noted that Curry could have had 20+ assists if the bigs just finished

Not to diminish Curry’s passing last night, which was fabulous, but I think this talking point tends to get overblown. A lot of Curry’s passes that supposedly “should’ve” been assists were sent to bigs who were cutting in traffic. They were great passes, but let’s not pretend those shots always should go down — bigs, even good ones, will miss some of those or simply get fouled on a bunch of those. A lot of those cuts were made at angles that made finishing very difficult.

Yep, and that goes to my point about him undervaluing things like defense and rebounding while overvaluing certain parts of offensive performance he’s interested in, and how we have a systematic problem in our organization right now that causes us to look for certain types of offense rather than things we need to help win. If a guy can shoot, or create shots for himself, Nellie will play him and let him shoot us out of the game and give him a huge leash (see Monta, Baron, Jack, Crawford, etc)….but even a guy that can contribute on offense, just in a limited way like Biedrins, struggles to get the minutes he should…..

Both of those stats play into the franchise’s attempts to deflect blame… unfortunately, both are misleading.

First, lineups. Our league-leading number of starting lineups has as much to do with Nellie’s restlessness as it does injuries. Let’s take the last twelve games as an example. If Nellie had simply started the most-played available guy at each position, he’d have used a total of five starting lineups:

1/31: Curry, Monta, Maggette, Tolliver, Biedrins (1)
2/2: Curry, Monta, CJ, Tolliver, Biedrins (2)
2/3: Curry, Monta, Maggette, Tolliver, Biedrins
2/6: Curry, Monta, Maggette, Tolliver, Biedrins
2/8: Curry, Monta, Morrow, Tolliver, Biedrins (3)
2/10: Curry, CJ, Morrow, Tolliver, Biedrins (4)
2/16: Curry, Morrow, Maggette, Tolliver, Biedrins (5)
2/17: Curry, Morrow, Maggette, Tolliver, Biedrins
2/19: Curry, Monta, Maggette, Tolliver, Biedrins
2/21: Curry, Monta, Morrow, Tolliver, Biedrins
2/23: Curry, Monta, Morrow, Tolliver, Biedrins
2/25: Curry, Monta, Morrow, Tolliver, Biedrins

How many different lineups did Nellie actually use? Eleven.

1/31: Curry, Monta, Maggette, Tolliver, Biedrins (1)
2/2: Curry, Monta, Vlad, Tolliver, Biedrins (2)
2/3: Curry, Monta, Maggette, Turiaf, Biedrins (3)
2/6: Curry, Monta, Karl, Maggette, Biedrins (4)
2/8: Curry, Monta, Morrow, Turiaf, Biedrins (5)
2/10: Curry, CJ, Morrow, Tolliver, Biedrins (6)
2/16: Curry, Morrow, Maggette, Tolliver, Biedrins (7)
2/17: Curry, CJ, Morrow, Maggette, Biedrins (8)
2/19: Curry, Monta, Morrow, Maggette, Biedrins (9)
2/21: Curry, Monta, Morrow, Tolliver, Biedrins (10)
2/23: Curry, Monta, Morrow, Tolliver, Biedrins
2/25: Curry, Monta, George, Turiaf, Biedrins (11)

Nellie’s gone super-big and super-small, he’s shuffled guys like Tolliver and Morrow in and out of the lineup, and in various games, he’s seen fit to start Vlad, Coby Karl and Devean George. The Warriors have used more starting lineups in the last four weeks than most teams have all season.

The wretched Curry/Monta/Morrow/Vlad/Mikki quintet started ten games… eight of those were coached by Keith Smart. No other Warriors lineup has been used more than three times. Just to repeat that for emphasis: Nellie hasn’t used a single starting lineup more than three times this year. Injuries explain a fair amount, but they don’t explain that.

Now let’s talk about those injuries. It’s true — the Warriors have missed more games due to injury than any other team. But 128 of those missed games have been recorded by

1) Raja Bell, a guy that the Warriors knew would be undergoing surgery when they traded for him,

2) Speedy Claxton, a guy that the Warriors hoped would be unavailable when they traded for him, and

3) Devean George, a guy whose availability the Warriors flat-out didn’t care about when they traded for him.

For most of the season, the Warriors devoted 20% of their roster space to three largely unavailable players. Now, you can argue that that was a worthwhile decision. And I suppose you could argue that Nellie was powerless to change that decision, (though I’d tend to think otherwise). But those 128 missed games didn’t come about through bad luck. They came about by design, and to non-rotation guys.

When it comes to rotation players, the Warriors have had bad injuries, but not uniquely bad. The Blazers have lost as many games from rotation guys, and their injuries have affected important players more than ours have… Roy’s missed fifteen games to Monta’s five, Oden and Przybilla have missed more games than Biedrins and Turiaf (though Camby will now soften that blow), Batum and Outlaw were both out for months. They haven’t had their planned starting lineup together for a single game, and they’re 16 /12 games ahead of us.

Point is, while it’s been a chaotic season, much more of that chaos has been self-inflicted than the team would have you believe. Poor decision-making by the front office and Nellie has made a tough situation much, much tougher.