Tom Abdenour in the community!  Teaching kids about eating healthy (via GoldenStateWarriors)

The number of "great" Warriors to be remembered as "great Warriors" is pretty slim.  The number of retired numbers that adorn the Oracle Arena are pretty limited.  With the way things are going right now, we wonder if there will ever be another Warrior that wants to be retired as one -- or a player that even comes close to having the achievements worthy of nomiation.

I argue that that next person is actually sitting on the Warriors bench right now. 

No, I'm not talking about the potential of Anthony Randolph to be a superstar, nor am I suggesting anything about Stephen Curry's future with the Warriors.  This dude has been with the Warriors 21 years and counting.

I'm talking about Tom Abdenour.  The Warriors' athletic trainer has seen it all and stuck with the organization through thick and thin.  This is more than we can say about former captain, Stephen Jackson.

This season, the Warriors need Abdenour to perform at his best.  Last season was quite an "off-season" given that various Warriors players missed a combined 200+ games last season.  What can we expect from him this year?  Hope he's got his rolls of tape ready.

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What do Ralph Sampson, Uwe Blab, Alton Lister, Tyrone Hill, Victor Alexander, Rony Seikaly, Todd Fuller, Erick Dampier, Adonal Foyle, and Troy Murphy have in common?  They've all been opening night starting centers for the Warriors in the past twenty years -- and their performances as Warriors all fall short of what Andris Biedrins has brought to the team.  But despite nearly two decades of longing for a high quality center, some Warriors fans don't seem to appreciate fully the one that fell into their laps at the 11th pick in 2004, fresh from Riga, Latvia.  That'll likely change in 09-10, and hopefully not only after Andris' departure.

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Oh Mr. Turiaf, how I enjoy having you around.   Yes, through the dark days and the rough games, you've seem to bring a smile to my face.  Why's that you ask? It's not the funny accent, the hyphy dance moves, or the big smile on YOUR face (although I do love those things.)

It's cause you love animals!

I guess you get an extra big teddy bear when you're extra big like Ronny!

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Mikki Moore's player preview for the upcoming year can be summed up by this clip:

In all fairness, and I'll be honest, I don't know much about Mikki Moore so he may be more than poster fodder for this upcoming season. What I do know about him after the jump.

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(I wonder if people really know who CJ Watson is...)

Despite a somewhat lackluster free-agent class of summer 2009 where Trevor Ariza was the headliner, the NBA off-season was still pretty exciting nonetheless.  Richard Jefferson switched conferences and makes me think the Spurs will continue their every-other-year championship a reality.  Vince Carter finally got to move back home.   Hedo Turkoglu got to go home as well...at least as "home" as the European city of Toronto can be for an Eastern European dude.  Upper-echelon teams wondered and battled over whether they should hold onto their team leaders (Turkoglu, Andre Miller, Carlos Boozer) or succumb to the restrictive pressures of the economy.  Teams strategized.  Teams made moves for the betterment of their short term and long term futures. 

And then, you had, what I would like to call, Watson-gate.

Honestly, the tug-of-war battle between our Golden State Warriors and the Orlando Magic over CJ Watson's services as a back-up guard might have been the most head-scratching and least inspiring drama of the whole summer.  I mean, really, was this battle over CJ Watson really something to get personal about, as Orlando GM Otis Smith felt about the whole situation.  In one word, I would describe this ordeal as "unnecessary."  But I guess that's typical Warriors fashion to piss off their own players (Marc Jackson).

Watson is a solid back-up shooting guard (since he doesn't do much distributing) and has the one thing that Warrior players never seem to have:  a mid-range game and a mid range jumper.  But aren't undersized, shoot-first point guards as plentiful in the NBA/NBDL/CBA/PBA talent pool as say the annoyingly unathletic  tweener PFs (Ike Diogu ...)? 

So what value does he have for a Warriors team overloaded with shoot-first players -  especially at the 1-3 positions that all guards have to play under Nellieball?  Is there something we don't know about Watson's future with the Warriors?

Check after the jump

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Early on, there were fewer more critical of Anthony Randolph than myself. Ready to give up on him?  Not exactly, but certainly not one to let him get in the way of just about any respectable trade offer that came along.  There just did not seem to be enough to warrant so much hype surrounding a rail-thin bigman who was more likely to miss a shot or turn the ball over than to do anything positive.

While indeed his play at the time was terrible, this is the most simple statement I can make about that early evaluation of his potential.

I.was.wrong.

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Sure he's a little overpaid... maybe a lot overpaid. But the real question is, what is in store for Corey Maggette this year?!

Hopefully 70+ games. Please please please 70+ games...

*clunk* "Ahhhh! My head!" Out 10 games.

Okay, all joking aside. If we can manage to have Maggette on the floor for the better part of the season, we're going to have a powerful scoring backup forward that knows how to get to the line. And I have no problem with that.

Check out some Maggette after the jump!

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And now we come to the new kid on the block. One thing we have to give this Warriors organization is their ability to pick up raw talent and allow it to blossom (before trading it away). Unfortunately, our current batch of raw talent hasn't yet learned to play cohesively enough together to form any kind of consistency, but it's tough to argue that players like Ellis, Biedrins, and Randolph haven't had the room to discover themselves.

As I was talking with Atma the other day, I shared a concern I've had with Nellie in recent years. What if Nellie sees a potential successful season in front of him without letting Curry stretch his wings? Atma brought up some solid points in this realm. Historically, if Nellie hasn't let a rookie or new addition to the roster breathe (POB, Diogu), they haven't really moved on elsewhere in the league to excel. If the talent is there, Nellie has and will let them cultivate their skill on the Arena floor.

That being said, we're going to be seeing a lot of Curry at the Arena this year.

Wrong Curry. But equally as exciting!

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