Wow. Not sure what just happened but it was a win. So happy how hard our guys fought.
— Daryl Morey (@dmorey) March 9, 2013
.@chandlerparsons & @asikomer carried us tonight w/key moments from @jlin7, @jharden13, & @cabezadelfino Have tie breaker on Golden State!
— Daryl Morey (@dmorey) March 9, 2013
I don't know about you guys, but that game was painful to watch. I'm not even going to try to come up with any clever metaphors to mask the pain in a brief moment of levity. It is what it is. I mean, folks, let's get real. After barely escaping with wins against the doldrums of the NBA vs Toronto and Sacramento, we lost to a Rockets team that, I'm just going to say this, is clearly better than us. They didn't even do it with James Harden, really, who had kind of an off night by his standards. No, they did it with Chandler Parsons (96% TS!), tenacious defense, and an analytics-based game strategy (all 3-s and layups) that just works with their personnel.
Both teams shot exactly 42.9% from 3-pt range, but the Rockets had 35 3-pt attempts to our 21. For those who don't remember what eFG%, that's the equivalent of over 60% FG%. An average layup is around 60%, in terms of efficiency. If you add together the 15 actual layups that the Rockets took (via my site nbawowy.com) with those 35 3-pt "virtual layups", that's 50 LAYUPS! It's amazing they didn't beat us by 30 points, to be honest. Thank an "off" James Harden for that minor blessing.
All I can say is, thank based god we wouldn't have to face the Rockets in the first round of the playoffs, although I'm increasingly becoming less concerned about making the playoffs, than I am about the general state of the team going forward. I'd say maybe we can hope for our youth to mature, but the Rockets are even younger than us and already making good on Daryl Morey's promises. Lately, all I've been thinking to myself about the Warriors is this: "Maybe Bogut will get back to 100% of his former self at some point in the near future." But that's pretty much all the hope I got. This Warriors team can certainly get hot for a night or a couple of nights in a row right now, but it's just hard to see how they can sustain a substantial winning record over a full season, unless Bogut gets back his mobility and Klay and Harrison substantially improve the next couple of seasons.
One statistical note of interest (again, from nbawowy): The Warriors were 1 of 6 shooting after timeouts last night. For the season, they shoot only 43% coming out of timeout situations (on 212 FGA). For comparison, the Spurs shoot 56% and the Thunder shoot 50%. This weakness certainly showed itself last night in the 4th quarter when Harrison Barnes took that awful long jumper coming out of the timeout. Really Harrison? Was that what was drawn up on the sideline?
And in the "because we have to" department (do we have to?), the Warriors Wonder for last night is:
Say what you want about Lee, but you can't question his toughness. Not sure it was the best idea to keep him on the court, as it almost will surely prevent him from playing tonight against the Bucks. But he definitely demonstrated his desire to win.
Let's go Warriors.