SAS @ GSW 12/16/09: PostThoughts

1) Well, we simply have to start with the man in question. Randolph delivered a performance that was right around average for his season. He took a few too many jumpers (and thought about them too much) and got burned several times defensively, but also produced a number of positive plays on D and continued his streak of passing well. His rebounding total was middling, which seems to be a trend when he's really tightly covering an opposing big... ideally he'd manage to do both, of course, but I don't think it's a hugely worrisome sign. This was quintessental Randolph: lots of good moments and lots of bad ones, with the good ones outweighing the bad. His performance was basically as much of a non-story as it could've been.

2) More notable than Randolph's performance, of course, was his role... Nellie somehow felt he didn't merit a start over Vlad at the five. Both Nellie and Smart have deemed Mikki worthy of a starting spot every time out, but now that he's shelved, here comes the hypersmallball! Maggette and all three of our li'l fellas earned a starting nod tonight, alongside Vlad, who was predictably useless. Nellie was fairly quick to pull Vlad for Randolph (or Hunter, who had an odd and ineffective fourth-quarter cameo), so I'm hopeful that Nellie will abandon this absurdity soon. Suffice it to say that starting Vlad over Randolph, at center, is even more forehead-slappingly incompetent than starting Mikki over Randolph.

3) Nellie definitely looked more energetic than he has in awhile, but I can't say that that resulted in any apparent, y'know, coaching. A terrible player once again started over a good one, CJ and Monta each got over 44 minutes despite both visibly fatiguing in the second half, there was no semblance of a consistent offensive plan, and there was no attempt to involve Morrow. And guess what? Thanks to our hyperhypersmallness (we only spent five minutes with more than one big on the floor, and over twenty with only *Vlad* on the floor), we got outrebounded by 20. Thank God rebounding isn't an important part of the game, right, Nellie?!?!?!!?!?

4) Don't worry, though: Nellie did yell at arbitrary players during the game and throw the whole team under the bus after it.

5) Two very strong performances went for naught tonight. Monta did his usual gunnin', but he did not force his drive nearly as often as usual, and ended the night with five assists and only one turnover. This version of Monta could work okay; here's hoping he remains this judicious about slashing into coverage. And Maggette played another spectacular game, scoring 21 points on ten shots and matching Monta's five assists. He had a couple ugly turnovers and bad beats on defense, but if you don't think a guy who plays like this is a big asset, you're a moron. Falling into that category? Nellie! There was no effort whatsoever to feed Maggette once it was clear he was having success.

6) The CJ/Curry gap continues to widen. CJ had his worst shooting game in awhile, but still had a credible all-around game; Curry's four steals were not enough to make up for a slap-happy, ineffective night. Curry looks like a learner, talks like a learner, acts like a learner... but we haven't seen much learnin'. And while it's not fair to expect him to learn quickly, given the utter lack of competent instruction on this dogshit team, we have seen other young players amend their games of their own accord. He is not doing that yet.

7) The-pre-family-emergency-leave-Morrow/post-family-emergency-leave-Morrow gap also continues to widen, as he was a complete offensive cipher tonight.

8) Watched the Spurs broadcast. Sean Elliott is every bit the smarmy asshole homer color guy you'd expect, but he did have a great line, something along the lines of, "It'd be fun to play in [the Warriors'] offense. Actually, fun and kind of terrible."

9) How good or bad of a loss was this? On the one hand, we sorta hung with a supremely veteran team, despite being shorthanded; on the other hand, a 12-10 team came into our building on the second half of a back-to-back and beat us by 12. I'd say this was about the baseline expectation for this game, with Monta and Maggette more or less balancing out Nellie's various stupidities.

10) Another grimly amusing tidbit in an endless line of them, this courtesy of Chris Cohan Sucks: the last two games have pushed Nellie's overall Warriors record below the .500 mark. The way he's coached of late, it's hard to believe he was ever above it.