Classically tragic loss, but count me out of the principled outrage against the refs/league/Freemasons/etc. Monta was stupidly close enough to Smith to make a foul call a realistic possibility, and both Monta and Curry traveled on the go-ahead bucket that preceded the final play. Plus, come on: the Nuggets lost Lawson with an injury with 4:09 remaining, forcing them to play Anthony friggin' Carter, one of the most over-the-hill players in the league. Four minutes to go, we're up four, facing a punchless lineup of Carter, J.R., Joey Graham, K-Mart and Nene. If you blow that, you deserve to lose, no matter what the zebras do or don't do.
Sending complaints to the league office just signals to the franchise that you're okay with how this game was played and coached. And you shouldn't be. To paraphrase a feud whose cobwebs were just recently dusted off: the refs didn't screw us, we screwed us.
It wasn't our worst game, either from an execution perspective or a coaching perspective. Maggette was scintillating, and Curry had easily his best game as a pro -- shooting aggressiveness is the best way for him to become an asset. The effort level was strong all around. And while Nellie did go to smallball for most of the second half, that's better than using it for most of the game; plus, for once, Randolph played poorly enough so that pulling him was at least halfway defensible.
Still... this was not very good. The Nuggets only have six good players; they were missing three of them coming into tonight, including their two best. They lost a fourth good player with several minutes left to go. You kind of have to win that game. We didn't. We went small and paid for it, getting outrebounded 19-9 in the second half, and our Monta-centric offense again delivered a lot more smoke than fire... the more we fed everything through him, the more trouble we had scoring. There is a difference between "impressive" and "effective", and right now, Monta pretty much typifies that.
After the game, Nellie was quoted as saying, "Bad teams just don't get breaks. I mean, let's face it. You just don't get breaks." That's true, but not in the way that he means. NBA refs can certainly suck, but they suck both ways... they sucked in our favor against Boston, for instance. If we want to become a legitimate basketball team again, we're going to have to stop complaining about not getting breaks.
If anger over this loss compels Nellie and the team to do better, tighter, more inspired work, I'm all for it. But this was not a case of a bad call screwing a team out of a noble and deserved victory. This was a hapless team playing a spirited-but-foolish game and stumbling into an unlucky loss. The last two seconds are not the story here; the first 2,878 are.
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5 comments:
Well said,
I am really excited about Curry's play of late. He is looking like that shooting/scoring maniac that he was in Davidson. If he can continue to shoot well and shoot when he is supposed to, and combine that with his hoops smarts and above average point guard play, we are going to have a very good player for many years to come.
As far as the traveling no calls, maybe; they were close definetly but the final 1.4 was fustrating. The thing about being such a crappy team is we need breaks from the refs to compete against more talented, better coached teams. So when we have nights like these were we don't get the breaks it is fustrating for the team and the fans. But of course the refs (or some crazy anti-Warrior league sentiment that some are suggesting on the GSOM game thread) are not the reasons the Warriors will finish well below 500 and no where near the playoffs.
Like usual Maggette was very effective but boring, and Monta was exciting but only semi effective.
Randolp looked horriable, Beidrins didn't look too good either. Just another game in another long season folks... One can only hope that Riley/Nelson realize that and make moves or dont make moves to help this team in the future instead of trying to salvage this season (which realistically is not possiable).
Great recap Owen, hope you had a great holiday season.
Thanks, friend, and ditto. And yeah, the shoot-first Curry is the one I want to see. I don't think he's consistent enough to be a pass-first guy, but if he gets his shot going early in games, it'll make his playmaking duties easier.
Big guys definitely didn't do too much with their time, although Biedrins has been subtly helpful in certain ways. We're long overdue for a big-boarding night from him or Randolph, something to get the blood going again.
Respectfully disagree with some statements here. This was one of Nellie's worst coaching performances. I still can't get over Turiaf (already a poor rebounder) limping around during crunch time. As for Randolph, he looked awful in the first half, but acquitted himself nicely in the second. I sure would have preferred he play over a one-legged Turiaf.
Okay, you're right about Turiaf... that was absurd. I'm gonna be doing a piece soon about how we deal with injuries, because my sense is that it's -- you guessed it -- incompetent.
I childishly bitched about the Turiaf thing on my blog, I'm excited to see how you fit that awful decision into the wider Ws injury context.
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