It hasn't been an uneventful time; like a bleary-eyed and recently shot Agent Cooper, we are a bit overwhelmed by the flood of news emanating from Oakland. Don Nelson has tipsily claimed he wouldn't mind coaching summer league. Raja Bell has finally relinquished his inexplicable hold of a roster spot. Stephen Curry has finally broken his "injured Warrior" cherry. Chris Cohan has finally acknowledged an interest in ending our long regional nightmare. And to top it all off, the good guys have played some more basketball games! Since we last checked in, they have
• beaten the Raptors 124-112, on a rare night where both Curry and Monta excelled;
• lost a 124-121 heartbreaker to the Lakers with a classic mix of heartening and head-scratching play;
• topped the Hornets 131-121 behind a trio of career nights from D-League alums;
• gotten stomped 147-116 by the Spurs, making their 24th straight loss in San Antonio one to remember;
• lost a 123-107 snoozer in Memphis, extending their road losing streak to 13;
• been edged 133-131 by the Suns, with a bone-rattling Amar'e dunk summing up the season nicely, and
• won a 128-110 semi-laugher against the Grizzlies, making Memphis the first good team to lose to the Dubs twice.
This was an absurd stretch of basketball, with scads of highlights, lowlights and moments of interest, and had we not been so busy assembling a juggernaut of an f-ball squad (Lincecum, Greinke and Johan --we'll talk later), we'd have very much enjoyed putting these games under our usual nerdy microscope. But time keeps on slippin' into the future [synthesizer solo], and we mustn't dally overlong in the past. So let's examine this heptet of games as a block. What did the Warriors do well? What did they do poorly? What trends are worth noting?
Team Offense
As you might imagine, this end of the floor hasn't been a problem. During this seven-game stretch, the Warriors averaged 122.6 points a night, shooting exactly 50.0% from the field, 42.0% from long distance and 83.6% from the line... those numbers not only exceed the Dubs' overall '09-'10 averages, they exceed every team's '09-'10 averages. The Dubs have continued the long-distance barrage we were hoping for: they launched 26.9 threes a night in this time period, a rate exceeded only by the Magic overall. And the Dubs' passing numbers have been video-game good: the Warriors averaged 26.0 assists against just 12.0 turnovers in this stretch, posting a point-guard-esque 2.17 A/TO ratio as a team.
This wasn't simply the Warriors amassing big point totals due to their breakneck pace. This was a stretch of jaw-droppingly, historically effective offensive basketball, and it'd have taken some real assy D for the Warriors not to win at least five of seven here...
Team "Defense"
...you know how this story ends. The Warriors' opponents scored 124.3 points per outing, with the Grizzlies' 110-point showing last night representing the lowest output by anyone. Last night's game was also the only one of the seven in which the Warriors held their opponents below 50% shooting from the field. Their opponents shot an aggregate 53.9 FG% in this timespan -- only the '84-'85 Lakers shot that well over the course of a season -- and recorded even more assists than the Warriors (27.7 to 26.0). The Dubs continued to grab a lot of steals, but that proved no more effective an overall defensive strategy than it has all year. In these seven games, the Warriors played like one of the twenty best offensive teams in history and one of the ten worst defensive teams in history. That formula will put a lot of butts in the seats, but it won't get you anywhere fast.
The Warriors' defense has been horrid all year, of course, but this stretch represented a new low. Why was the Dubs' D so super-double-extra-bad here? Occam's razor, girlfriend!
Size Matters
Warriors opponents averaged 47.4 rebounds a night in this stretch. While that may not sound like an aberrantly high figure, remember, the teams in these games haven't been missing very often. When you notice that the Warriors averaged just 35.0 rebounds in this seven-game swing, you start to smell the problem. There've been 66 NBA games this season in which one team grabbed 47 or more rebounds and the other team grabbed 35 or fewer... in those games, the outrebounded team has gone 8-58. This should come as no surprise: the Warriors have played the role of "team that gets outrebounded 47-35 or worse" an embarrassing eleven times, and lost all eleven of those games.
Another sad consquence of the Warriors' recent bout of Lilliputianism is the gruesome number of points in the paint they've allowed. On the season, the Warriors have allowed 48.9 points in the paint, the league's worst figure. In these past seven games, however, they've allowed 60.3 points in the paint per contest. They gave up ninety fucking points in the paint to the Spurs, a total that (though I haven't yet been able to confirm this) absolutely has to be a league record. And to complete the picture, the Warriors have continued to fecklessly slap at their larger opponents. Their opponents have shot 31.6 free throws a night in this timespan, a number that -- you guessed it -- is higher than the season average of any NBA team.
This should come as no surprise: this team's central problem is not poor late-game execution or inexperience or lack of moxie or even defensive ineptitude. To compete in the NBA, you need to compete near the rim. And until the Warriors are willing and able to do that, they will always be a joke, no matter how entertaining their style of play.
Nelson Eddy
The team's health woes and stumbling lurch towards a meaningless record should not obscure the fact that this guy is still coaching an eager young roster down the drain. Bob and Jim can lament the fact that Chris Hunter is the team's only available center all they want... when you're only playing said OAC 22.4 minutes a night, during a stretch where lack of size is your defining problem, you're not actually making a good-faith effort to win basketball games. You can argue that Nellie shouldn't be trying to win basketball games, but you can't argue that he's bringing a single thing to the table right now. With the amount of effort he's currently putting in, I'm not actually sure that he'd be the best coach for the Warriors' summer league squad, let alone the real one.
Rotation Rumblings
The fascinating ascendance of Reggie Williams (something we'll discuss in detail soon) has seemingly pushed CJ and Morrow to the curb; if you throw out the two games Curry missed, they've respectively averaged 18.8 and 16.0 minutes in this timespan, despite an absurd tilt towards smallball. Neither guy is signed for next season, and it's frankly a bit hard to see why they'd want to stick around. The team seems more than fine with the idea of CJ departing, but Morrow was a favorite son as recently as a month ago, and Riley and Nellie are signaling that they'll push hard to keep him. Which makes sense. After all, you're gonna need at least six or seven offense-only swingmen to compete in this league.
Holy fucking moly. You can't accuse this regime of going out quietly... strictly in terms of on-court product, this may be the weirdest team in the history of a thoroughly weird franchise. The freakshow continues Saturday against Dallas.
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