Mikki No Moore

Per ESPN, the Warriors have waived him to make permanent room for Chris Hunter, as our hardship exception has run out. (EDIT: Marcus Thompson has more.)

This was the right move. Given the fondness Nellie and Smart showed for Mikki's bellowing veteran ways, I'd expected them to try to keep him around, perhaps dumping Hunter to do it. That would've been a mistake, not because Hunter has much value, but because Mikki has none. We kept the younger, more useful player here. Smart call.

Mikki becomes the first Warrior to lose his stripes in our Internet tenure. While we won't miss his punchless contributions, we appreciate his willingness to play hurt and his eagerness to take fellow journeyman Hunter under his enormous wing. He seems like a nice enough guy.

Fare thee well, big man... I'm guessing you see the postseason before we do.

Mikki Getting Surgery, Out Indefinitely

Per Steinmetz.

Let's start with this: Mikki has been playing hard, and playing hurt, to help a miserably bad team. That he has been terrible is no criticism of his character. He seems like a very nice guy and a good teammate. Mikki is deserving of the description "warrior", and in the classical sense, not the tawdry Cohanian sense. Best of luck to him on his surgery... here's hoping he comes out of it more able to help us, or whatever team he plays for next.

In a cold-hearted basketball sense, there is no question that this will make us dramatically better. As I just finished typing, Mikki has been the least effective NBA player to receive significant minutes... crossing a guy like that off of your lineup sheet is an unequivocal positive in terms of winning games. Be not fooled by the media suggestions that his loss makes us even smaller; Mikki was playing very, very small.

Until Biedrins and/or Turiaf comes back, this guarantees larger roles for both Anthony Randolph and Chris Hunter -- not even Nellie can smallball his way around them at this point. Again, those are unequivocal positives. Randolph has been our most effective player thus far, and his return to the starting lineup is weeks overdue. Hunter may be an NBA-calibre player or a D-league scrub who's in over his head, but seeing as he's a dirt-cheap 25-year-old and the season is already lost, it's very much worth our while to find out which. Vlad may also wring a few more extra minutes out of this, and that wouldn't be a good thing. Still and all, the sum effect on the lineup is positive, and significantly so.

Between our return to Oracle, Nellie's re-taking the reins (in whatever nominal sense), various rising tensions and a merciless opponent, tonight's game had been feeling like one that would yield some news. It turns out the news has preceded the game. A good man has gone down; as a result, a bad team may get better.

Me No Likey Mikki

Mikki Moore may be a great guy. He may be a guy you can go to a shooting range with, a guy you can go inner-tubing with. It's possible that Clinton Renard "Mikki" (pronounced "MY-key") Moore is the single greatest person in the world. But we're here to talk about basketball. Through that narrow lens, he is goddamned HORRIBLE. And MY-key to the Warriors improving is sitting this guy down as much as the gods and Nelsonian flights of fancy allow.

Mikki Moore will hit the occasional jumper, and he can sometimes nail the type of layup you're taught in drills at a really white middle school. Where it starts to suck is, Mikki Moore is not a good rebounder, AT ALL. Or a good post defender. Or a good help defender. Or good at altering shots. Or good at "catching the ball", which is an NBA skill you may have never considered before, because most players can kind of just do it. Mikki Moore is not good at raising his arms on basic defensive sequences... it's like Dennis Hopper told him that a bus would explode if any of his fingers ever got as high as his nipples. Mikki Moore is not even good at not fouling players in super-dumb situations. He is basically the cautionary-tale guy in a "How NOT To Play NBA Basketball" corporate video. Yes, he's unselfish. I lent Season Two of "The Wire" to a dude, and I can't even remember which dude, and I'm not making a big stink about it... that doesn't qualify me to be a starting NBA center. When it comes to basketball, this guy sucks.

82games.com records two types of plus-minus data: a team's production with a dude on the court as opposed to off, and a dude's production on the court versus the production of his positional "opponent" while he's on the court. (It sounds complicated, but it's not... don't be a dick.) Plus-minus numbers are noisy, flawed things, particularly early in a season, and 82games's positional data is hinky. Still and all, if a guy rates horribly by BOTH metrics -- if his team is at least 10 points per 48 minutes better when he's off the court, and the guy he covers outplays him by at least 10 points per 48 minutes when he's *on* the court -- it seems safe to say he's a shitty player, right? If a dude is consistently losing his battle, and you're consistently losing the war when he's out there, it shouldn't take you all that long to smell a rat.

Indeed, the players that "earned" more than 10% of their team's minutes in '08-'09 despite rating -10 or worse by both metrics: Darnell Jackson of the Cavs (11%), DeSagana Diop of the Mavs (11%), and former Dub Josh Powell of the Lakers (18%). Just three guys, all of whom mainly played in garbage time for good teams. In other words, no team put a -10/-10 guy in competitive situations last year. This year, the overall crappiness-sifting is not yet complete... as of four days ago (82games falls behind now and again), thirteen players still rated at -10/-10 or worse in 10% or more of their teams' minutes:

Quinton Ross, Dallas (26%), Anthony Carter, Denver (22%), Joe Smith, Atlanta (19%), Sasha Vujacic, Los Angeles (17%), Sean May, Sacramento (13%), Dorell Wright, Miami (12%), Ronnie Price, Utah (12%), James Singleton, Dallas (11%), Juwan Howard, Portland (11%), Sonny Weems, Toronto (11%), Chris Wilcox, Detroit (10%), Jerryd Bayless, Portland (10%)

Initial reactions:

1) JOE SMITH I HAVE YOUR JERSEY SKYS THE LIMIT BRO *SOB*

2) Oh, Machine. Oh, you silly, silly Machine.

3) Juwan Howard? Yeah, right. That guy died at least thirty years ago.

4) There's no way "Sonny Weems" is a real person. Quit messing with me.

5) These guys mainly sit deep on the benches of good teams. They're garbage-timers.

6) They're also some pretty horrible players... just about everyone's a has-been or a never-was.

7) What is Dallas thinking, giving 26% of their minutes to a guy that's killing them?

8) ...wait, that's only twelve names. I thought you said there were thirteen?

Indeed. Lucky number 13: Mikki Moore, Golden State (35%). Mikki has played, by far, the most minutes of any terrible player in basketball. Competitive minutes, generally starter's minutes, for a team with no margin for error. "But Mr. Long-Winded Debuting Blogger, our front court is all banged up. So what if it's not ideal... we need Mikki out there." You know what? Shut up. Do you realize that every single game has featured at least one healthy, foul-trouble-free big who sat while Mikki played? Do you realize that, despite all these injuries, we're actually outscoring our opponents whenever Mikki's on the bench? "I, um..." EXACTLY. No response, Mr. Imaginary Quoted Guy.

Injuries have decimated our frontcourt, but idiocy decimated it long before that. We should have turned CJ into a big in the summer (Orlando, for one, was willing to oblige). Once Wright went down, we should have turned Devean George's roster spot into another big, by hook or by crook. And we should have signed a better big than Mikki in the first place. He is not "a solid reserve" or "a good third-stringer" or "a glue guy"... he just straight-up sucks. (There's a reason the Celtics lost interest in him once they actually saw him play.) The very fact that Mikki's on our roster is evidence of incompetence. But Mikki's having played over a third of our minutes, and having started 13 of our 16 games... that's not incompetence. That's some kind of surreally strange gonzo beauty. We are continually going to war with one of the very worst players in basketball. This is fucking Bocockian at this point.

Anthony Randolph > Mikki. Chris Hunter > Mikki. Over-the-hill on-another-team Adonal Foyle > Mikki. For God's sake, Warriors, pass this simplest of tests. Bench Mikki Moore.