Golden Stats, 3/01/11

The Warriors have opened the season's second "half" with three straight losses, the last to a Minnesota Timberwolves team that is comprised of, well, Minnesota Timberwolves. The trade deadline has come and gone, leaving Oakland one young 'un lighter and one blooper heavier. Hope, in its many-splendored forms, has been extinguished from the hearts of all but the most crazed Dubs fans, and there's nothing left to do but take a peek at what's left in this grim cupboard. Line up, Warriors: you're getting inspected, numbers-style.

Last season, we Worriers experimented with a statistical amalgam we called SCORE. We've put that bad boy on ice, partly because BP's WARP, a tentpole metric, has not yet been published for this season, and partly because statistical amalgams are for fucking babies. This year, we're busting out a fat chart. This chart will feature

- John Hollinger's famously flawed and nevertheless useful PER;

- Justin Kubatko's readily available and plentifully plausible Win Shares per 48 minutes;

- and net overall unadjusted ratings and two-year adjusted plus-minus from Aaron Barzilai.

Without further ado: said chart! Above-average numbers are in green, below-average in red.

At The Break: An Overview

Whoops! Looks like we tuned out for 37 games. Don't fret, Worrier Nation -- reputable blogs do this kind of thing all the time.

When last we spoke, the Warriors were 8-10 and flailing. They lost eight of their next nine, but have since gone 17-11, a modest achievement that nevertheless demolishes anything they've done since the Beard disappeared. The Dubs have already matched their '09-'10 win total, something only two other teams (dem Nets and dem Sixers) can claim. Here at the dawn of All-Star weekend, they stand above an honest-to-God NBA team (dem Rockets) in the standings. The 9-18 start and the monstrosity that was 1/28/11 have faded in the thrill of six straight wins over plus-.500 teams. The Warriors are starting to rise, and the fanbase is starting to buzz. Is there reason for all the excitement in Oakland? Let's take a closer look.

When you analyze the season to date, the first impression you get is a sadly familiar one:

1) The Warriors Have Been Bad At Basketball

Any clear-eyed analysis has to start here... while the Warriors haven't been a terrible NBA team, they've been a solidly poor one. They have the 18th-best record in the league but just the 21st-best point differential. And the team's recent competitiveness has come during a part of the schedule that has been heavy on home games and -- something that hasn't gotten enough attention -- very light on back-to-backs. When a team gets a string of rested games in its building, it should win some games.

After a road-heavy start to the season, the Dubs have now played as many home games as any team in basketball. The Dubs have actually been healthier than the average outfit... the Curry/Monta/Wright/Lee/Biedrins lineup has started 33 games, tied for fifth-highest among NBA quintets. And for all that, the team is still decidedly below average. At their pre-Christmas nadir, the Warriors placed 22nd in Basketball Reference's adjusted rankings. The recent flurry has skyrocketed them all the way to, well, 21st. This has not been a good basketball team. And why not? The two-pronged answer is also sadly familiar.

Sins of the Starters

So. Since we last spoke, the Dubs have lost semi-competitive games in Houston and Memphis, snapped their losing streak with a solid performance in Minnesota, and kick-started a new losing streak with a stinker at home against the Spurs. For all the changes in the offseason, these seem a lot like the same old Warriors: an offense that's not as good as it looks, a defense that's every bit as bad as it looks, and team that's going nowhere, and going there rather quickly.

There is still a fairly compelling glass-half-full view. The Dubs have solidly outscored their opponents when David Lee has been on the floor... more to the point, the results of the Curry-Ellis-Wright-Lee-Biedrins quintet have been rather spectacular. In the 138 minutes that the starting lineup has played together, they've outscored their opponents by a mind-boggling 83 points, the equivalent of winning three games by an average score of 121-92. By Basketball Value's adjusted plus-minus (the usual sample-size caveats apply), the Warriors' quintet actually ranks as the fifth-most effective unit in the league, and the second-most effective starting lineup in the league, behind only the Miami variant that features Big Z at the five. That dog'll hunt.

Unfortunately, this half-full glass has a couple cracks in it. For one thing, the starting lineup's stellar results are predicated partly on an offensive excellence that may be sustainable, but partly on a defensive brilliance that isn't. More to the point, however, the Warriors starters create negative externalities that make life even harder for the overmatched backups that succeed them. The starters hurt the team in ways that elude even the most sophisticated plus-minus systems.

The Bench

That 6-2 start was mighty nice, but if the last six games haven't taken the wind out of your sails, your boating license oughtta be revoked. Since David Lee went down with a case of tooth elbow, the Warriors have

- gotten gored by the Bulls in an understandable but ugly road-weary blowout;

- been outscrapped by Milwaukee in the worst Golden State offensive performance in years;

- barely survived a middling Pistons team after a complete second-half collapse;

- been lit up by the Knicks in front of the home faithful;

- gotten stomped by a Lakers team that never even considered leaving cruise control, and

- gone cold in Denver, in another excusable loss that was uglier than it had to be.

Simply put, dem Dubs have been playing some wretched, wretched basketball. The offense is tied for 19th in the league in efficiency; the defense, which had shown early signs of legitimacy, now ranks 26th. The team's -4.7 point differential is significantly worse than last year's. Yes, they're still .500. But this may very well be the least impressive 7-7 team in league history. And given the rough road they have to travel over the next four weeks -- after the holiday, their list of opponents reads "Spurs-Suns-Thunder-Mavs-Spurs-Heat-Jazz" -- the Warriors probably won't be .500 for long.

Others will tell you that better days are coming -- that the return of David Lee will make a huge difference (possible, though he never seemed to help the Knicks' fortunes to any massive degree), that the return of Louis Amundson will help a bit (certainly so), that the schedule will get easier (indeed it will), that "these guys just need time to gel" (possible but unfounded). We're not here to tell you that things won't get better. But we are interested in examining why they've gotten so bad. The nightly disparity in free throws is a big reason. Another is the bench.

Ten Games In: The Team

(Quick programming note: our decreased unemployment has made regular blogging a taller task. Going forward, we're not going to cover every single game. But we will be chiming in on dem Dubs every Monday and Thursday, in our traditional numbers-heavy style, and will single out the occasional game for the microscope. We hope you tune in and join us.)

So. On the one hand, the Warriors are 6-4, and (cue the desperate kind of accounting that crappy teams' fans are reduced to), if the season ended today, they'd nab the sixth seed in the Western Conference. On the other hand, their -1.9 point differential bespeaks a .400 team more than a .600 team. But on an unprecedented and terrifying third hand, their early schedule has been road-heavy and arduous, with one of the season's three big East coast swings already in the books. Maybe a -1.9 differential in these ten games ain't so bad, after all. Or maybe it ain't not so bad. How good are these guys, really?

Let's take a look at the team output thus far, using last year's wretched squad as a reference point. (Next time out, we'll take a look at the season's output on an individual level.)

Carneyvale

Lucky Warrior #13, come on down! We're looking at you, Rodney Carney. And as with so many other Golden State moves this summer, we're seeing something of a mixed bag.

The good news here is pretty straightforward: Carney is a solid commodity as cheap bench pieces go, a useful 26-year-old with some athleticism and upside. His career per-36 numbers -- 13.9 points, 4.6 rebounds, 1.0 assists against 1.2 turnovers, a .510 TS% -- scream "slightly below average", and his plus-minus numbers more or less echo that take. He probably is who he is at this point, but he did record career-best marks in rebounding, passing efficiency and free-throw shooting last year, so you could at least plausibly wishcast him into an average player down the road. Even without improvement, the guy should make a good third-string small forward this season.

But the signing of Rodney Carney begs a smack-your-forehead obvious question: Why is the front office worried about the third string when the second string is so horrible? As things stand, the Warriors' B-team includes Jeremy Lin, Charlie Bell and Dan Gadzuric... this is a team with gaping holes in its second unit, and meaningful patches like Louis Amundson and Earl Watson are still available. Instead of locking those guys in, the Dubs have done what they always seem to do when they have a roster quandary: they've shrugged and grabbed a swingman.

Rodney Carney isn't any sort of problem. But for this team, at this time, he isn't any sort of solution, either. The Warriors need another bench big and another bench guard, and if this signing precludes the acquisitions of guys like Watson and Amundson, it's money very poorly spent.

The Road Not Taken

It's very easy to bag on the Warriors' offseason, as we did yesterday... it's another thing entirely to propose a superior strategy. Pitch positive, as they say in our other line of work. How would we Worriers have handled this summer? We're glad you asked!

First, we would've decided upon a direction for the franchise. And as it happens, that direction would be the same one we advocated eight months ago: rebuilding, with an eye towards competing in 2011-12. There is, and was, no reason to believe that the Warriors could contend for a playoff spot in the upcoming season, so why waste resources trying? Moreover, NBA armageddon looms next summer, as a lockout and extensive re-jiggering of the salary cap structure are more than likely. If you don't have a good team when the mushroom cloud hits, you're best off getting yourself cheap, young and flexible, so you can nab talent from those teams that need to dump salary in a hurry.

A rebuilding mindset would've led to the following moves. (Note: we're not changing the Udoh pick, because that's too easy.)

Warriors Stumble On... 35 Wins

You may remember an article that created a bit of a stir in the Warriors blogosphere a month or so ago... Jeremy Britton, a Dubs fan and Wages of Wins contributor, pointed out that the new-look Warriors projected to be a 50-win team by WP48. Actually, the exact projection he came to was 56.9 wins, a number so outlandish that he didn't even dare mention it in the text of the piece.

In case you couldn't tell, we ain't buying this 50-win talk. Frankly, we ain't buying WP48, either. Kevin Love, a guy on a 15-win team, is the fourth-most effective player in the league? Troy Murphy, a massive detriment, a blight upon the earth, is the twelfth-most effective player in the league? Like fun, Wagers. As Dave Berri's evasve snippiness in the comments section attests, this isn't a system you can really vouch for. All you can do is claim that it's infallible, eyes shut, fingers in your ears, shouting to the heavens. We Worriers aren't statisticians, but we know an echo chamber when we see one.

So we're going to project this team's potential ourselves, using two different tools: the Win Percentage figures over at Basketball Prospectus and the Win Shares figures at Basketball Reference. This'll be some quick and dirty figgerin', and the results won't be the gospel by any means, but we'd take them a lot more seriously than the WP48 results. Why? Every key Warrior, except for Dorell Wright, presided over worse team defense when on the floor than their individual numbers suggest. These two metrics attempt to account for that; WP48 doesn't.

So. First, let's estimate minutes totals for the '09-'10 Warriors.

PG: Stephen Curry (36), Charlie Bell (12)

SG: Monta Ellis (36), Reggie Williams (12)

SF: Dorell Wright (30), Reggie Williams (18)

PF: David Lee (30), Brandan Wright (18)

C: Andris Biedrins (30), David Lee (6), Dan Gadzuric (12)

An Open Letter To Joe Lacob

Greetings, kind sir, and apologies for the dreadfully hackneyed format of this blog post.

Congratulations on your new basketball team! We were delighted to hear of your acquisition (the failure of Larry Ellison to buy the franchise caused no tears in Worrierland), and your hour-long discussion with the Razor and Mr. T was informative and appreciated. It must be a hectic time for you and your partners. You don't even officially own the team yet, and joy-starved Warriors fans risk overburdening you with demands and requests (one of which you've already been kind enough to sound off on).

Our worry-filled cup runneth over... we have no shortage of suggestions, thoughts, gripes and musings. But as your time is limited (and since you'll never actually read this), we will make only one request, one you can fulfill simply by doing nothing.

Do not trade Andris Biedrins.

Not this season, anyway, and certainly not before it. You're hearing a lot of babble about his free-throw shooting and his controversial Latvian interview... your task is to ignore that babble. There's a slam-dunk statistical argument in favor of keeping the guy, but we needn't even resort to that to demonstrate how important Beans's continued presence is. Some general business rules of thumb will do.

1) Never sell low. Trading Andris Biedrins anytime in the near future would qualify. Twelve months ago, he was a 23-year-old coming off of a double-double season, a guy who'd engendered occasional All-Star mutterings outside the Bay Area, a player who was discussed as the centerpiece in deals for Chauncey Billups and Amar'e Stoudemire, among others. Now, thanks in large part to other Warriors employees, he's seen as a wart-ridden goofball. Joe, you didn't become a whateverionnaire by pissing away commodities at the nadir of their value. Biedrins is 24, and on a non-increasing contract... you can stand to wait a while and see if he appreciates.

2) Protect your investments. The above is doubly true because of the summer's key acquisition, the guy who'll earn almost a fifth of what you just paid for this team. David Lee is a guy with many strengths, but "playing center in the NBA" ain't one of them. Alongside a five who protects the rim and cleans up his messes, Lee could be the difference-maker he was paid to be; left to fend for himself in the middle, he's a defensive sieve, and an overall mixed bag at best. The only player on the Warriors roster -- hell, one of the few in the NBA -- that has a chance at complementing David Lee properly is Andris Biedrins. It may not work even with Andris, but it sure as hell won't work without him.

3) Choose the right people. There are rumblings that you may leave Don Nelson on the bench to start the season. While we Worriers quite emphatically wouldn't, there's an argument for ceding to inertia in this case. However, this franchise has hemorrhaged a good number of useful players away in the fat man's name over the years, and while he once provided enough value to make that a worthwhile trade, he no longer provides enough value to justify hemorrhaging away a Twix bar. If you are forced to choose between Andris Biedrins and Don Nelson, please, for the love of fucking fuck, recognize that that choice ain't no choice at all. Andris Biedrins is an imperfect asset; Don Nelson is a noxious sunk cost.

Thanks, Joe. We'd say "good luck", but we're hoping you're an intelligent enough chief executive to not need much of it.

Pargomania...?

For a team that seemed comprised almost exclusively of little guys just four months ago, the Warriors sure ran out of 'em quick. Corey Maggette and Kelenna Azubuike were traded away; the blink-and-you-missed-him Raja Bell signed with the Jazz; the Warriors decided not to match reasonable contract offers to Anthony Morrow and C.J. Watson. All five of these players play small forward or smaller in a sane universe, and their departures stripped the returning non-big depth chart down to Curry, Monta and Reggie Williams. To compensate, the Warriors have added a promising three in Dorell Wright, a charming novelty act in Jeremy Lin, and a pretty useless vet in Charlie Bell. Today, the Dubs added another piece: 31-year-old journeyman Jannero Pargo has agreed to a two-year contract worth $2.4 millon in full.

The way to look at this signing is to ask yourself the following question. Let's say you've just signed a player to an 80-million-dollar contract, thereby signaling that you're serious about competing in the near future. Your cap situation is decent... you aren't likely to sign any max players in the near future, but you're in no danger of triggering the luxury tax, either. In that scenario, which would you rather have?

Two Wrights Make This Less Wrong

...maybe I take it back, lame-duck chickenheads. The signing of Dorell Wright to a three-year, $11 million contract is a good one, and helps to answer some of the questions the Lee trade created.

Wright scores efficiently and rarely, he can score from distance (39.5% last year), and he's an actual by-God decent defender, with good length for a three. You could not design a more well-suited small forward for the needs of this team. I love Anthony Morrow like a sharp-shooting brother, but he's not as good as Dorell Wright, and he's not as good of a fit. Best of all, Dorell came cheaply enough so that re-signing CJ still looks like a strong possibility.

It'd be a stretch to call this a masterstroke. Wright is no star, and his arrival doesn't begin to erase the pain of Randolph's departure. But you can at least see a semblance of a plan starting to take shape here. If CJ re-signs, the rotation shakes out thusly:

PG: Stephen Curry, C.J. Watson

SG: Monta Ellis, Charlie Bell

SF: Dorell Wright, Reggie Williams

PF: David Lee, Brandan Wright, Ekpe Udoh

C: Andris Biedrins, Dan Gadzuric

There's more size, health, consistency and (potentially) defense here than there was last year. I don't think it's a playoff team... this lineup screams "38 wins", and far less than that if the league's worst coach manages to stick around another year. And the Warriors will now be spending more money for less upside, which is a ridiculous trade for a bad team. Still, the signing of Dorell Wright fills a hole and stops the bleeding. Good move.

Disaster Strikes

UGH.

Okay. Look.

The Warriors' big trade today -- Randolph, Turiaf and Azubuike (plus possibly others?!) for David Lee -- has the contours of a trade that makes sense. If you have a bunch of middling players, the best possible outcome is to trade several of them for a pretty good player. Azubuike and Turiaf, as fond as we Worriers are of them, are the exact kind of short-contract spare parts that should be moved for value. And while we'd personally love to cradle Anthony Randolph to our misery-wracked chests until the end of time, there is an argument for trading a high-upside, high-risk guy for a known commodity.

The problem is, the known commodity that is David Lee is known to... how do we put this politely... not help NBA teams win basketball games.

The 2009-10 New York Knicks were outscored by 4.1 points per 48 minutes when David Lee was on the court, and by 2.8 points per 48 minutes when he wasn't. To reiterate: this year's Knicks team played better without David Lee. The previous year? Same deal: the '08-'09 Knicks were outscored by 3.4 per 48 with Lee, and by only 0.7 per 48 without him. In the two years before that, Lee's net plus-minus was positive, but considering he was subbing for a gravy-addled Eddy Curry, that ain't saying all that much.

The more grizzled Warriors fans among you may remember a gentleman by the name of Troy Murphy. By many production-based metrics, Mr. Murphy is a borderline superstar: Dave Berri's Wins Produced, for example, rate him as one of the league's twenty best players. This, of course, is ridiculous, for Troy Murphy's teams are always bad, especially so when he plays... his gaudy rebounding totals stem from the fact that he selfishly pads his own stats, to the detriment of the Pacers' D and even the team's rebounding.

Well, David Lee is better than Troy Murphy. But the two share the same category: both guys boast gaudy counting stats that exemplify weaknesses as much as strengths. When Lee took the floor for the Knicks in the last couple seasons, they rebounded worse as a team and defended much worse. His individual stats suggest he's a borderline All-Star; his team results suggest that the Knicks might've improved upon their 29-53 record if he'd simply stayed home.

This is the exact type of player that the Warriors don't need. In fact, this is the exact type of player that the Warriors just dumped for Charlie Bell and Dan Gadzuric. On a shitty roster with only one healthy three and several high-upside young fours, why, exactly, would you dump $30 million worth of Corey Maggette and then trade real talent for $80 million of David Lee?

This is pointless. This is counterproductive. This is ridiculous. This team is now paying $33 million -- about 57% of the salary cap -- for Monta, Biedrins and Lee, three players whose teams failed to win 30 games last year. This is not how you build a team, nor how you sell one. If the Warriors' next owner looks at a trade like this and smiles, then run for the hills, people... a new day will not be dawning anytime soon. This shit is downright shameful.

Tomorrow, we will take one last look at Anthony Randolph, a player who possesses more upside than any current Warrior (yes, Curry too). Next week, we will embark on the ugly process of examining this newly Lee'd and freshly directionless franchise.

Worrying doesn't even begin to cover it at this point. Is www.goldenstatemourners.com available?

Disaster Looms

Do not do this, Warriors. Just don't do it. Do not fucking trade Anthony Randolph, Kelenna Azubuike and Ronny Turiaf for David Lee and then sign David Lee to an $80-million deal.

People: call your friends and neighbors, your local representatives, your mail carriers, your travel agents. Sound the alarms... let hell roll through the streets of northern California. May the very skies shudder as we bellow these three truths:

1) The proper move after dumping an overpaid, no-D scorer is not to acquire an even more overpaid no-D scorer.

2) Now is no time to swell the payroll.

3) Rebuilding teams should not punt on Anthony Randolphs.

We're at the edge of a cliff here, folks. Here's hoping LeBron accidentally announces he's joining the Knicks, because this has Webber Dump: The Sequel written all over it.

Stay tuned.

Catchup: The Udoh Pick

We Worriers are not big college basketball fans. Any sport that requires you to get to know an entirely new set of elite players every season is for suckers, and at the risk of Marxing out on the subject, it's hard to get jazzed about a multi-billion-dollar entertainment industry whose performers don't get a dime. Is the first weekend of March Madness fun? Sure. Does that one weekend a great sport make? Not from where we're sittin'. College hoops, no offense, but we're just not that into you.

Another thing we're not into: talent evaluation by online amateurs. Projecting an NBA prospect's potential from afar isn't as patently ridiculous as doing the same for a prospective NFLer or MLBer, but it's still pretty damn ridiculous. It's not that a fan can't speculate about John Wall's ability to play the point or DeMarcus Cousins's personality; it's that far too many people claim certainty on these subjects, when they have no idea what they're talking about. The transition into the world's strongest basketball league is a complicated one, and no, VonteegoDownToKokomo44, you don't know what's going to happen. Give them indignant capital letters a rest.

With all that said, let's do a by-God EXPERT ANALYSIS of the Warriors' latest draft pick!!!

Catchup: The Maggette Trade

Take a breath, young basketball fan. Pull your eyes away from the glitz and glamour of the freshly underway free agency season; divert your thoughts from idle fantasies of superstars and fresh starts and hypothetical 73-win teams. Far below all the churn, far below where even the sunlight can reach, the Golden State Warriors franchise inches along, as unattractive and irrelevant as ever.

This repellent franchise has, however, made a rather interesting excretion in recent weeks. After a throat-clearing cash-netting second-round pick downgrade, the zombie FO sent Corey Maggette (and said downgraded second-rounder) to the Bucks for Dan Gadzuric and Charlie Bell. Maggette is a very good player coming off of a career year... by several metrics, he was one of the 25 most productive players in basketball last year, and he was certainly the most productive player on the Warriors. Gadzuric and Bell are scrubs, and bad ones. Maggette is a favorite of this blog; conversely, players don't get any more boring than Bell and Gadzuric.

Personally, I don't like this trade.

Catchup: The Front Office

While some enjoy speculating about the insanities of the Golden State braintrust, we Worriers don't: it's depressing, and it's generally based on ephemera and the insinuations of those who profit from insinuating. More to the point, there's no party left worth rooting for. When Larry Riley, a replacement-level cipher of a GM, is your standout front office figure, you know you're in the midst of some dark times.

But this regime is (crossed fingers knocking wood) on its last legs, and we should stand ready for the autopsy. And when you're examining a rotting fish, it's best to start with the head. So let's look at what we know and what we think we know.

The Owner

Tim Kawakami has done a crackerjack job of following this stuation on his blog... an entry from June 21st sums up the state of play pretty well. Basically, Chris Cohan started soliciting bids for the franchise in late April, with the help of auctioneer/sports financier extraordinaire Sal Galatioto. Several groups submitted bids in late May. How many groups? Who were these groups? How much did they bid? Thanks to the usual Cohanic blend of secrecy, coyness and just plain bullshit, we don't quite know. But it's reasonable to assume that 1) Larry Ellison, who cleverly allied himself with the current minority owners, is still the guy to beat, 2) Ellison's in no real rush, 3) a group led by 24 Hour Fitness founder Mark Mastrov is still in the picture, and 4) Cohan isn't likely to get the record $400+ million dollar offer he was hoping for. Awww.

Until a sale finalizes (which could be months), the acting basketball folks are in as pure of a lame-duck position as you can find on the current American pro sports landscape. All of them will almost definitely be fired when a new owner takes charge (and thank the good Lord for that)... in the interim, they're tasked with the job of keeping the team looking all shiny and young and affordable. How're they doing with that task?

REBOOT

Jeez... you take a simple sixty-nine-day blogging sabbatical, and your downtrodden NBA franchise goes all squirrelly on you! Among the Warrior stories that have surfaced while we were off on assignment:

- The team is officially on the market, and while it's too early to name a frontrunner or take down the legions of shrill, blacklit anti-Cohan websites, there is what one would call sunlight on the horizon.

- New uniforms, and better ones, too!

- Kelenna Azubuike exercised his option, keeping him in, uh, white and yellow and royal blue.

- Ex-Dub and Nellie favorite Manute Bol passed away, depriving the league of one of its greatest spectacles and greatest people.

- The Warriors traded one of their best players away for garbage...

- ...and made perhaps the most-reviled pick of the 2010 NBA Draft.

What do we make of all this? Well, friends, that's a good question! And one that will be answered in the days and weeks to come. For we Worriers are BACK, and as long-winded as ever. Stay tuned.

2009-10: A Season Punted

The Warriors' thrilling win in Portland last night capped off a 7-5 finish to the season, easily the year's most successful stretch. It was a fun closing run, with big moments and big performances from a number of guys -- in each of the Warriors' final six wins, a different player led the team in scoring. The players remained enthusiastic and chipper throughout the dying months of the season, something many bad teams, and many Warrior teams, have not done. It's hard to remember a group of players as likeable as the current crop, and you may well be feeling pretty good about them right now.

As the glow of those final games fade, however, you'll again be confronted with the cold realities of the team's ineptitude. In a season that was supposed to represent a bounceback from the moped miseries of the yesteryear, the Warriors regressed by three games. Their 26-56 record was tied for the fourth-worst in the league, was the Warriors' worst record since 2001-02, and was the tenth-worst record in the 64-year history of the franchise. (Actually, tied for tenth-worst: the Dubs also went 26-56 in '94-95,the year Chris Webber, Don Nelson and Jim Fitzgerald cruelly morphed into Donyell Marshall, Bob Lanier and Chris Cohan. Let's hope this year doesn't leave scars as lasting.)

This wasn't simply a bad year. This was a horrible year, a disaster, an unmitigated embarrassment. The Warriors got a hard-working and largely healthy year from Monta Ellis, a fabulous, career-best season from Corey Maggette, and an eye-opening rookie turn from Stephen Curry. They still couldn't reach the "heights" of the '08-'09 squad. Why not?

The franchise's various mouthpieces have already made it clear what they want the narrative to be: injuries, with a splash of ref bias. Poor team health was, indeed, a huge issue, and maybe we can chalk that up to pure bad luck (though that's probably a generous assumption). But even if you account for injuries, the Warriors still underperformed. As we've discussed in the past, injuries, even crippling ones, don't have to nuke a team as quickly and thoroughly as they nuked the '09-'10 Warriors. You could blame a 36-46 season on injuries. When you're 26-56, you've still got a lot of 'splainin' to do. As for ref bias -- the Fitz talking point that if Monta had gotten the star calls he deserved, if the league hadn't cheated the Dubs out of a win in Denver in January, the season might've gone a little differently -- it's an excuse that's too pathetic to even merit a debunking. Let's not be children, here.

Was lack of talent an issue? To be sure... the Warriors' talent level is not particularly high. But it's not particularly low, either, and given the energy and hard work displayed by the majority of the roster, it's hard to figure how you only eke out 26 wins in a season. The Pacers have an overrated star and a crap supporting cast around him, and they still managed 32 wins. The Pacers resolutely refused to tank, but then the Warriors didn't tank, either... the Warriors had more wins in their final twelve games than they'd had in their previous thirty games, and they even cost themselves a draft spot or two with a 5-3 record in April. If they weren't talentless, and they didn't tank, how'd they end up on the short list of the worst teams in Warrior history?

Great Job, Guys! Now Tank.

Rooting for a clueless organization sometimes forces you to root for strange things. I was rooting hard for Nellie to pass Lenny Wilkens, not for his sake -- he's way too damaging of a presence right now for me to care about his legacy, and I don't really think he cared much about the record anyway -- but for the sake of the team's future. A franchise this stupid has enough trouble doing business in a vacuum, let alone in an environment filled with distractions. (The sad irony, of course, is that stupid franchises beget distractions, and thus the bulk of the season has been spent discussing the soap-operatic relationships between key figures, not the horrible product on the court.)

Nellie's record hunt, though ostensibly a positive distraction, was a distraction. Now that it's done, there's at least a chance that the Warriors braintrust will take a glance at the facts on the ground. If they do, they will come to two quick conclusions:

1) Jesus, we suck.

2) Now is no time to stop sucking.

The first point is both obvious and frequently made, but worth reiterating once more: this team is extremely bad, in a way that transcends injuries or luck. There are a number of variables in play here, not all of them reflecting an innate lack of talent: this roster is poorly constructed and execrably coached, and a few savvy trades and more competent on-court guidance could improve the team's results. Nevertheless, there is no reason whatsoever to think that this team has enough talent to compete for a playoff spot in the Western Conference going forward.

Which brings us to the second point, and the only stat line that matters.

The Warriors and Truthiness

This weekend saw the largest edition yet of the MIT Sloan Sports Analytic Conference, an annual gathering of the nerds that provides a rare high-profile moment for APBRmetricians. Many of the people whose work we've linked to -- Hollinger, Simmons, Pelton, Paine, Sill -- were in attendance, as were former Dub Avery Johnson and noted Barry son Brent. Not in attendance? Anyone currently affiliated with the Warriors. Some attendees estimated that as many as 16 of the 30 NBA teams (including most of the best teams) sent representatives to the conference; no one saw any sign of an envoy from Oakland.

This is not surprising, but it is nevertheless dispiriting. Given the wealth of geek talent in the Bay Area and the storied successes of Billy Beane's analytic work just down the road, there is no team that should have cottoned to advanced statistics more quickly than the Warriors. Instead, they continue to languish in ignorance; while most intelligent front offices were keeping an eye on Cambridge, Larry Riley and his comrades twiddled their thumbs. And so, on the day that BP's Kevin Pelton announced he was now working as a consultant for the Pacers, the Warriors lost their third game in a row. On the day that the conference itself took place, the Warriors lost their fourth in a row. And on Monday, while the basketball cognoscenti buzzed over the statistical insights of the weekend, the Warriors lost number five.

This goes beyond the little on-court efficiencies that statheadedness can add. For a franchise as rudderless as this one, a refusal to reckon with the realities of the statistical record is a refusal to deal with reality itself. And indeed, we have seen some decision-making and signaling from Oakland that evokes all the intelligence and clearheadedness of the previous presidential administration. Every day, this team drives home the lesson that you can't spell "Warriors" without "W".

Let's take a trip down Memory Lane here in Worrierville and revisit some of the team's more harmful '09-'10 delusions: