48minutes.net

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

OAKLAND — For all the talk about incoming point guard Marcus Williams, Warriors coach Don Nelson isn’t ready to hand him the keys the offense just yet.

Nelson said after Tuesday’s morning practice that C.J. Watson currently holds top position on the depth chart at the point, filling in the spot that the injured Monta Ellis was slated to inherit from the departed Baron Davis.

“C.J., right now it’s his starting job to lose,” Nelson said. “I think he’s the best starting point guard in camp right now, so I’ve got him penciled in there. But there’s still a long way to go. This is all early, (but) he’s done a very good job.”

Nelson said that when the team gets around to going over its offensive sets — more than 90 percent of the work since Saturday has been on the defensive side of the ball — he’s not planning on making any changes to help compensate for the absence of Ellis, whom Nelson expected to play 35 minutes a night at the point.

“Everything we do (in training camp) is anticipating that Monta would be in the lineup,” Nelson said. “So he’ll walk right back into things that he does well, that he can do.”

That means whomever gets slotted in at point guard, be it Watson or Williams, will have to do all the things Ellis has been expected to do. That’s an interesting tidbit, because there’s nobody else on the Warriors’ roster — and few players in the entire league, for that matter — who can match the offensive explosiveness a healthy Ellis brings to the floor.

“They can do (Ellis’) job,” Nelson said. “They’ll have to do it differently. It’s not that they’re not good players; they don’t have the ability to score like he does.”

Neither of them has displayed that propensity in the NBA to this point, but Watson arguably has more potential to be a prototypical scoring point guard of the type Nelson loves. Watson doesn’t have the raw speed and quickness of Ellis, but he did average 26.2 points — on better than 50 percent shooting and 40 percent accuracy from 3-point range — in the NBA Development League last season.

Watson seemed to be concentrating, almost to a fault, on avoiding mistakes, rather than making plays, after joining the Warriors in January. Then again, he spent half his time playing alongside Davis rather than in place of him, and according to 82games.com, Watson’s PER at the point was 16.2. At the 2, alongside Davis, it was just 8.0.

Given the freedom to look for his own shot rather than wanting to defer to older, more dominant teammates, Watson might be able to get closer to that NBDL form. Certainly the Warriors will need that kind of output if they want to keep pace with the rest of the West while Ellis heals, because Golden State faces a frightening schedule to open the season: 23 of its first 36 games on the road, and eight back-to-backs — six of them all-road affairs — before Jan. 1.

Notes: Stephen Jackson and Al Harrington were given the day off, “just because they deserved it,” Nelson said. “They’re old. Both of them are below 30 (years old), but they have bodies below 40.”

A few words about myself, since some of you already know me, but others don’t. My name is Geoff Lepper. I’ve been a sportswriter in the Bay Area for 16 years, most recently spending three seasons covering the Warriors for the Oakland Tribune and Contra Costa Times before being laid off in July, just a couple of weeks after a successful union drive that I often spoke out for favorably.

This is a site dedicated to beat-level coverage of the Golden State Warriors specifically and the NBA in general. When I covered the Warriors as an intern for the Peninsula Times Tribune in 1993, there were six traveling beat writers and three more guys (including myself) covering every home game. Last season, there were two traveling writers — Janny Hu of the San Francisco Chronicle and myself. That was it.

Obviously, the public’s appetite for sports coverage has not waned dramatically in the intervening years; just the opposite, frankly. But through consolidation and the steady decline of newspaper circulation, the number of beat writers have declined precipitously.

What I’m aiming to be is another beat writer, working sources and bringing you news from around the Warriors’ locker room and the league as a whole. I plan on holding myself to the same standard of professionalism that I upheld over the last three seasons covering this franchise. I hope you’ll enjoy the fruits of my labor.

– Geoff