By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

Turns out that changing course with an NBA team in the middle of a season is not all that simple.

After the Warriors’ 119-108 defeat to the Houston Rockets on Friday — a game in which Golden State shot just 37.2 percent through three quarters, 40.2 overall — it’s easy for fans to say, “Look, the ball movement experiment failed.”

But in addition to just plain bad luck — such as Stephen Jackson’s missed dunk attempt — there were plenty of instances of Warriors pulling up for jumpers that clanged off the iron without the benefit of a pass to set up the shooter.

In the first 8 1/2 minutes alone, Jackson, C.J. Watson, Kelenna Azubuike (twice) and Jamal Crawford (twice) were all guilty of such infractions. Five of those six shots were misses; the only make was when Azubuike ducked behind a ball screen from Andris Biedrins and knocked down a fading 17-footer.

There were some positives: Several Warriors were aggressively using up-fakes to get past their man at the 3-point line — a place the Warriors, the NBA’s next-to-worst 3-point shooting team (30.3 percent), shouldn’t be firing from — and then stepping in for open 15- to 18-footers.

And kick-out passes made a reappearance, including a couple from Azubuike, who tied his season-high with four assists (a level he hadn’t reached in more than a month).

** The absences of Brandan Wright, Ronny Turiaf and Corey Maggette forced Jackson into spending 31 minutes at power forward, which was doubly damaging to the Warriors: Their best individual defender was relatively wasted shadowing Luis Scola while a rookie (Anthony Morrow) was tasked with shutting down Tracy McGrady. When you include the fact that Jackson is possibly the worst rebounding 4 in NBA history, you can see why it’s a problem.

** I will say this for Jackson at 4: He made some superb rotations defensively, including the first-quarter play to draw a charge on Yao Ming. The rest of the team was nowhere near as successful. Even when one player would make the right move — such as when Marco Belinelli came across the lane to shut down a drive by Luther Head, who had gotten past Jackson on a screen-roll play — a teammate would fail to make the next necessary rotation — i.e., Crawford not sliding down to the baseline to cover Shane Battier, who drained an open 12-footer.

** Crawford still needs to push the ball faster, even when the Warriors don’t have numbers. It’s more about stoking the tempo of the game than anything else; when he would jog it upcourt, it fed into the idea that the game was going to be played at Houston’s pace.

** Anthony Randolph may have finished with 15 points and 10 rebounds, but he also made his share of rookie mistakes. In one particularly cringe-worthy sequence in the second quarter:

Randolph chased hopelessly after an offensive rebound, and the Rockets capitalized on his late arrival at the other end with a 3-pointer from Aaron Brooks.

Randolph missed an open 18-footer off a pick-and-pop with Belinelli.

Randolph switched onto McGrady after a screen-roll play, leapt into the air at the sight of McGrady’s up-fake and gave up two easy points at the foul line.

I did wonder, if a fuller bench had been available, whether Nelson would have yanked Randolph and buried him on the bench at that point.

** Speaking of rookie mistakes: Why does Morrow keep overplaying people on their weak side? First it was Oklahoma City’s Damien Wilkins, who blew by Morrow for an uncontested slam on Monday. This time, it was Von Wafer who had a couple of easy layups at Morrow’s expense by using that same baseline route.

* * Do you think Yao will be buying Carl Landry a nice Christmas gift after Landry nearly impaled Randolph with his first-half dunk?

The Lineup Project
Hard to go anything but small when two of your five bigs are on the bench and two of the three remaining are rookies.

Lineup             GSW     HOU     Time
Large                 N/A       N/A       0:00
Turiaf-Biedrins    N/A       N/A       0:00
Medium              47        40        16:46
Small                 61        79         31:14

Without Monta. . .
I predicted a 9-17 record for the Warriors when Monta Ellis’ suspension was over, so at 7-16, they have some work to do.

Contact: geofflepper@48minutes.net