FOURTH QUARTER:

** Three possessions in a row for ATL, and Biedrins is up off the bench. Good move by Nelson, going to go with Biedrins and Turiaf together.

** Good job by Turiaf getting out to the perimeter and helping Belinelli, who was walled off by Pachulia.

** The part of Stephen Graham will be played tonight by Flip Murray.

** CC: I’m not giving into anything. I’m just acknowledging that they are showing improvement tonight (at least in some areas; Crawford’s off-balance shooting is still horrid — can’t believe this guy averages 5.5 treys a game while shooting 26 percent).

Also, I think Belinelli can be a marked improvement on the boards.

** This is the problem with the AB/Turiaf tandem: Josh Smith suckered them both in with his drive to the left block, then fed Horford, who was laughingly unaffected by Belinelli’s foul en route to the three-point play.

** And poof, there went all those all those Belinelli-to-the-point stories…

** Erik: I’m betting he spent one season at North Carolina. Unless you mean on either team, in which case, look four points above this one.

** I really want to look at this fourth quarter again, because I think this was simply a case of returning to the mean — the Warriors didn’t deserve to be as close as they were early, so that second-quarter burst gave them a false lead.

** Well, that was fun. BTW, CC, just noticed the link and checked out the blog. Nice stuff. Profane, but quality.

THIRD QUARTER:

** Another outlet-steal. And just as I was going to ask if Anthony Randolph or Wright would be pulled, the hook did come.

** Erik: BW, frankly, doesn’t defensively rebound as much as he could, probably. But it’s still better than what they’ve been trotting out there.

** Combined with the Indy game, Kelenna Azubuike is putting together his best back-to-back performances of the season.

** Crawford is looking like a distributor, but even more importantly, so is Belinelli. Frankly, I think this game is going to resurrect those, “Marco to the point?” stories, and rightfully so.

** M.Squared: Get your season tickets now, because I think once this season is done and they’ve made the second round, seats are going to be in short supply.

SECOND QUARTER:

** Implosion alert: Tim Kawakami is now reporting that Jackson and Don Nelson argued at Monday’s shootaround when Nelson told his captain, essentially, that he’d been playing of garbage of late. Jackson allegedly…

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

It’s looking more and more like the Warriors are going to, once again, end up disintegrating into a cloud of debris.

If, as ESPN’s Chris Broussard says, coach Don Nelson told rookie forward Anthony Randolph to have his agent explore potential trades, then things have come unglued to a point that would probably be unprecedented in franchise history . . . if only this franchise wasn’t the Warriors.

Is Broussard’s report accurate? I don’t know. Can I see Nelson saying something like that to Randolph? Absolutely. Without question. When Nellie gets down on a player — consistently down, not just for a two-week stretch of juggling the rotation or somesuch — it’s pretty much impossible to dig yourself out of that hole.

I had an interesting conversation recently with a Nelson confidant about the Warriors’ pick in this year’s draft. This person said that Nelson’s much-hyped interest in Jason Thompson — so well-hyped that it seemed it could only be a smokescreen — was very, very real. In fact, Nelson had to be talked down from Thompson and into Randolph by Chris Mullin and others in the days leading up to the draft.

In retrospect, I can see why Nelson was so much more interested in Thompson, who was taken by the Kings with the No. 12 selection. Thompson doesn’t have the 3-point range that Al Harrington offered, but he has a decent enough mid-range jumper and was ready to go after four years at Rider — meaning that having Thompson on board would have made it that much easier to trade Harrington before the season began.

It also helps to explain why Nelson — again, assuming Broussard’s reporting is correct — can so cavalierly toss aside the No. 14 pick in Randolph.

That being said, it’s one thing for the coach to decide he has no use for a player. But when that coach makes it so patently obvious to all other clubs, how you possibly get decent value? Nelson’s unbridled disdain for Marcus Williams has made it such that the Warriors can’t even sell him off for 50 cents on the dollar.

Given that fact, why shop Randolph now? Why not give him some playing time and showcase him this month before trying to dump him? Why not wait until the summer, let him put up some big numbers in Vegas and build back some stock? It just makes no sense.

I’ve said it…

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

Warriors center Ronny Turiaf has an easy fix for Golden State’s problems when it comes to securing defensive rebounds:

“Plain and simple, go get the ball,” Turiaf said. “That’s it.”

Except that hasn’t been it, of course. Not by a long shot.

Including last night’s horrific 20-offensive rebound performance for the Indiana Pacers in their 127-210 victory, Golden State has chalked up a defensive rebound rate (DRR) of just 67.0 percent through its first 26 games.

The DRR — a team’s defensive boards divided by the sum of a team’s defensive boards and the opponents’ offensive rebounds — is a rough ratio of how many defensive rebounds a team gets (it doesn’t include team boards, so it’s not as exact as you would want).

At 67.0, Golden State ranks last in the NBA by a wide, wide margin. There’s a chart to illustrate that point below, but here’s some specifics as well: The Kings are 29th in the league at 70.5 percent and the league average is 73.1. The top-ranked Spurs are at 77.8.

Consider: Even if the Warriors closed half the gap between their DRR and the league average . . . they’d still be the league’s worst, at 70.05. So the data begs the question:

How bad are the Warriors, historically speaking?

Well, how about this: They’re the second-worst defensive rebounding team this century.

OK, I realize the 21st century is only in its ninth year, but still, the last time a team posted a DRR lower than 67.0 was in 1999-2000, when the Dallas Mavericks — put together and coached by familiar, white-haired adherent of small ball by the name of Don Nelson — pulled down 66.1 percent of their opportunities.

In an attempt to solve that team’s failings — both on the floor and at the ticket office — Nelson and new Mavericks owner Mark Cuban brought in a 38-year-old Dennis Rodman. Though the Worm helped somewhat — Dallas’ DRR in 12 games with him was about 3.5 points better than in the 70 without — it wasn’t enough to make it worth dealing with his particular brand of crazy.

I’m sure that Rodman would be game to pull down more NBA coin, but let’s assume for the moment that a washed-up, 47-year-old ex-husband to Carmen Electra isn’t the answer for Nelson & Co. this time around.

What can the Warriors do to solve this problem, which keeps biting them at critical junctures (such as the…

(Today’s installment of your faithful reporter’s quest to prognosticate all 1,230 NBA regular-season games this season.)

Spurs (15-9) at Magic (19-6), 5:05 p.m.
Pick: Magic -3
If things keep up the way they are, this’ll be the first season in many years where an Eastern Conference team is wishing it were in the West (because you know Orlando would rather be the No. 2 seed in the West than No. 3 back East, where they’d have to get past Cleveland).

Suns (15-10) at Trail Blazers (16-10), 7:35 p.m.
Pick: Suns +4.5
One last kick from the old guard.

Yesterday: 6-3
Season record: 183-185-6

– Geoff

POSTGAME:

** I know Jamal Crawford is not a great rebounder, but when you’re down 3 with 2 to play and Ronny Turiaf jumps over to your man (Jarrett Jack) on the screen-roll and delivers the block, you HAVE to come up with that board. Simply have to. Instead, of course, it’s more of the Jeff Foster personal highlight reel and a putback bucket for Stephen Graham that ices the game.

** Stephen Graham? Seriously?

** Marcus Thompson is quoting a source close to Marcus Williams as saying that a buyout is “not going to happen.” That means that if the Warriors do cut him loose, they have to pay his full $1.26 million salary.

If there was no salary cap, the Warriors could just flip Williams to someone for a second-round draft pick, salvaging some value, and be done with it. But with the cap, the Warriors’ trade options are much more limited. They would need to either:

A) Make a multi-player deal where they take back one less player then gets sent out (2-for-1, 3-for-2, etc.)

B) Make a 1-for-1 trade where they take back a player making at least $1 million

C) deal Williams to a club with a Traded Player Exception of at least $1.26M (of which there are 15, not including the Warriors)

D) convince the Memphis Grizzlies to take Williams, since they’re under the salary cap.

Option A is tough because I know some prominent members of the organization would like to see the team play together, fully healthy, before making a decision on any more major changes. Option B is basically the same situation as they’re currently in, just slightly less expensive. Option C is better, but many of those other clubs with the requisite TPE already have the maximum 15 players and thus would have to cut one of their own to make room for Williams. And with a glut of PGs already present in Memphis, Option D ain’t happening.

Assuming there is no trade, and with DeMarcus Nelson showing an ability to rebound that none of the Warriors’ other guards have displayed, there’s probably three players left on the list of possible cuts:

Rob Kurz is on a non-guaranteed, minimum-scale deal worth $442,114 that vests fully on Jan. 15. Richard Hendrix is on a guaranteed minimum contract (I know Marcus said it wasn’t, but it is, unless the Warriors somehow got him to give up the guarantee after training camp) also worth $442,114. And there’s Williams and…