48minutes.net

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

The frontline void for the Warriors is kind of like the U.S. school system: You can throw however much money and manpower you want at it, and it just doesn’t seem to make a whit of difference.

The latest attempt to stem this tide is Jermareo Davidson, who was originally selected 36th overall in the 2007 draft by the Warriors but was traded before the night was out to the Charlotte Bobcats, along with Jason Richardson, for Brandan Wright.

Davidson, brought in today on a 10-day contract, essentially replaces Richard Hendrix, who was cut loose on Dec. 18 when Monta Ellis had to be transferred back from the suspended list to the inactive squad. It’s a funny coincidence, since they played together at Alabama for two seasons and were the two leading scorers on the Tide’s 2006-07 team. Here are the stats from that season (and remember that Hendrix was a sophomore, while Davidson was a senior):

Many fans have questioned why on Earth the Warriors would waive Hendrix (whose $442,114 salary was fully guaranteed) without seeing him play once in a real NBA game, only to turn around two weeks later and sign another big man who could — if the team chooses to retain Davidson for the rest of the season — cost another roughly $350,000.

There’s either one of two things at play:

A) The Warriors simply need another large body to get through tonight’s contest, since Wright and Rob Kurz are both banged up, Anthony Randolph is on double-not-so-secret probation, Corey Maggette hasn’t played in nearly a month, Kelenna Azubuike will get eaten alive by Paul Millsap and Andris Biedrins and Ronny Turiaf can’t each play 48 minutes — unless the foul disqualification limit is doubled to 12.

Or. . .

B) Don Nelson likes Davidson more than he liked Hendrix. A lot more.

I can believe at least half of choice B, because Nelson clearly didn’t think much of Hendrix’s ability, right from the start. Back in October, after three weeks of working with Hendrix, before the regular season had even begun, Nelson had this to say: “He has an NBA body and NBA desire but is not NBA ready.”

Asked if Hendrix had NBA talent, Nelson said, “Not yet.”

The coach’s attitude was unmoved by what he saw when he watched Hendrix and DeMarcus Nelson play for the Bakersfield Jam in mid-December, according to Matt Steinmetz: “I think the school is still out on Hendrix. He’s got a lot of work to do. As far as the body and rebounding, he’s got two things going for him. But he’s got to learn a lot of other stuff.”

Is Davidson going to be any better? Certainly, at 6-10 and with a 7-4 wingspan — a quarter-inch longer than Wright and a full inch better than Randolph — Davidson has the potential to fill a “traditional” power forward spot.

But I’ll believe it when I see it.

Winners and losers?
The most obvious winner is Davidson, who was released in training camp this season by the Bobcats. He’s almost certainly going to get a chance to play over Randolph, and I suspect could pass Wright on the depth chart, especially if Wright keeps getting into early foul trouble.

Another potential winner is Maggette. I know Don Nelson has said he’s not going to overplay Maggette this time around, but I recall he said that about Baron Davis last season just before grinding BD into the ground with endless streams of 38-, 40- and 42-minute games. If Davidson flops, that will open the door for Maggette to get another shot at power forward, where there are oodles of minutes to be had.

And you can’t put up numbers if you don’t get minutes.

The biggest loser is also plain: DeMarcus Nelson, the Oakland native who got cut to make way for Davidson. Don Nelson said from the start that it would take a year, at a minimum, to remake DeMarcus’ shot, which is why I found it strange they kept him, let alone started him on Opening Night.

Even with the emergency revamp that took place in the D-League, Nelson’s shot is still too inaccurate and too slow to make it at this level right now, as evidenced by his shot chart:

In case those numbers are too fuzzy to read, that’s 20-35 (57.1 percent) on layups and dunks, 4-18 (22.2 percent) on everything else.

Steinmetz pointed to Randolph as being on the downside of this decision, but I don’t really agree. That theory, to me, flips the causality; it’s not that Randolph is going to play zero minutes because Davidson is on the roster — Davison is on the roster precisely because Randolph is already guaranteed not to play, a fact Nelson made clear with his public trashing of Randolph.

(Wouldn’t it be fascinating if tri-captains Biedrins, Turiaf and Stephen Jackson all went on the record tonight as saying that, since Nelson left the decision up to them and the assistant coaches, Randolph should play? How hilarious would that be?)

The biggest potential loser is Wright. Nelson has made it clear he’s willing to play Wright, but only begrudgingly, and always with a shorter leash than any of the veterans (Maggette being the most pertinent example). If Davidson can shoot with regularity the 15-footer that Wright really can’t (not with any consistency, anyways), is there any doubt he’ll be starting for this team in the near future?

Contact: geofflepper@48minutes.net

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

As the rift between the Warriors coach Don Nelson and rookie forward Anthony Randolph continues to widen unabated, with the teenager effectively serving an unofficial and open-ended suspension, it’s funny to think about who might have salvaged this relationship:

Chris Mullin.

Randolph was a Mullin pick; Nelson wanted Jason Thompson but came around eventually to Mullin’s way of thinking, which was to take a potential superstar if one was available at No. 14 — and Randolph fit that bill.

It stands to figure that Mullin would be the guy best equipped to keep Randolph’s emotions in check when he would get yanked by Nelson’s short leash. After all, Mullin was the guy who served as Monta Ellis’ biggest champion during a rookie season in which coach Mike Montgomery derided his talents and kept him mostly glued to the bench until Baron Davis shut it down in March.

But Mullin has been persona non grata for a while now, unseen at practice or even at shootarounds, where he used to be a constant presence. He’s been on the road scouting college games, which should give him some great insights (on the Warriors’ dime) when he goes to work for another NBA team next season, but that’s a whole other problem.

Much has been made of the shot Randolph delivered to fellow rookie forward Rob Kurz in practice last weekend; the obvious inference to be drawn from Stephen Jackson’s reaction is that Randolph deliberately nailed Kurz.

I don’t think he would have wanted to cause serious injury, but it wouldn’t surprise me at all if Randolph, having reached the height of his frustration, lined up Kurz’s chin and clocked him as a stand-in for Nelson.

Nelson has been almost unremittingly critical of Randolph this season. The coach’s biggest compliment — that Randolph had passed Brandan Wright on the team’s depth chart way back in preseason — turned out to be totally false, just a motivational tool to light a fire under Wright.

On the other hand, Nelson has been effusive in his praise of Kurz from Day 1, all but pouting when Kurz was cut on Mullin’s order and then campaigning hard to get him back once Ellis was placed on the suspended list.

I’m not saying definitively that that’s what happened. But I can certainly see Kurz being the epitome of everything that’s going wrong for Randolph — at least in Randolph’s eyes — and Randolph snapping after three months and lashing out.

As for a return date for Randolph, Nelson is once again publicly demurring to other members of the organization despite his unquestioned status as the leader of basketball operations. It’s similar to the move Nelson pulled a few weeks back when Jackson was struggling terribly and needed to be told to hit the bench until his hand was healthy. Rather than doing it himself (at least at first), Nelson tried to put the onus on his other players to deliver the message to Jackson.

Matt Steinmetz posits that this is Nelson’s way of telling everyone that there’s “a major problem with Randolph” and that he’s out of ideas how to deal with the rookie.

To a more cynical observer, it could be interpreted as another way to ostracize Randolph.

Lead assistant Keith Smart had been Randolph’s closest confidant during games, the guy to whom both Randolph and Wright would go to after being unceremoniously yanked by Nelson after one or two mistakes (while Corey Maggette would make seven and still be on the floor).

Putting Smart and the other assistants in charge of deciding when Randolph can return means that relationship must change — after all, how can Smart seem fair and evenhanded if he’s still letting Randolph bend his ear?

It’s too bad there isn’t anybody else under contract who might fill that role.

Oh, right.

The Lineup Project
As for the game, there’s not much in the way of analysis needed. The Warriors should been up big at the half, but gave the Timberwolves 12 points off turnovers in the first two periods. There’s no shame at not being able to stop Al Jefferson (32 points, 10 rebounds), but letting Kevin Love rip you for 19 points and eight boards in 25 minutes is just horrendous.

Contact: geofflepper@48minutes.net

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

By now, you’ve undoubtedly read Marcus Thompson’s blog item regarding the report from Stephen Jackson that Baron Davis wants to be traded back to the Bay less than six months after bolting to go back home.

Aside from the usual eye-rolling that comes with most Baron pronouncements, there’s a very specific and immoveable obstacle to this scenario: BD can’t seriously think that the Warriors (i.e., team president Robert Rowell) — who didn’t want to be on the hook for four fully guaranteed years because of concerns about Davis’ health and motivation — are suddenly going to be willing to pay for FIVE seasons.

Here, then, is a helpful guide to 30 things more likely to happen than Baron Davis coming back to the Bay:

1) Barack Obama arrives at the White House on the afternoon of Jan. 20, spots George Bush ducking out the back door, tosses him the keys and says, “You can keep it. I just got Hank Paulson’s last report, and I’m outta here.”

2) Tracy McGrady and Vince Carter each play 82 games — in the same season.

3) Clay Bennett goes bankrupt and the City of Seattle picks up the Thunder for $42,598 plus court costs in an Oklahoma City repo auction.

4) Warrior fans make it through a broadcast without being reminded that they’re missing (insert number here) points per game.

5) Larry Brown quits the Bobcats out of sheer frustration with Sean May.

(Wait, that one could actually happen.)

6) The L wakes up to the fact that Kevin Garnett has crossed the line from “hard-nosed” to “wantonly overaggressive” and finally takes some punitive action.

7) Allen Iverson takes two weeks off from the Pistons, undergoes 274 laser treatments and comes back without any tattoos.

8 ) Jose Calderon misses a free throw. But only one.

9) Gilbert Arenas announces that he’s quitting the NBA to switch to blogging full-time.

10) Jamal Crawford starts to play lockdown defense.

11) Barry Bonds is named the San Francisco Giants’ new strength and conditioning coach.

12) Kobe Bryant drops 71 on the Suns, then tells a live ABC audience: “Shaq, your ass taste like chicken. At least, that’s what Steve Nash said.”

13) Al Harrington tells Jackson that he’d like to come back to the Warriors, too.

14) Erick Dampier acknowledges that he hasn’t played up to the seven-year, $73 million deal he signed in 2004 and gives Mark Cuban an oversized posterboard check for $30 million in a halftime ceremony at a Mavericks home game.

15) Cuban’s attorneys immediately take half as a retainer.

16) The San Jose Sharks turn yet another glittering regular season into a Stanley Cup title.

17) Stephon Marbury returns to the Knicks at the All-Star break, scores 22.8 points per game the rest of the way and leads New York to the playoffs.

18) Corey Maggette misses 17 games after tearing his lat during a particularly vigorous weight-training session.

19) Eric Gordon takes a rainbow jumper that gets caught among the banners at the TD Banknorth Arena and never comes back to the court.

20) Thanks to a general outcry from critics, “ER” gets renewed.

21) Newspapers in the United States report a 450 percent jump in readership for 2008 over 2007.

22) Dikembe Mutombo stays retired.

23) Dennis Rodman doesn’t.

24) Gregg Popovich promises to dress like Gandalf for the duration of the Spurs’ playoff run.

Will Pop . . .

. . . pick up pipe-smoking as well?

25) Derrick Rose actually breaks Andre Miller’s ankle.

26) Kerri Walsh announces that because it’s too hard to choose a new partner while Misty May-Treanor recovers from her torn Achilles tendon, she’s just going to play solo on the AVP Tour.

And she still wins every tournament.

27) The luxurious manes of Pau and Marc Gasol are revealed to be nothing more than wild wigs when Ron Artest yanks on Pau’s hair during one particularly intense Rockets-Lakers confrontation.

28) Kevin McHale goes 1-62 as a coach. AND STILL KEEPS HIS JOB.

29) No, really: Jamal Crawford starts to play lockdown defense.

30) The Clippers wake up on the morning after the trade deadline and find that not only is Davis still clad in red and blue, but they also still employ Zach Randolph, Chris Kaman and Marcus Camby.

Contact: geofflepper@48minutes.net

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 possession Wednesday where Jeff Foster simply bulled over Jamal Crawford, collected his own miss and allowed Stephen Graham to give the Pacers a second-chance layup for a five-point lead)?

“Well, it’s a very complicated thing,” Nelson said last week. “It’s not just one thing. There’s lots of different coverages, there’s lots of different assignments. It takes a while before it’s a natural thing for young players.”

It’s interesting to look at the Warriors’ individual DRR numbers this season compared to last season, when Golden State still ranked last but had a 70.3 mark that was at least within hailing distance of the rest of the league.

In 2007-08:

In 2008-09:

A few things that stand out: Harrington’s dramatic slide (-5.2) reiterates just how little he cared to toil in a Warriors uniform this season.

That was just one piece of the across-the-board decrease for returning players, such as Wright (-2.7), Azubuike (-2.3) and Jackson (-1.1).

Turiaf attributes some of the team’s problem to a habit of standing around and watching Biedrins (third in the league at 12.0 rpg): “Because Goose gets so many of them, sometimes we’re like, ‘OK, Goose, just go get it.’ We become somewhat complacent; ‘You average 13 a game, so we’ll just box out for you.’”

Yet even Biedrins is down 1.3 percent.

It’s been fun to watch the Phoenix Suns play this season and witness, even as they’re disintegrating because of Steve Nash’s disenchantment with new coach Terry Porter, Matt Barnes having a career year. Much like Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi,” where you “don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone,” Barnes’ tenacity on the glass has become so much more noticeable now that it’s not here, replaced by the pale imitation that has been Corey Maggette’s work as a “power” forward.

Watson deserves praise for his concentrated effort on rebounding, which has been rewarded with greater numbers, and so to a lesser extent does Belinelli. And, not to beat on a dead horse, while Randolph may have his problems in making the transition from teen-ager to NBA pro, going up and securing loose balls is not one of them.

But Crawford is as bad as he was advertised to be. And Turiaf, the Warriors’ alleged answer to such bangers as Utah’s Paul Millsap (20.4 career DRR) and Dallas’ Brandon Bass (17.4), is at a career-low number, continuing a slide that has not stopped since his rookie year: from 19.0 to 18.3 to 15.4 to 13.6.

There are a number of factors that lead back to different causes. That Golden State’s guards are doing a remarkably poor job at keeping opposing ball-handlers from turning the corner seemingly at will means that Turiaf and Biedrins are constantly pulled out of prime rebounding position to provide last-line-of-defense help around the rim. Nor is it helping that wings are supposed to be heading downcourt, seeking out early offense in Nelson’s system, rather than dealing with the heavy lifting of defensive rebounding.

Turiaf claims it’s all mental, and doesn’t blame even the Warriors’ near obsession with a small-ball setup that the coach keeps saying didn’t work because the opponent’s small squad was just flat-out better.

“It has nothing to do with not being strong enough, being small, blah-blah-blah,” Turiaf said. “It has nothing to do with that. . . . Regardless of what happens, just go get the ball. I’d rather have a turnover — I don’t think coach is going to agree with me on that one — but I’d rather have a turnover with two guys going to get the ball than not getting it. That’s pretty much it.

“Just go get it.”

Hendrix goes, Williams stays
The Warriors couldn’t bring themselves to pay Marcus Williams almost $1 million not to show up for the rest of this season, so they cut rookie forward Richard Hendrix instead to make room for Monta Ellis’ move off the suspended list. The decision saved the team costs the team roughly $600,000 less than losing Williams and makes sense from one perspective: There is no way Don Nelson was going to use either of those two players the rest of the way, so the team simply chose the option that represents less wasted money.

The Lineup Project
I don’t want to give anyone a stroke, so I’ll just point out that the 7:15 in the Medium line encompassed Brandan Wright’s entire evening.

Without Monta. . .
So it’s 7-19, then. I thought I was being pretty good at tamping any optimism when I wrote that the Warriors would be 9-17 by the time Ellis’ suspension ended. Guess I was wrong.

Contact: geofflepper@48minutes.net

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

OAKLAND — Maybe the sky really is falling for the Warriors this time. Not that that’s a bad thing, in this instance.

Lost amid all the hoopla over Monta Ellis sitting down for a 12-minute discussion with the media after Thursday’s practice was the fact that Golden State coach Don Nelson said that he was going to continue, long-term, his two-game experiment with greater ball movement.

After two practices in which players were ordered to pass the ball a minimum of four or five times before shooting in half-court sets and two victories that featured none of the stagnation of the previous 20 games (15 of which were losses), Nelson declared an end to the days of allowing Golden State’s offense to dissolve into an endless procession of isolation plays for the likes of Corey Maggette, Stephen Jackson and Kelenna Azubuike.

“I wasn’t enjoying watching the team, the way that we were playing,” Nelson said. “I think the game of basketball should be fun, and you can only have fun if you move the ball and we play together. And I can only have fun coaching when my players do that. The ball basically was stopping too much, and that’s got to change. And it’s gonna change.”

Was the sound I just heard outside my window that of atmospheric debris smashing into a parked car? Or did the sanitation workers on my street just get a little careless with their driving?

That’s the problem: You can’t really tell the difference sometimes when it comes to Nelson, who seems to make as many pronouncements as Chicken Little — and sometimes sports a similar track record for accuracy.

Just last week, frustrated Warriors guard Marco Belinelli told Italian newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport: “I can’t trust Nelson any more. . . . The things he told me haven’t come to pass.”

But with two of his best half-dozen offensive performances this season in the books, Nelson appears set to follow the same blueprint — at for now.

The obvious winners in such a scenario would include Belinelli, who has flourished in the victories against Oklahoma City and Milwaukee — scoring a combined 28 points in 39 minutes in hyper-efficient style (11-for-14 FG) — and Anthony Morrow, who had his first double-digit games (15 and 16) since his two-game outburst in November that first alerted many folks to his very existence.

“I think that’s great, because when we play like this, I think the game is fast,” Belinelli said. “We enjoy the game, we make passes to everybody.”

Nelson has historically felt that the Warriors lack passers; the abortive Chris Webber return last season was an attempt to address that concern. Without someone such as Baron Davis on the roster who can force a defense to leave a teammate open and then find them with a spot-on delivery, the hope is that a quickened pace and greater volume of passes will achieve the same, simple goal:

More open shots.

“I didn’t make them, but that’s the most open shots I’ve got all year, because we moved the ball,” Jackson said of the Warriors’ 119-96 win over Milwaukee on Wednesday. “The two times we moved the ball the most in the season, we won, so something must be right. . . . That’s how we’ve played the last two years: We moved the ball, we got open shots, we made plays for the next guy.”

Precious little of that was on display as the Warriors opened 5-15 with an offense based in large part around individual skills rather than a team concept.

Nelson himself admitted that part of the problem was his veterans calling their own number too often: “Well, we were isoing too much, and it wasn’t always the coach calling those plays. We were looking there too much, and we need to look for ball movement. Players have to understand that’s what’s going to happen.”

Understanding and adapting are two totally separate things, however. Jackson, with his ability to pass, should be able to rapidly find his equilibrium in the new system. Maggette, on the other hand, has shown no such proclivity. In addition, he’s spent the majority of his NBA lifetime — five full seasons with the Clippers — following the densely detailed stylings of Mike Dunleavy, Sr., a guy who is so regimented, Hans Gruber could’ve based an elaborate heist on his tendencies.

Can a guy whose game is so dependent on isolation plays — “It was a 98 percent iso team. They dropped it down, they posted up, they isoed. That’s all they did,” Jackson said of the Clippers — remake himself this radically? Can he drop a half-decade of conditioning on a dime?

“He’s the coach and this is what he wants to do, and I think as a player, you have to make adjustments,” Maggette said. “I think we’re really trying to do that. I think everyone is really buying into it. At the end of the day, you want to buy into whatever philosophy it takes to win. And the past couple games, we’ve won by this new philosophy. Hopefully, we can keep it up and just be a better team.”

On that last point, Nelson and Maggette agree.

“We want to be a good basketball team, I think is the main thing,” Nelson said. “And we haven’t been up to this point. So we’re working hard to become a better team. If that results in wins, that’s fine.

“But at least let’s play the game the right way.”

Contact: geofflepper@48minutes.net