48minutes.net

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

Warriors coach Don Nelson has admitted on multiple occasions that his team’s small lineup couldn’t match up, talent-wise, with what the opposition put on the floor on a given night.

Against Charlotte on Saturday, that equation was flipped on its head: it was the Bobcats who couldn’t hang with the Warriors’ two-tower configuration of Andris Biedrins, Ronny Turiaf and three wing players.

For one 6 1/2-minute stretch in the third quarter, the Warriors outscored the Bobcats 23-6 using a lineup of Biedrins, Turiaf, Kelenna Azubuike, Jamal Crawford and Marco Belinelli (replaced near the end by C.J. Watson). That was the turning point in Golden State’s 110-103 win; the stretch ended with the Warriors up 81-69, and Charlotte never got closer than five points after that.

The Turiaf-Biedrins lineup played a total of 10:37 on Saturday, after getting some (less successful) run against the Atlanta Hawks on Friday:

Those two games represent the fifth- and sixth-highest total of playing for the Turiaf-Biedrins configuration this season, and you have to wonder how much of that is due to any added influence has gained Keith Smart as the team’s defensive coordinator.

Smart has no problem using the young bigs — recall the game in Houston when Brandan Wright didn’t sniff a second of playing time until Nelson was ejected, and then Smart brought in Wright almost immediately, helping spark one of the team’s only decent stints on the evening — and dumping small ball when necessary.

Of course, it might just be simpler than that. During most of the 23-6 stretch, Charlotte’s Larry Brown, who never met a 12-year veteran he didn’t like, was trying to get by with Juwan Howard at the 4 alongside Emeka Okafor, and the Warriors pinpointed that spot as something to exploit.

Howard was overmatched by Turiaf at both ends of the floor; in 12 offensive possessions, the Warriors ran their screen-roll with Turiaf as the big four times, scoring a total of eight points on those plays. Turiaf also handed off the ball twice in the high post to a curling Crawford, who knocked down an open 3-pointer off one of them with 5:17 left in the third.

There are distinct differences in the Warriors’ S/R with Turiaf as the screener versus Biedrins. Since Turiaf’s own offensive arsenal features much more mid-range jumpers (as opposed to Biedrins’ game, which is much more based on rolling through the lane), he’s able to sell out more thoroughly on his screens and thus more often force the defense to switch.

For example: Early in Saturday’s run, Turiaf wiped out Gerald Wallace, causing Boris Diaw to pick up Belinelli, and the Italian blew by him for a circus shot layup and free throw [8:14]. (The foul was Diaw’s fourth, forcing him to the bench and bringing Howard to the court.) The next time downcourt, Turiaf barred passage for Raja Bell, allowing Belinelli to slip free from Howard and feed Azubuike for an open 3-pointer in the left corner [7:35].

Once, Turiaf even got the benefit of the screen without having to even set the thing. The Warriors positioned a pair of bookends at the top of the key for Crawford’s use, with Biedrins on the left and Turiaf the right. Crawford ducked right and — even though Turiaf slipped the screen and traipsed down the lane — Howard was late in reacting and could not get out of the way of Raymond Felton. Crawford took advantage of the opening to dart past the ineffective help of Wallace and kissed a layup off the glass [5:58].

Turiaf also helped on plays where he wasn’t involved. When Azubuike rubbed Wallace off a Biedrins pick and missed an 18-footer, Turiaf collected the offensive rebound and fed Azubuike for the wide-open 3-pointer [4:25]. (Wallace, who had been sucked into the lane on the first shot, could barely be bothered to wave like he was going to close out on the trey.)

Defensively, Turiaf provided much-needed weakside help to cover Biedrins’ back when he would try to shut down the lane– a key fix given that the Warriors’ wing defenders are, to a man, seemingly unable to stop penetration. An example: Felton shook free from Crawford and took a lob while moving down the left block. Biedrins slid across to take away the baseline, so Felton fed the ball to the now-uncovered Okafor.

It’s a play that Warriors fans have seen time and again all season long, ending in a layup or dunk. Except this time, Turiaf came off his man and delivered a block on Okafor.

The other thing that made the Turiaf-Biedrins pairing a success was the work of Azubuike. Three times, he left his man at the 3-point line to come down and latch onto defensive boards during the stretch, as opposed to busting it downcourt and assuming that Turiaf or Biedrins was going to come up with the ball.

To me, that’s a sign of progress. The Warriors are not going to outrun anyone, not in their present Monta-less state (in fact, the only fast-break points of the 23 came when Azubuike ducked down for a board and then drove the length of the court before getting fouled by Wallace at the rim). It’s better for them to plug the gaping hole in terms of second-chance points than try to prop up a fast break that’s on life support.

We’ll see, moving forward, if Nelson agrees.

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

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

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

OAKLAND — There was plenty to make a Warriors fan giddy Wednesday at the Arena, what with seven Golden State players reaching double figures for the second straight game, the ball zipping around the floor, an improved performance on the defensive glass and the grand opening of Marco Belinelli’s Trick Shot Emporium.

What might have been the most impressive, however, was also the most basic.

The pick-and-roll, and its multitude of permutations, is a bedrock piece of every team’s arsenal. And in their 119-96 victory over the Milwaukee Bucks, the Warriors showed off a renewed ability to run their pick-and-roll sets with aplomb.

Golden State put up 11 points in the first 3 1/2 minutes of the second quarter, a span of seven possessions in which they ran some form of the two-man game on each occasion.

What made it interesting was the diversity of pairings the Warriors used. This wasn’t simply the Stephen Jackson-Andris Biedrins tandem that has become a focal point of opposition scouting reports.

Instead, you had Jackson in the opposite role, setting picks for Jamal Crawford, who zinged passes to Jackson for consecutive layups against the defensive tandem of Ramon Sessions and Luc Mbah a Moute.

Then it was Anthony Morrow using the looming presence of Ronny Turiaf to free himself for a wing jumper. Turiaf was repaid the next time down, when Jackson took a turn as ballhandler and spoon-fed him a bucket.

Finally, it was Crawford and Turiaf working together. After the first, ill-advised pass — a looping lob into a lane packed with three Bucks — was stolen, Crawford came right back with an adjustment. As the Bucks once again had the angle to Turiaf covered, Crawford, who was heading towards the right wing, smartly fed the ball back to Jackson at the top of the key, and the captain whipped it down the wide-open lane to Turiaf for a pair of free throws.

The run of screen-rolls ended when the Warriors had a fast-break opportunity that led to a missed jumper for Morrow, and it was truly over when Kelenna Azubuike took the ball at the top of the key the next time downcourt and went on a solo drive to nowhere.

“The films that we watch, we thought that was a good area for us to attack,” Warriors coach Don Nelson said.

Even Belinelli got into the act. Two of his most circusy shots in his 11-point fourth quarter came off pick-and-rolls with Turiaf: First, the 16-footer while fading at a 90-degree angle to the basket from the right wing; then, after Charlie Villanueva tried to pick him up on a switch, Belinelli blew past him to the baseline and fired up the high-arcing 5-footer from behind that backboard that’s already making the rounds on YouTube.

“The Italian Larry Bird, that’s what we were calling him,” Jackson crowed.

Notes
Credit where it’s due: After five games with at least one inbounding disaster, the Warriors had two nice buckets on wide-open shots — a layup from C.J. Watson with the shot clock running down and a 17-foot jumper for Morrow — from sold inbounds plays. . . . According to the official heights and weights, Andrew Bogut was the biggest guy on the floor, at 7-foot and 260 pounds. He did OK using his robotic moves in the paint against Biedrins, but when he was matched up the much smaller Jackson, he was totally flummoxed as to how to take advantage of the situation. . . . With Earl Boykins playing in Italy, Luke Ridnour may be the only guy left in the league that Watson can post up.

The Lineup Project
With a 31-9 run to open the fourth quarter, the smalls clearly were the way to go. Milwaukee, which started small (Mbah a Moute opened at PF), could not make Golden State pay by going big, since the Bucks’ version of going big was to play Villanueva at PF. And that won’t scare anybody in this league.

Lineup GSW MIL Time
Large N/A N/A 0:00
Turiaf-Biedrins 11 13 4:28
Medium 13 11 6:49
Small 95 72 36:43

Without Monta . . .
A win was expected and a win was had. The Warriors remain on pace for a 7-19 start without the suspended Monta Ellis, however, because the prediction is for a four-game losing streak beginning Friday against Houston. That will be a litmus test for the Warriors’ new European-style offense.

Contact: geofflepper@48mintues.net

The Warriors’ vaunted fast break, such an integral part of their combined 90 wins in the past two seasons, has been significantly throttled back this season.

Golden State is averaging 17.0 FB points per game and allowing 14.5, a difference of 2.4; I can’t find last year’s team FB stats online, but the 2006-07 numbers, with Don Nelson at the helm, had the Warriors ranked No. 1 at 20.4 FB points for and 13.4 against, with a delta of 7.1 ppg. (A thank you to 82games.com for making the data available.)

I’m fairly certain (insert sarcasm alert) Monta Ellis helped kick those ’06-’07 numbers even higher last season with the one-man sprints that would often lead to wide-open layups off the long yet still accurate outlet passes of Baron Davis or Matt Barnes.

But even using the 4.7 ppg difference between the fast break net of this year versus ’06-’07 shows how critical the stat can be for the Warriors; since Golden State has already lost five games by 5 points or less, flipping those decisions would gave the Warriors an 11-10 record heading into their game Wednesday against the Milwaukee Bucks instead of being 6-15.

The question is, how much will Ellis, assuming he returns at full strength sometime in January, really be able to kick-start that aspect of the Warriors’ attack?

“We’ll have a faster push up the floor, that’s the obvious part,” Nelson said. “So it’s not going to hurt, that’s for sure.”

In the meantime, Nelson would like to see his current team do a better job than they have at pushing the pace, singling out second-year guard C.J. Watson as an example.

“C.J. is capable of pushing it better than he has,” Nelson said. “What he’s doing too much is waiting for his players to run, and he needs to not worry about them. He needs to get it to the foul line, and then make some decisions. And we talked to him about that.”

Statistical oddities
In the 82games.com data from ’06-’07, a team with an advantage of 11 or more fast break points won its game 67.7 percent of the time; the Warriors were 24-9 in such situations (72.7) and 0-2 when outscored by 11 or more in transition.

This year, the Warriors overcame a 27-9 fast break deficit (in beating Denver 111-101), and are only 1-2 when posting their own 11-plus difference, with the win coming against Portland (111-106, 22-9 on the break) and losses versus Chicago (110-115, 28-17) and in Philadelphia (81-89, 15-0).

– Geoff