By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

Baron Davis going off for 25 points against his most recent former team is shockingly predictable.

Eric Gordon going off for 27 points against the same squad is just plain shocking.

The Warriors’ 118-105 loss to the Clippers on Monday was, to my recollection, one of the Warriors’ worst performances of the season in terms of simply losing vision and letting guys run free on the perimeter. Rock-bottom in that category for Golden State was the 119-114 loss in Utah on Dec. 5, when Ronnie Brewer and C.J. Miles just kept slipping away from the Warriors’ Club Fed-style defensive presence and scoring uncontested layups.

When Davis hits a step-back 26-footer, or banks in a triple, there isn’t much to be done about that. You shrug your shoulders and move on. But what Gordon did to the Warriors – 27 points, five assists, seven rebounds – can’t be so casually explained away.

Read the rest of this entry…

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…

Just a quick note about Anthony Morrow as we await his chance to prove Saturday’s game wasn’t just a one-hit wonder of the highest NBA order.

In what I would like to call an “homage” to Kevin Pelton over at Basketball Prospectus (and don’t send me notes about how I’m ripping off ideas, since Kevin imported the original concept from Michael David Smith over at Fanhouse), I thought I’d dissect Morrow’s entire 37-point barrage against the Clippers, to try and glean if that performance will translate against a team that’s not on pace to go 8-74.

Type of play Points
Catch and shoot 14
Pull-up jumper 10
Layup off cut/fast break 6
Turnaround jumper 4
Driving layup 3
Tap in 2

(Yes, this totals 39, not 37, because there was one play where Kelenna Azubuike delivered the ball to Morrow on the baseline while he was facing away from the hoop. Morrow then wheeled and fired, all in the same motion, so I put it under “Catch and shoot” and “Turnaround jumper”. Also, I included a made free throw in the category that led to the FT — i.e., the one “Driving layup” was a three-point play.)

The catch-and-shoots coming off kick-out passes are no surprise given the range, accuracy and touch on Morrow’s jumper. (The Clippers’ inability to close out: Also no surprise, given the roster, the lack of motivation and the record.)

But Morrow’s ability to put the ball on the deck and get to an empty spot on the floor (such as when he ran Ricky Davis off a screen and popped up for two on the other side), up-fake his defender out of the way (as he did to Al Thornton) or just blow by someone with a swift change of direction (so long, Baron Davis) was very impressive.

One thing that really struck me was how many possessions Morrow was just a decoy, patrolling a station in either corner or in 3-point territory on the wings. Stephen Jackson mentioned at practice Monday how helpful that threat is:

“As you see, by him being able to shoot and score, that opened up the floor so much for us, as far as Corey (Maggette) getting isos playing the 4. Me and (Andris Biedrins), when we pick-and-roll, the floor’s wide open now. It helped us in a lot of aspects of our game.”

In other areas . . .

Morrow’s 11 rebounds are probably going to be tougher to duplicate than the 37…

So, I trekked out to Stockton last night planning to sit down with Baron Davis before his Clippers played the Kings and discuss a few items, namely: how things are going with his new team, the departure from his former employer and his reaction to Monta Ellis’ remake of “Quadrophenia.”

Then I got to University of the Pacific and found out he’d bagged on the trip to stay home because of the flu.

That means you’ll be getting a story on the Kings and rookie forward Jason Thompson — the would-be Warrior, if you believe all the pre-draft talk — a little later today. But in the interim, some random thoughts from the Clippers’ 116-112 comeback win in the Spanos Center:

** Without Ellis, the Warriors are going to be hard-pressed to check Kings star Kevin Martin, who darted all over the floor en route to an extremely efficient 29 points (9-11 FG, 2-3 3FG, 9-12 FT). I like DeMarcus Nelson’s defense an awful lot, but I’m not positive he’s got the quickness to chase down Martin.

** Martin barely played in the second half (5:42) and not at all over the final 18 minutes, when the Clippers outscored the Kings, 55-34. Sacramento coach Reggie Theus rightly declined to bring a cold Martin back into the game to try and secure a meaningless victory, but it was kind of shocking to see how fast things slipped away from the Kings’ second unit.

** It would have been nice if Clippers rookie Eric Gordon would have passed the ball ONCE at some point during the proceedings (24 shots, zero assists). That being said, he proved he can fill it up in a hurry, with 21 fourth-quarter points and 33 on the night.

“The play sets we were running were designed to get him shots, because he had the hot hand, and we go with whoever’s got the hot hand,” Clippers coach Mike Dunleavy said. “You know, he’s been injured for us, so he’s only had about three practices. Guys were joking around in practice when he was blowing by people; ‘Well, it should be like that. He’s been off for two weeks. He’s got fresh legs.’ I don’t think that’s going to be the case (anymore). He’s really talented, he’s great off the dribble, he gets to the free-throw line and he makes 3s. And he’s a good defender. We were dying to get him in the…