By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

OAKLAND — In 568 career NBA games, Warriors guard Jamal Crawford has only gotten to five fouls on 16 occasions. He has not fouled out once.

Keith Smart, Golden State’s defensive coordinator, doesn’t see those facts in a positive light.

“If you don’t get in foul trouble, there’s a reason,” Smart said. “You’re probably not close enough to get a foul. So we’ve got to get him thinking about those things.”

Crawford is thinking about it. He’s an avid film watcher, and Smart has used those sessions to point out Crawford’s flaws on D since his arrival in November.

“I definitely could get better,” Crawford said when asked if he was playing up to his potential defensively. “I think my whole overall game could get better, though. I think that I could be a better player. And that’s the way I work, what I’m striving towards.”

Read the rest of this entry. . .

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

SACRAMENTO — Stephen Jackson realized a while ago that there’s a very basic problem at the heart of the Warriors’ struggles so far this season.

“Guys are going to have to understand that I can’t be the only guy out there making plays for other guys to get open shots,” Jackson said on Wednesday. “Everybody has to be accountable for that. And that’s what was a big part of our success last year. Baron (Davis) got guys open shots. Monta (Ellis) got guys open shots. I got guys open shots. Right now, it’s just me getting guys open shots. So until we figure out that everybody has to try to make the extra pass or worry about making a play for somebody else, then we’re going to be in the same position.”

Despite a change in location, the Warriors found themselves back in that same position Sunday. With Jackson effectively removed from the game by aggressive, early double-teaming from the Kings, Golden State’s offense once again fizzled, and Sacramento ran away with a 115-98 victory.

“We would expect that that’s going to happen,” said Warriors coach Don Nelson, who admitted that he “packed it in” after three quarters with his team trailing by 16 points. “When you’re limited as far as your star players go, that’s a pretty smart thing (for an opponent) to do, don’t you think?”

So what can you do in response?

“Then somebody else has to step up. It’s his job to make the proper pass, not try to fight it. And it’s up to the other players then to deliver.”

In that case, go ahead and rename them the Golden State Postal Service, because there were no deliveries made Sunday. C.J. Watson and DeMarcus Nelson combined for five assists and four turnovers in 51 minutes. (Marcus Williams had three assists and no TOs in 9 minutes’ worth of garbage time.)

The Warriors shot 41.1 percent, and even the shots they made had a much higher degree of difficulty than the open layups that Kings such as Kevin Martin (27 points before a third-quarter spill knocked him out for the evening.

“I think we just need to share the ball more,” said center Andris Biedrins, who had the team’s second-highest assist total with four. “We always just do one pass and shoot. You don’t really need to be a playmaker to get somebody open. Just drive, pass it out, next pass and…

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

STOCKTON — Prior to the NBA draft in June, the rumor mill was consistently churning out talk that Rider big man Jason Thompson would wind up playing an up-tempo style in Northern California.

But that was supposed to happen in Oakland, not Sacramento.

At 6-foot-11 and 250 pounds, Thompson had the size the Warriors lacked. And as a do-everything star for the Rider Broncos of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference, Thompson showed the versatility — and range on his jump shot — that seemed to make him a natural big man for Don Nelson’s system.

Except the Kings stepped in at No. 12 and snatched him up, two spots before the Warriors. The Warriors, who were giddy about the prospect of having LSU’s Anthony Randolph drop to them at No. 14, did nothing to dissuade the impression that their interest in Thompson was meant to drive up his value and help them acquire Randolph.

But even though the 19-year-old Randolph may be the better player when both their careers are done, there’s no doubt that Thompson, 22, is the one who will contribute immediately to his NBA team.

“He’s been very good,” Kings coach Reggie Theus said. “He’s learning a lot, he can play multiple positions. I think he’s exactly what we thought he would be.”

Thompson said he wasn’t fazed by all the pre-draft talk.

“There’s always going to be rumors, but I just stayed focused,” Thompson said. “It would have been a great opportunity anywhere I went. I kind of had that up and down style, and people said I would fit in (with the Warriors), but we do the same thing here. Once we get the rebound, we’re out.”

This is a drastic change for a Kings team that had long been dominated by half-court specialists such as Mike Bibby and then Ron Artest. But with Bibby in Atlanta, Artest in Houston and a remaining roster devoid of significant post-up threats, Theus decided to dip back into his own history as a player, as chronicled by the Sacramento Bee, and speed things up a notch or three.

There were elements on display Wednesday against the Clippers that would be familiar to any Warriors fan: Fast breaks after made buckets by the opposition, big men dribbling the ball upcourt, a constant search for runners leaking out ahead of the defense for easy points.

“It’s a way I like to play, but it’s more (about) personnel,” Theus…

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…