By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

I know it’s way late, but I did want to collate the collective analysis of the end of the Stephen Jackson Era in Oakland and have it in one handy place.

I never did get a chance to write any lengthy analysis, but I think, from listening to all of Larry Riley’s comments on Monday, that Jackson finally broke the Warriors’ back with his quotes after the Brandon Jennings Explosion™ on Saturday.

It was a bad enough look when Jack praised himself for not getting T’d up during the Clippers’ road beatdown of the Warriors, which made it clear that he cared not one iota for what happened to the team on the floor.

But in the aftermath of the Bucks’ 129-125 win, Jackson let loose with both barrels.

First up was coach Don Nelson’s decision at the end of the game to call a play that involved Anthony Morrow, Corey Maggette and Monta Ellis all as options as the Warriors looked to tie the score. It wasn’t flat-out insubordinate, but it was sure coming close: “All I know is that I’m one of the best scorers on the team, and I was taking the ball out. That’s all I know. My job was to pass the ball inbounds. When you’re in the huddle at the end of the game, you pay attention to what you’re supposed to do. You don’t want to be the one who messes up. My job was to get the ball inbounds, and I did a great job.”

Then came what was, IMHO, the final straw — throwing his teammates under the bus for Jennings’ double-nickel performance: “Nobody has ever given me 55 points, and I didn’t get 55 points scored on me,” Jackson said. “Somebody has got to man up and take that 55, and I’m not going to take it. I wasn’t guarding him.”

That quote had to be especially galling because the Warriors have spent the better part of the last two years preaching about rotations and second and third efforts and all those team principles that Nelson and Keith Smart feel a team needs to become a good defensive unit. And Jackson, knowing all of that, just hung the young kids out to dry.

To me, that was the breaking point.

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…

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…