48minutes.net

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

It’s looking more and more like the Warriors are going to, once again, end up disintegrating into a cloud of debris.

If, as ESPN’s Chris Broussard says, coach Don Nelson told rookie forward Anthony Randolph to have his agent explore potential trades, then things have come unglued to a point that would probably be unprecedented in franchise history . . . if only this franchise wasn’t the Warriors.

Is Broussard’s report accurate? I don’t know. Can I see Nelson saying something like that to Randolph? Absolutely. Without question. When Nellie gets down on a player — consistently down, not just for a two-week stretch of juggling the rotation or somesuch — it’s pretty much impossible to dig yourself out of that hole.

I had an interesting conversation recently with a Nelson confidant about the Warriors’ pick in this year’s draft. This person said that Nelson’s much-hyped interest in Jason Thompson — so well-hyped that it seemed it could only be a smokescreen — was very, very real. In fact, Nelson had to be talked down from Thompson and into Randolph by Chris Mullin and others in the days leading up to the draft.

In retrospect, I can see why Nelson was so much more interested in Thompson, who was taken by the Kings with the No. 12 selection. Thompson doesn’t have the 3-point range that Al Harrington offered, but he has a decent enough mid-range jumper and was ready to go after four years at Rider — meaning that having Thompson on board would have made it that much easier to trade Harrington before the season began.

It also helps to explain why Nelson — again, assuming Broussard’s reporting is correct — can so cavalierly toss aside the No. 14 pick in Randolph.

That being said, it’s one thing for the coach to decide he has no use for a player. But when that coach makes it so patently obvious to all other clubs, how you possibly get decent value? Nelson’s unbridled disdain for Marcus Williams has made it such that the Warriors can’t even sell him off for 50 cents on the dollar.

Given that fact, why shop Randolph now? Why not give him some playing time and showcase him this month before trying to dump him? Why not wait until the summer, let him put up some big numbers in Vegas and build back some stock? It just makes no sense.

I’ve said it before in this space: The best move the Warriors have made in the second Nelson era — the eight-player trade with Indiana — was born of three competing desires all landing on the same deal. There was team president Robert Rowell, looking to regain lost flexibility under the salary cap. There was Nelson, delivering a harsh truth about the games of two former centerpieces of the roster, Troy Murphy and Mike Dunleavy. And there was Mullin, who had been coveting Harrington for years and finally took advantage of the Pacers’ angst to get him — and added the guy who turned out to be the best player in the deal, Stephen Jackson.

Now that Mullin has been marginalized, Pete D’Alessandro whacked and nobody left to rein Nelson in other than Rowell, it’s unclear where this team is going. But it sure seems likely it’s going to be in pieces before its arrival.

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 — That the Warriors were repeatedly gashed by Orlando’s pick-and-roll play in the Magic’s 109-98 victory Monday should have come as no shock. Golden State hasn’t defended the play well for most, if not all, of this season — most famously in the David Lee/Chris Duhon massacre at Madison Square Garden — and even with Dwight Howard out, Jameer Nelson was just too savvy for the Warriors to handle.

What did raise eyebrows was the way coach Don Nelson called out center Andris Biedrins for his handling of those plays.

“Screen-and-roll’s been very difficult for us,” Nelson said. “(Ronny) Turiaf handles it better than Goose and he’s just really struggled this year to keep guards in front of him, on the blitzes. They split him. We try about everything we can try to help him out. And then when they have 3-point shooters, it takes your weakside help away, so then they hurt you with the roll man, and (if) you cover that, then they have the 3-point shot open.

So, I asked, has Andris regressed this year on the screen-and-roll?

“Um, you know, I’m not sure. I think we had more veterans around him a year ago and they helped cover some of his issues,” Nelson said. “We were bigger and quicker and had more years under our belt. Now he’s more exposed. There’s other mistakes that happen and guys aren’t where they’re supposed to be and they’re not used to different coverages. So it’s harder on everybody.”

I thought therefore that I’d take a look at the Magic’s screen-roll usage and see what we could glean from that data.

Orlando used S/Rs against the Warriors’ man-to-man defense on 66 occasions, scoring a total of 50 points on 22-for-39 shooting (6-for-11 3-pointers). The rest of the time either resulted in a turnover, a loose-ball foul on the Warriors or, most likely, a pass to another player who reset the offense or worked one-on-one.

Of those 66 times, Biedrins was guarding the big man in 38 instances, typically Marcin Gortat, who was subbing for Howard. Turiaf got called upon 14 times, mostly versus Tony Battie. And Stephen Jackson pulled big duty 14 times, usually when Rashard Lewis was the screener.

Turiaf fared the best, allowing just four points in his 14 possessions (2-for-4 FG) and nabbing a steal with some quick hands. Those figures may also have something to do with Battie’s pretty severe limitations offensively, but give credit where it’s due — Turiaf kept the Magic ball-handlers from finding a third player to get involved.

Jackson didn’t do as well, allowing nine points (4-7 FG, 1-2 3FG) in 14 attacks, although he was most often facing the Magic’s top two available players in the form of Lewis and Jameer Nelson.

Biedrins, meanwhile, was the worst of the three, giving up 37 points in his 38 plays (16-28 FG, 5-9 3FG). The worst aspect, as Don Nelson pointed out, was the number of secondary looks for players not involved in the original pick-and-roll; giving up weakside help on the rolling big man opens up 3-point shooters on secondary looks, and the Magic went 5-for-8 on those type of shots (3-for-6 on treys) with Biedrins in the game.

Biedrins often left the screener open to chase the ball, but then failed to impede the ball-handler in any significant way. This puts way too much stress on a Warriors defense that is already stretched thin due to a lack of quality on-ball defenders.

And given the Warriors’ multitude of other problems, it’s too much to overcome.

Notes
** After Jackson’s 3-for-14 night, I’ll reiterate: Doing without Jackson entirely for five games is better than having him play as a shell of himself for 15, assuming it will make him healthy after the layoff. The Warriors very easily could go 1-4 or even 0-5 on this trip even with a half-strength Jackson. Why not use that time more effectively?

** On that same topic: Don Nelson dropped the ball in essentially abdicating responsibility when it comes to Jackson (“He thinks he can play on, so . . . It’s totally up to him.”). Jackson, for his part, said that he’ll play until his teammates tell him not to, but really, what guy in that locker room has the cred to pull him aside for that conversation?

I can just imagine the death stare locked onto Anthony Randolph as he tries to get through that speech. (“You’re 13-for-64 in your last five games. That’s . . . even worse than my shooting percentage.”)

There are three guys who might fit the bill, but they’re all disqualified either because they’re hurt (Monta Ellis), just arrived (Jamal Crawford) or both (Corey Maggette).

** There may be more passing in the Warriors’ new offensive focus, but it often seems like passing for passing’s sake, the NBA equivalent of moving deck chairs on the Titanic. The extra ball movement needs to lead to players being put in a position to score more easily, or else they might as well go back to isolation & stagnation as a game plan.

** Who would’ve thought that the play of Gortat (10 points, eight rebounds at intermission) would make folks pine for a halftime recovery by Howard?

** Jameer Nelson obviously had his way with the Warriors defense, but in a sad state of affairs, Magic rookie Courtney Lee (6-8 FG, 2-2 3FG, 2 S, 2 A, 0 TO) also easily outclassed every member of the Warriors’ backcourt. Lee’s night was summed up by a sequence late in the third quarter when he first raced across the court on a rotation to keep Turiaf from getting a clean look at a jumper from the left elbow. Then he spun on a dime and got back to his own cover, Kelenna Azubuike, in time to snatch up Marco Belinelli’s pass and draw a clear-path foul.

** The Warriors have until Thursday morning to either make an unbalanced trade or cut loose a player to make room for Monta Ellis coming off of the suspended list. A team source said the organization will be choosing from three possible plans of action, and confirmed the obvious: Cutting loose third-year guard Marcus Williams — who likely will cost the Warriors a first-round pick in a future draft — is one of the three options.

The Lineup Project
I’ll just let Don Nelson state his case:

“Well, it was a small man’s game tonight, the way we figured it. And our small team had to really play well. And their small team outplayed us, that’s all. . . . That’s been my problem, when we go small, the other team’s small team is often better. Makes it kind of a difficult time. But I think it was a match-up that we had to do. We had to go small. I don’t think any of our bigs could’ve guarded their front line-up.”

They couldn’t have been any worse than what you had, Don.

Lineup GS OPP Time
Large 0 0 0:00
Turiaf-Biedrins 0 0 0:00
Medium 31 32 12:00
Small 67 77 36:00

Without Monta. . .
The Warriors are 7-18 with one game to go before Ellis is off suspension. I think somewhere around Jan. 15 is the most realistic return date. Whenever Ellis does come back, it seems clear it will be to a team that is significantly below .500.

Contact: geofflepper@48minutes.net

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

At a Warriors practice last week, Golden State captain Stephen Jackson stood on the sideline talked for roughly 10 minutes with team president Robert Rowell and minority owner Michael Marks.

I have no idea what the gist of the conversation was, but Rowell needs to have another meeting with Jackson, with one simple message:

Sit down until you’re healthy.

Like Oscar De La Hoya’s cornermen after watching him get pummeled for eight rounds at the hands of Manny Pacquiao last week, someone has to step in and say it, because Jackson refuses to admit what’s obvious to everyone — that his injured left hand is crippling his effectiveness on the floor right now.

Jackson showed reporters this week how his middle finger is misaligned, and said that the ligaments had been pushed out of place when he originally incurred the injury against Boston on Nov. 26 (his hand got caught in a Celtic’s jersey as Jackson tried to fight through a screen). Nevertheless, he steadfastly refuses to ask off the floor in games, even after he takes a shot and can clearly be seen between plays rubbing the hand to try and ease the pain.

The team has not given any indication that Jackson needs anything other than rest to get better. If that’s the case, then the rest should start immediately.

Jackson was 1-for-13 from the floor in the Warriors’ 123-105 loss to the Nuggets on Saturday. Teams are overplaying his right hand now, knowing that he can’t get anything going on a dribble with his left.

That’s bad enough, but let’s be honest: Even if Jackson had been playing at his 2007-08 level against the Nuggets on Saturday, does anyone really think that would have turned the tide? On a night where Don Nelson’s top three possibilities at power forward — Corey Maggette, Brandan Wright and Ronny Turiaf — are all off the floor? Maybe an 18-point defeat becomes an eight-point margin. But there’s not much more to it than that.

The only way the Warriors are going to make the playoffs — assuming you’re not joining the Tank Brigade after a quarter of the season — is if they win a stunning proportion of the games once Monta Ellis comes back. We’re talking a 65, 70, 75 percent proportion.

Running Jackson out for 31 minutes on back-to-back nights in games where the Warriors already have next to no hope because of their myriad other injuries is time he could be spending recovering. And getting ready so that when Ellis returns, it’s with a full-strength Jackson alongside.

Notes
Jamal Crawford may or may not be the reason why the Warriors’ defense went from “merely poor” to “catastrophically bad” in the past few weeks. But there’s no reason whatsoever why he should stand around near halfcourt and watch, dumbstruck, while Kenyon Martin streaks past him to set up a breakaway dunk after Chauncey Billups collects a missed 3-pointer and launches a lead pass. At least give an effort. Act like you care. . . . I’m going to search through the tape later today with an eye on Rob Kurz’s performance. I will stipulate that he was one of only two Warriors that could hit any kind of shot, but this no-mistake defense I keep hearing about was belied by two plays that jumped out on the first viewing: Kurz got pushed down the lane by Nene on the very first play of the game, which allowed Kurz’s cover, Martin, to cram home a dunk. (Thankfully, Kurz turned away at the last second, otherwise Martin would’ve given him the full Frederic Weis treatment.) Then, 90 seconds into the second half, Kurz came from the right block all the way across the lane to try to provide C.J. Watson help covering Anthony on the left wing. Except all that did was leave Martin open to tap home Anthony’s alley-oop pass. . . . Given that he couldn’t even get into a 25-point blowout until the final 3:02, it’s pretty clear that third-year guard Marcus Williams is the leader in the clubhouse in terms of being the player the Warriors to shed after Monta Ellis’ suspension ends on Dec. 17. Barring a very poor showing by DeMarcus Nelson on Wednesday while he fills in for Watson (who will be attending a family funeral), the only question would seem to be whether the Warriors can salvage a second-round pick for Williams, or just have to cut him loose with no compensation at all. . . . Anthony Morrow needs to learn to stay home when matched up with a 3-point gunner such as J.R. Smith.

The Lineup Project
Once again, no real chance to go big without Turiaf and Wright in the building.

Lineup               GS      DEN      Time
Large                   0        0          0:00
Turiaf-Biedrins      0         0          0:00
Medium               41       49        18:56
Small                  64      74         29:04

Here’s a season-long update, per 48 minutes

Lineup                GS      OPP      +/-
Large                   99.7     92.5      +7.2
Turiaf-Biedrins      107.1    97.4      +9.7
Medium               103.6    109.6    -6.0
Small                  107.3    116.6    -9.3

Without Monta. . .
7-19, here they come. Only two games remain, and both of them, like the Denver game, were predicted to be defeats.

Contact: geofflepper@48minutes.net

By Geoff Lepper
48minutes.net

My take hasn’t changed from what I wrote several weeks ago on the subject of Stephen Jackson’s extension with the Warriors, which after weeks in the works was finally signed Monday.

In terms of pure production, Jackson deserves to be the highest-paid player on this team (or perhaps second-highest, if Monta Ellis had kept himself healthy). It’s almost an insult that he’s slated to pull down the fifth-highest salary this season behind Ellis, Al Harrington, Andris Biedrins and Corey Maggette.

But by extending Jackson now, the Warriors are tossing aside their previously iron-clad rules of dealing with a player only when the team has used up all of its possible leverage. I’ll be fascinated to hear the explanation for this exception, if any is forthcoming on the matter.

One interesting note: Jackson told me a couple weeks back that he wasn’t asking for the max, but the reported numbers — three years for $28 million — don’t reflect any money left on the table. The most the Warriors are allowed to give Jackson under the Collective Bargaining Agreement is $27.8 million — $8.45 million in 2010-11, $9.26 million in 2011-12 and $10.06 million in 2012-13.

Outside of the reasoning for why the Warriors would break with their own philosophy, here’s the biggest question: How will the signing impact the Warriors in the summer of 2010, when a whole raft of top-notch free agents is scheduled to flood the market?

There is no real hope that a player with the stature of LeBron James will be willing to come to Oakland when the lights of New York are beckoning to him. But having maneuverability in that timeframe — when teams will potentially be looking to offload players in order to make a run at UFAs such as Paul Pierce, Jason Richardson, Josh Howard, Dirk Nowitzki, Tayshaun Prince, Yao Ming, Kobe Bryant, Michael Redd, Amare Stoudemire, Tony Parker, Chris Bosh or Caron Butler — would afford a franchise the opportunity to recast its core, if that was deemed necessary.

With Jackson in the fold, the Warriors are set to spend $51.5 million in 2010-11 for an eight-man core of Jackson, Ellis, Biedrins, Maggette, Kelenna Azubuike, Ronny Turiaf, Brandan Wright and Anthony Randolph.

Based on the trend line of the last few years, my guesstimate of the 2010-11 cap number would be roughly $64 million. (That’s assuming the league’s revenue total continues to ramp up, which is probably on the optimistic side of things, given the economy’s disastrous free fall).

That sounds like a fair amount of room, but it’s really not. To start with, it doesn’t include several other possible expenditures, such as C.J. Watson (RFA in ’09), Anthony Morrow (RFA ’10), Marco Belinelli (potential team option for ’10-’11), Biedrins’ incentives, and a No. 1 pick from the ’09 draft (unless it goes to the Nets as payment for Marcus Williams).

Even if the Warriors cut all those extraneous guys loose and just went with their eight-man core, they still would need to spend probably $5 million filling out the remainder of the roster, leaving themselves $7.5 million, tops, under the cap.

Without Jackson, that figure would be $16 million or so.

Plenty of things can change between Nov. 17, 2008 and July 1, 2010. The Warriors could remake themselves in the meantime through a trade similar to the eight-player blockbuster that first brought Jackson to the Bay Area.

But if they keep this core together for another 19 months, signing Jackson now will probably preclude the Warriors from making a big splash later.

NOTES: Jackson got poked in the left eye during the Clippers game on Saturday, but reported no damage. It’s the second time he’s been hit there this season; he also took a shot in the open practice three weeks ago.

“This eye’s been having a bad season so far,” Jackson said. “But as long as I can see out of it, I’m happy about it.”

So, you’re not going to go for a James Worthy goggle look?

“No goggles, no,” Jackson said, shaking his head to punctuate his point. “No-no-no-no. Never that, never that. No. I’m not going to be like Rip Hamilton, where my nose was broken eight years ago and I still wear a mask. I’m not going to do that. The only way I’ll wear a patch is if my eye’s closed and the doctors say (it’s necessary). I’m not going to no nothing. I’d rather stay with Captain Jack than Pirate Jack.”

Contact: geofflepper@48minutes.net