From my main man Johnnnnnnn Hollinger!

 

(insider) http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/trainingcamp08/insider/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&page=WarriorsObservations-081009

It's pretty short... interesting points on Nellie saying the point guard job is Watson's to lose, also they've been trying out Jax at the point.

Maggette has said he hasn't been asked to try the power forward spot once yet.

Nellie says that Rob Kurz has had a very strong camp? I've never heard of this guy.

Is it November 1st yet?

 

How about Harrington for Hinrich?

Hinrich is definitely on the block with the drafting of Rose. The Bulls have big guys like Joakim Noah, Tyrus Thomas, and Aaron Gray who are very limited offensively.

The Warriors are in need of a legitimate point guard. Also one of Hinrich's strengths is guarding bigger guards, so he would complement Monta nicely by allowing Monta to play the 2 on offense and guard the 1 on defense.

The players have very similar contracts for the next 2 years. The difference is that after 2 years Harrington's contract expires, while Hinrich will still have 2 more years. Still, Hinrich would come at a reasonable price, especially considering that his contract actually decreases from year to year.

(I have to admit I didn't come up with this idea myself - saw it in a John Hollinger article http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/columns/story?columnist=hollinger_john&page=FreeAgency-080703 It just made a lot of sense to me so thought I should post it)

     If Cassell agrees to a buyout, he is placed on waivers for a few days, so his return to Boston isn't guaranteed even if they are his number one choice. The Warriors have enough room under the luxury tax to claim him and not go over. link

     I'm not sure if getting Cassell would be too smart for the Warriors considering he'd be pretty pissed at us. What I don't get is why an Eastern conference team like the Cavs, Magic, or Pistons don't claim Cassell just to block him from the Celtics. Perhaps they don't want the negative publicity that would come with a move with such disregard for the player's wishes? Or they don't want to be seen as a franchise that doesn't care about the player since that might scare off free agents in the future?

I just saw that John Hollinger of espn.com thinks Baron is an all-star over Tony Parker, Deron Williams, Brandon Roy, and Iverson. Of course, he says himself that fan voting can result in unworthy players making the team and pushing out worthy players. Specifically, T-Mac is 2nd in fan voting right now at the guard spot. But most likely if T-Mac didn't get voted in he wouldn't be selected by the coaches because of all the injuries. Iverson and Nash are right behind T-Mac, so if we can vote in either one of them we'd greatly increase Baron's chances of making the all-star team.

So don't vote for Baron. Vote for Nash and Iverson!
Vote here: http://www.nba.com/allstar2008/asb/eng/landing.jsp?bid=NBA&mid=b_asb08

     Damon Stoudamire received a DNP-CD in the Grizzlies' last game, which was Mike Conley's first start. With the team's season going nowhere it looks like they'll look to give Conley heavy minutes. They also have Kevin Lowry and Juan Carlos Navarro to play the point.

Stoudamire's agent says that his client wants to be traded or released. Getting Stoudamire for cheap would be nice. The only possible problem I see is that Damon complained the first game he didn't play for the Grizzlies, and he might do the same if Nellie gives him some DNP-CDs, but perhaps he would be less quiet on a winning team?

I am loving the Warriors' offensive efficiency this season. Last night in the frenetic shootout against the Suns we somehow only turned it over 10 times, and on the year we are averaging just over 13 turnovers per game, good for 5th in the league. For as fast a pace as we play, 13 turnovers per game is excellent (last year we averaged 16). In fact, we currently lead the league in turnover ratio (Hollinger term - insider), which is the percentage of our possessions that end up in a turnover.

The player most responsbile for this statistic is of course Baron. He is averaging 8.9 assists and 2.8 turnovers for a great assist to turnover ratio of above 3:1. Big ups to the Beard for his inspired play this year. This will be a career year for him as long as his health permits.

Barnes also has put together a nice ast:to ratio of over 2.5:1. Monta and even Harrington deserve some mention as well as they are posting 2:1 ratios.

link: http://www.mercextra.com/blogs/kawakami/2007/10/24/chris-mullin-q-a-here-and-there-a-week-before-the-regular-season

In this interview, Mullin implies that to get KG we'd have to trade our whole team for Minnesota's whole team. If that was the case I can see why we didn't get KG, lol.

He also talks about all the guys on the last year of their contract, his developing reputation as a risk-taker, the starting lineup Nellie announced, and more.

Okay, I'm not one to get annoyed very easily, but this is something that really bothers me. George was quoted today in a Dallas newspaper as saying

"You also expect eventually teams aren't going to play so far over their heads. We have to help them do that."

For one thing, this common perception is not even true; we've been playing this well for the last month of the season. Even if it were true, it's just plain bad sportsmanship to disrespect your opponent like that. This is why Wade and Dirk feuded during the regular season - Dirk played down the Heat win, saying that the Mavs lost it more than the Heat won it. These guy are just sore losers, no matter what happens in this series.

I love Bill Simmons' (espn.com) articles, and I'm sure many of my fellow internet basketball geeks here love him too. In his recent MVP article where he ranks the MVP candidates, he ranks Stephen Jackson at 69. and says

Gave us a little bit of everything: He had the best off-court incident (allegedly getting hit by a car outside of a strip joint, then firing gunshots in the air); he has a legal trial that starts May 10 and could coincide with the second round of the playoffs if Golden State upsets Dallas (not out of the question); he caused the fading Pacers to make one of the worst deals of the decade because they were so desperate to dump him; he turned his career around by embracing NellieBall, even giving point guard a whirl for a few games (now that was a sight); and if that's not enough, the fact that he's living in Oakland doubles as the most dangerous running subplot in sports right now that doesn't involve Pacman Jones. I haven't been this excited since Tupac got out of jail.

I especially loved him terming the trade "one of the worst deals of the decade."

He also comments on the trade in Part 1 of this article. He ranks Troy Murphy and Mike Dunleavy together at number 287 and says

The lesson, as always: Anytime you're considering a six-player NBA trade in which you end up with both overpaid white guys in the deal ... you might want to rethink that baby.

Just thought y'all would enjoy this. It'd be funny if Simmons' opinion starts to become the general consensus, because at first all the experts seemed to think Indiana won the trade (of course how were they supposed to know they never watch our games anyways...)

Simmons isn't paid to be an NBA expert; he is paid to be entertaining to sports fans, but he is obsessed with the NBA so he pretty much is an expert

FYI he ranks Baron #30 and US, The Fans, #1, for having to deal with this crappy tank-fested regular season (the regular season wasn't so crappy for some of us fans however :) ) He ranks Nash at #2 over Nowitski #3 based on the argument that if you replaced Nash with another random great pg, the team would've imploded because of the adversity they faced with stupid "alpha-dog" battles between Amare and Marion and Boris eating too many croissants in the offseason. But Nash kept them together. With Dirk, you could've replaced him with another random great pg and the team would've had a similar record. That's his argument anyways. I'd vote for Dirk just because their record is too good to ignore. But I don't like the MVP award or any award (MIP...) with such loose guidelines on how one should vote

Aussie Warrior linked Tim Kawakami's Warriors blog in the diary Warriors too good, move to 7th and face Suns instead?

I was reading the comments below his blog and the second comment was very interesting:

D'Antonio has already come out and said that he owes it to the other teams to play the game vs the clippers as a regular game

I mean, did he really say this? Can anyone find it somewhere? If this is even somewhat true, it would be UNBELIEVABLY good for us. I'm a little skeptical because this guy called him D'Antonio though. "D'Antonio" really has no reason to play his starters, except for his conscience ("owes it to the other teams?")

OR one plausible theory: he would love to avoid having to play the Mavs, and he feels that the Warriors have a better chance of beating the Mavs than the Clips? It's possible, right?

For one thing, most experts think the Suns will cruise through the first round no matter who ends up as the seventh seed, so it's not like playing his starters this game will jeopardize his playoff chances significantly. He'll most likely have time to rest his starters after they win the first round in 4 or 5 games and wait for other series to finish.

Man how am I going to wait for Tuesday.

I know we didn't make it yet but we finally have control of our own destiny! psapdfaihdfpiadshdfpdiawodhfpasiodhf!
I used to hate the Kings so much!
adhsfpaosdhioapsdogihapsoihdpoihadspoi!

!!

!

psdioahaiodshgpanods!

I'm so excited I'm speechless obviously!

I'm going to every game I don't care where in the United States it is played!

We have a game against the Timberwolves left. Why is this good, besides the fact that the Timberwolves are probably worse than us? The Wolves have to give up their pick to the Clips if it's not in the top 10, and right now they sit right at the 10th worst record. They have a history of tanking games when they need to, as well: in the final game of last season, Mark Madsen shot 1 for 15 from the field, including 0 for 7 from behind the arc. Those 7 3ptrs attempted also happened to be his only 3ptrs attempted for the entire season.

Am I allowed to make an official game thread? Or is this unofficial? Anyways, Sleepy hasn't had any luck with games when he makes the game thread, so I thought I'd try to change the luck up.

Preview from NBA.com: http://www.nba.com/games/20070403/DENLAL/preview.html

If you don't feel like reading the article they talk about Kobe alot. They then get a quote from Melo about him not liking their place in the standings, then they talk about Kobe again.

We need Denver and LAC to start losing, and start losing soon, since the season is rapidly finishing. It's debatable which one of our competitors is most likely to fall - you can check out the schedules in twelve years' diary: http://www.goldenstateofmind.com/story/2007/4/3/03042/76717
Denver has a tougher schedule than the Clips, but Denver is probably more talented. Also, assuming we do make up 2 games on the Clips, there's a reasonable chance that we will get the tie-break from them, as Sleepy points out:
http://www.goldenstateofmind.com/comments/2007/4/2/172918/1441/3#3
Dubs have the easiest schedule of the three, but they're still playing catch up. It should be an exciting finish to the season. The fact that we're even associating the P-word with the Dubs in a non-sarcastic manner at this point in the season is amazing already.

Warriors fans, whether Kobe lover or hater (there's no in-between), we're all rooting for Kobe tonight!

Vegas Odds: Lakers by 3.5

Predictions:
Lakers by 10
Kobe drops 41 with 1 assist
AI drops 26 with 9 assists
Melo gets at least 3 charges on 3-on-1 fast breaks, but ends up with 32
Camby gets 12 points, 15 boards, 6 assists, 3 steals, and 5 blocks and makes me want to kill myself for trading him for D Wade in fantasy bball

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2810487

Monta took the blame for the 2nd T. I believe him too, because I don't really know why he'd lie about it after the fact. Man, I hate refs. And I think Matt Stymitech or whatever at halftime said that before the game Jax was talking about how important it is to avoid getting ejected from games because the team needs him.

The Jam are playing right now. As I'm typing this he just threw down a nasty oop. Own those guys that aren't good enough for the NBA Patty-O! Show'em what it's like to play against an NBA lottery pick! The other team is starting one J. Richardson, Jason's illegitimate younger brother Jeremey. Hmm Patty O got 2 fouls in the first 3 minutes and just got subbed out. Too bad, he was at least their #3 option on offense Woah, the Jam have Patty-O, Mateen Cleaves, AND Gerry McNamara. Plus a guy with the first name of Scooter that dropped 48 last game. Stacked!

We all knew this was inevitable. Personally, I always liked Troy Murphy. He worked hard in the off-season to improve his game, which to me is all we can ask of a player. Anyways I was just reading an NBA chat on ESPN.com and a Pacers fan asks this question:
Gerald: (Indy): ESPN UPDATE: Mike Dunleavy and Troy Murphy are tied for the most useless player award.  

David Thorpe then answers Have you seen Jason Collins play? Must be something about the Bay...

If anyone has any links to Pacers blogs I bet they'd be funny

Link: http://proxy.espn.go.com/chat/chatESPN?event_id=15058

Okay I only know this from reading the game thread. I just find it weird because Mavs had won 17 in a row - seems like an odd game to choose for them to lose. Could anyone that saw the show say the basis behind his prediction? Just curious...

Need more words... ever find the commercials for these sports day-time-talk-shows weird? They still run normal ads for cars and stuff, but the show's running at like 3pm. The only people that are watching this show are old people and college students. They should just have cheap beer and viagra commercials nonstop. Okay, see now this pointless word limit has me talking about cheap beer and viagra in the same sentence.

If you guys don't know it, Ronnie Nunn is a former ref and I think he is now the head of officials or whatever they call it. He does this 30 min. show on NBAtv called Making the Call with Ronnie Nunn, where they go over borderline calls of the past week and he explains why a call went a certain way. Of course, usually he defends the call that was actually made when it comes down to a judgement call, but if a call was wrong he will say it. He will no doubt have to go over the crazy finish in the Wizards game, so it will be interesting to see what is said (airs on NBAtv at 6pm here in Texas, so  4 for most of u guys)

For those who don't know he's one of the main contributors to the NBA section of ESPN.com. This was a question asked to him during a live chat. He's basically impartial except for the fact he might want to defend his preseason prediction, but I feel his real main point was that Nellie's coaching was enough to get us to the playoffs if we had remained healthy, so his prediction wasn't bad. Seems like he also still likes our chances once J Rich gets back.

MC Welk (SLC): How's your Warriors playoff prediction looking?

SportsNation Marc Stein: Honestly? I'd say it's looking pretty damn good considering they're down three starters, including their two best players: Baron and J-Rich. I think Nellie has already proven my point. His coaching alone instantly made them playoff-credible. As I also made clear going into the season, injuries would settle what happens at the bottom of the West playoff ladder because injuries always do in a conference with 13 or so teams going for eight spots. It's not looking great for the Warriors right now -- and they've certainly let themselves down with some hideous no-shows on the road -- but they've been battered by injuries like the Bucks and Hornets. And they're still in the race somehow.

I read alot of NBA articles, and I've seen a few different experts comment on how positive a sign it is for the Warriors that they're still in the hunt given our injuries. Of course, I've also read a few articles saying we'd never make the playoffs the way we play D...
J RICH BRING US TO THE PROMISED LAND

they're playing the 1976 Western Conference Finals Game 4, GSW vs Phoenix. I was born in 85 so this is my first time watching Rick Barry - this guy is amazing! He just made this shot from around where the 3pt line would be (there was no 3pt line than) where he had his back to the basket and jumped, turned around in the air, and knocked it down. Let's bring him out of retirement!

Lebron sat out the Cav's friday game against the 76ers with a toe injury, then tried to play through it yesterday against the Suns and re-injured it. James was quoted as saying

It's definitely going to take time for me. I really have to get off it. If that means taking some games off, I'm going to have to do that because it's definitely a problem. I can't keep forcing action.

Music to the ears for the Warriors, although the game will be less fun to watch now