SB Nation User Blog: gsw4life

Hollinger insider article on Warriors Training Camp

gsw4life — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:39:51 -0000

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?

Hinrich?

gsw4life — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:33:37 -0000

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)

Sam Cassell

gsw4life — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 20:51:38 -0000

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?

Get Baron in the All-Star Game!

gsw4life — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 07:12:19 -0000

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

Mighty Mouse wants out

gsw4life — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 03:46:08 -0000

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?

Taking care of the ball

gsw4life — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 10:57:40 -0000

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.

Tim Kawakami Q & A w/ Chris Mullin

gsw4life — Fri, 26 Oct 2007 07:25:35 -0000

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.

Devean George quote that really annoys me

gsw4life — Thu, 03 May 2007 23:56:56 -0000

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.

Bill Simmons MVP Article

gsw4life — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 08:19:52 -0000

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

Suns to play full strength tuesday?

gsw4life — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 07:38:06 -0000

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.