Pistons 107 Warriors 102

After playing rather solid basketball through 2 and a half quarters, the Warriors let another game slip away (again by 5 points or fewer) in a loss to the Detroit Pistons 102-107. This game featured the return of a still hampered Corey Maggette, and although he had his moments early on in the third quarter, he wasn't enough to put away a good eastern conference opponent. Throughout the year I have criticized the Warriors on several key issues, some of which I will bring up again as a result of this game, but the funny thing is we stand at 3-6 and actually have had some great opportunities to beat some good teams. If you ignore those Memphis "games," this team has actually stayed in it against some of the best in the NBA despite not having arguably one of their best players in Monta Ellis. At the end of the day however, it's wins and losses that really matter, and we just can't seem to win those close games with any consistency at all... Here's what I saw

Defense
Without any doubt in my mind, this team is leaps and bounds ahead of previous Nellie-coached Warrior teams in terms of defense. With Biedrins, Wright, Turiaf, and sometimes even Randolph in the middle of the paint blocking shots, it makes it very difficult for opposing teams to penetrate the lane. What this does is forces a lot of jumpshots, which can then lead to shooting slumps and ultimately momentum in our favor. I saw a bit of this when we made our runs early in the game. I love that when we really buckle down and WANT a stop this year, we can actually get one. In the long run this will be huge, however if you can't score on the other end of the court then it makes things rather difficult. This leads me to my next point...

Maggette early in the 3rd quarter
This team was most successful during our 8-0 run (it might've been 10-0 I can't remember) in the beginning of the 3rd quarter because our defense got stops (and well, Detroit missed jumpshots but again I don't think it's always a result of just plain bad shot selection... Andris, Turiaf and co. change the mentality of going in the paint from game to game). On the other side of the court, we were ridiculously effective because Walter Hermann was guarding Maggette, and well... he shouldn't be. 3 or 4 times in a row Maggette got the ball and did what he was brought here to do: Get to the basket and get fouled. What this team needs to do is become more consistent and efficient with our possessions offensively. If we can get on a 6-0 or 8-0 run in front of our home crowd, we can really carry that for the rest of the game. I'd like to see more of this because that's really how you win basketball games. Get stops on defense, and score on offense. It sounds very basic, but I think Maggette can give us more for our possessions than say, Jackson tossing up a ton of 3 pointers ever game, particularly after a stop on defense. It's just a higher percentage possession when we run the offense through Maggette (hopefully he just learns to pass from the post from time to time).

3rd Quarter Deficiency
Although we were very successful the first 4 or 5 minutes of the third quarter while we were getting stops and running the offense through Maggette, we seemed to run out of gas the rest of the quarter, as we do in most games this season, and we never re-gained enough gas to finish the game. We lost the quarter 34-20, and in 9 games I think we've lost the third quarter by double digits 4 or 5 times. That spells DISASTER. Every game it's something different too, so I can't really put my finger on why this happens so consistently, if anyone has any thoughts on this please post why you think this always happens. Regardless however, you just can't win games by digging yourself holes in the 3rd quarter because it really gives us no time to come back with only a quarter left in the game. Nellie has to find a way to actually get us a winning 3rd quarter if we are going to be more successful down the stretch.

Top Performances
1. Andris Biedrins- 17 points and 19 rebounds
2. CJ Watson- 17 points and 6 assists (yes he made many crucial mistakes but for a guy playing starter minutes who's really a backup, he's stepping up)
3. Anthony Morrow- In 2 consecutive games I've loved what we've seen from him. I think this kid can do more than just shoot too. He was aggressively attacking those rebounds. He finished with 8 points and 4 boards in only 14 minutes