Warriors 125 Knicks 138

Are You Kidding Me?

In an absolutely pathetic defensive performance, the Golden State Warriors fell to the short-handed New York Knicks with an alarming score of 125-138. Amazingly, New York managed to score 82 points in the first half, but I give them little to medium credit for this achievement because they had 3 or 4 handfuls of uncontested dunks and layups. Sure, we're a poor road team and always have been, but I honestly don't understand how an NBA team can play that poorly on the defensive end. This performance was the culmination of several similar games in which we couldn't play a lick of defense, and this results in an 0-5 road trip heading back to Oakland on Monday against Miami. Here's my take...

Defense
I'm sick of this. I was literally embarrassed watching this game tonight. With NBA League Pass airiing the New York feed, I sat on my couch cringing at every word the announcers pierced about our lack of defense. I almost muted the television because I was disgraced to be a Warrior fan. Duhon is a solid NBA PG but by no means is he a star. Tonight, he made the pick n' roll look easier than Stockton and Malone did back in the 80s and 90s. But here's the thing; he was just playing ok. I saw countless times a WEAK pick at the top of the key and our PG just get completely lost defensively. Whether it was Crawford or Watson, he just had to take 3 or 4 uncontested dribbles to get to the rim, when a C or PF would have to play help defense because our PG did so poorly, leaving of course a wide open David Lee for dunk after dunk. And yet, the gameplan NEVER CHANGED... Did Duhon hit a jumper all night? Perhaps one or two, if that. Why not go UNDER the screen and take away his penetration? No, our coaching staff isn't brilliant enough to think of something like that.
The smartest thing the coaching staff did all night defensively was switch to a zone defense in the 3rd quarter. What did this lead to? We actually made a small run, got some stops, and made some buckets on the other end. Was this not possible to do sometime in the 1st or 2nd quarter when Duhon's penetration was seemingly impossible to guard? It is very frustrating to see things like this night in and night out. It's not just that our roster is weak, because we do have some talent on this team, but our coaching staff and our team leaders are just not putting things together at this point. We're turning into the joke of the NBA

I can't say much more about this game, and every game is getting harder and harder to write about. Here's my top performances:

1. CJ Watson- 23 points 5 assists 6 rebounds
2. Jamal Crawford- a double double for someone other than Biedrins. He had 21 points 10 boards and 5 assists
3. Corey Maggette- Another double double for someone other than Biedrins. He had 32 points and 12 boards.

Team Outlook
Ok, this has nothing to do with this game in particular but where the heck is this team going. I touched on this in the last post, but our future is not looking very bright to say the least. I can't believe we have Jackson and Maggette locked up for the next 5 years. Those contracts will be incredibly hard to maneuver. Without being able to move them, we won't be able to position guys next to Monta and Biedrins, and thus we'll be wasting their better years. We got guys like Wright and Randolph coming up, but they won't be able to grow under a coach like Nelson, who by the way is under contract for another 2 seasons after this one. What are we supposed to be excited about as fans? What are we supposed to buy tickets for? Why should we even watch the games? This is all I could think about when I was watching this game-- winning was an afterthought