A sampling of fan feedback to the close loss last night to the Rockets. Nellie’s first game back after a 2 week bout with pneumonia.  The Warriors were rolling in the 3rd quarter and early 4th then questionable substitutions and lineups in the 4th took a winnable home game and turned it into a frustrating loss.

Tim Kawakami covers this topic in blog this morning as well. For fans, it’s a head scratcher.

From Deacon Blue:

yeah I am still steamed about that bizarro 4th quarter lineup with Morrow/Maggette as our “front court” while he sat Hunter and Rad????

when you’ve just come back against a tough, smart, defensive team like the Rox using Hunter, Radman, and (unreal) Moore, why try this?

Here’s why: like most successful addicts, Nelly reached for the familiar bottle of small ball. Not normally a bad idea –since hes built a team that is notoriously light on Big Dudes –but it shows two very telling points:

1. Hes forgotten his own success formula–to win with smalls you gotta be playing a team with at least one galumphing big ass dude on the floor (Yao, Oden, Kaman, etc.) so you can out quick/ out flank/out run them.

2. worst, he wasn’t tuned into the game — the Rox are full of PF/big SG types who play smart defense and can out think the W’s almost every time, so when you stumble on something that’s working, why mess with it?

Oh, i forgot: he’s the Great Coach that Fitzer has googoo eyes for.

Sorry, Nellie’s day has passed. Please book him on the next flight to Maui and lets get back to building a real team.

From Berkeley Scrub:

it is indeed time for the nellie to head back to hawaii. his one trick is always going small and that just isn’t as effective as it used to be. the nba is so much quicker on average than it used to be so the advantage he once gained by going small has been greatly negated. i read somewhere that his fascination with small ball dated back to his celtics days when red used to run bigs vs. smalls scrimmages which the smaller team routinely won. to me that says a lot as there is such a huge difference between game and practice mentality. hell down here in LA there was a times story last week where Phil had the Lakers run bigs vs. smalls in practice and the smalls won by 45 points. needless to say the lakers didn’t all of a sudden start kobe at center.

monta-i have really enjoyed the monta debate on this board as it is one of the few times that both sides are “correct”. monta is an amazing player who is just very difficult to build a team around. his defense has improved so dramatically and he really deserves credit there. he is trying to be a better floor general it’s just not in his nature. he is not now nor will he ever be a true point guard. what he is, however, is BY FAR the best player on this team. ironically what we could use is a JAX type great passing front court player player (Diaw?) who isn’t a chemistry killing poo butt.

rockets- i have posted this before it bears repeating. they are my official “hoop nerd” favorite team. it’s like watching a small college team in the nba. the amount of times multiple players touched the ball during a possession was staggering to me. everyone defends, everyone shares the rock, great team ball. they just simply don’t have the talent to compete with the big boys but what a great “team” in the truest sense. adelamn COY should be a no brainer.

From Steven:

I heard Nellie went small ball in the 4th quarter.

after Vlad and Hunter played well in the 3rd. And that Vlad or/and Hunter didn’t come back til waaaay late in the 4th quarter.

This is what frustrates me about coaches in general, but specifically Nellie. When a player or two is playing well, why yank them out and not put them back in earlier???

There’s something called if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. I just don’t get the mentality of sitting out productive players. Reward them. If it’s frustrating for us as fans, imagine how the players feel. That cannot be healthy for the player-coach relationship. And ultimately, it’s not healthy for the organization.

From Fandorin:

So why on earth did Nellie put Hunter and Radman on the bench and gave Houston a free ticket to the rim? Those guys had a good chemistry going, why change to accomodate Maggs of all players?
Smart would easily win this game, hands down.