The one knock against the Golden State Warriors tiny back court has been that they could be exploited by larger guards. In the early part of the season against sub .500 teams, high scoring has made this a non-issue. Last night against the Phoenix Suns, a team not known for it’s defense, all of the warts were exposed. The Suns played Jason Richardson on the Warriors smaller guards, posting them up at will. The Warriors defense was lazy and uninspired with Ellis gambling for steals and leaving a free path to the basket. On a night where Biedrins played uninspired basketball, and the Warriors had no healthy shot blocking bigs, there was a layup line at the basket. As the season starts to slip away, and the schedule gets more difficult, fans react to the back court.
My take on this back court and this team. Just for reference of the last successful team to run a small back court.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/DET/1989.html
Having 2 pint sized back court players won’t work in the long run. This isn’t the Detroit pistons of 20yrs ago. compared to that team, this duo are NOT defensive nightmares nor as strong/aggressive as Isiah/Dumars were. Those guys had guys like Rodman, Laimbeer , Aguire, Dantley, Sally, V.Johnson, Mahorn and Dawkins behind them if their man blew by them. That team was decently sized and played superior defense, team basketball and roles were cemented and played.
Our team is constructed as a guard eccentric team in which most of their points come from JUMP SHOTS or points scored outside the paint. We don’t have REAL bruising type players that had the complete skill. Our roster is extremely flawed.
C- Although can be a rebounding guru and has pretty good hands, he is offensively very limited, not strong and does get punished even by the likes of the Landry’s, and similar 6’7” PF’s.
Our bench is god awful, even with the return of Lou ( we know what he brings and he’s consistent ), everyone else is either OK only to garbage.
We need a bigger, defensive minded guard that can play within the offensive scheme, and doesn’t dominate the ball. I’ll also take a defensive rebounding big that can actually hold his own inside the paint and not get pushed around. Someone to just do the dirty work kinda like in the mold of Kendrik Perkins.
This team will get tested more and more by bigger stronger guards to will continue to pound our small back court throughout this 82 game campaign. Smart coaches will start to hone in to getting our smaller guys into foul trouble, fatigue, and make our other players leave their man to help out and double team. Sure Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry will have nights that they can handle it somewhat but that isn’t going to last nor be effective for 82 games and imagine the toll on their bodies from getting beat up by bigger guards night in, night out. Not all teams have capitalized yet, but trust me we’ve only played a hand full of GOOD/Great teams.
Our offense does get stagnant when the ball is being pounded on top of the 3pt line while the other 4 stand around. Defense’s just stand and wait for the drive or ISO.
Ellis has been great this year, but can we live with that for 82 games and a possible that 1/2 those games he won’t be as effective and can also become a volume shooter. Ellis needs to also know that besides shooting he can also help this team to do other things than just attack the basket not just every other game or so.
Curry really needs to reign in his game and start watching film of his previous games, mistakes, short comings and also what he does good to hopefully learn and improve from them. For this team to do well for now, he and Ellis needs to raise their games to unheard of levels.
We always complain of getting out rebounded or don’t get to the line but that’s what happens when you have a small team and purely a JUMP SHOOTING team. This team lives and dies with the long shot or 3. and this team has a very soft belly.
Also, I really don’t know what this ownership can get with the expiring contracts of Gadz/Bell/Radman and with the sweetener of Brenda Wright being used as trade fodder.