Sorry for the hiatus—“things have been busy,” “life got in the way,” “my dog ate my homework.”
I just wanted to touch on the Warriors very quickly. Their long home stretch—which has been dubbed the stretch that will determine their playoff hopes—is on the tail end. They’re lost three in a row, in which the last two were home blowouts.
Well, the final scores might not indicate that, but if you watched the games, it was just one of those stat-padded losses. These are the times when we get to hear Bob Fitzgerald touch on the “positives” like David Lee getting 20 and 10 and Dorell Wright having a career year and Monta Ellis for All-Star!
Whatever individual accolades are being garnered, they’re not contributing to wins, not even close. It wouldn’t be so bad if Keith Smart learned the art of throwing in the towel. You know, where you pull your injured and ailing starters for bench guys who need the playing time. Like, Brandan Wright instead of Lou Amundson. But no, he’s living last season’s dream of having 8 active players. I guess the trauma of being chronically injured has a lasting effect. Everyone, including the owner, knows Keith Smart’s rotations stink, but what he does at the end of games they’re clearly going to lose is baffling.
When the game was already out of reach in the fourth quarter last night against the Hornets, he rested Monta Ellis for the first time at the 9:58 mark—who never came back into the game and happens to be the one guy that is unaffected by heavy minutes—but decided to run with an ailing Stephen Curry, Dorell Wright, and David Lee for the majority of the fourth quarter.
During this time, we also saw Acie Law and Vladimir Radmanovic get extended minutes off the bench but not once did we see Brandan Wright. The Brandan Wright who leads the team in TS% and is fifth in points scored per 36 minutes—basically, he makes an impact every time he hits the floor. Now, he may not be a go-to guy or a guy you can depend on to stay healthy, but when he plays, he plays well. For some reason, he never plays, even in blowouts. He must have stolen Keith Smart’s deodorant or something. If there’s a Keith Smart doghouse, Brandan Wright is in it.
And that’s what makes no sense, because he clearly has no problem playing Vlad or Law (when is Jeremy Lin going to be recalled, by the way?), who you practically have to put into a Juiceman to extract any sort of productivity. Keith Smart’s shotgun approach to his rotations are both an insult to his starters, who he’s running into the ground by playing meaningless, stat-padding minutes, and to the player (singular) who actually makes a consistent impact on the court. Somehow though, Brandan Wright is not part of his shotgun munitions.
I told myself I would reserve judgment on Keith Smart and his rotations until Feb. Well, I was presuming we’d see some incremental improvements. Hey, whatever happened to “defense travels well” and all the talk about defense? That sure died down quickly given how the Warriors have panned out to be (probably) the worst defensive team in the league (haven’t checked this but I presume we’re at or near the bottom).
So during this very important home stretch, the Warriors have gone 5 – 6. Where’s the sense of pride and urgency? I know the Hornets are playing out of their minds but this is Oracle and we beat them at the Hive a few weeks ago.
There are zero excuses right now. I blame everyone. And on this note, Joe Lacob is about to take calls from fans on KNBR.
