Thursday, December 25, 2008

Warriors lose to Magic: Get Used to It

The Warriors recently lost to the Orlando Magic.  And last night they lost to the Heat.  And they are going to do a lot more losing.  

Everyone on the team knows what Don Nelson knows: they aren't making the playoffs.  They are making any noise.  They aren't getting hyped.  

And Don Nelson doesn't rebuild.  He doesn't energize.  He doesn't berate like Pat Riley.  He won't discipline and focus like Greg Popovich.  He simply unleashes.  

And if you unleash mediocre players, they will give you below-mediocre level of play.  Mediocre players with good, hard coaching can get you mediocre results.  Why?  Because in the NBA there are lots of good players.  And lots of great players.  Lots of 40 inch vertical leaps, enormous centers, and teams put together to win lots of games. 

And then there are the warriors.  With a collection of talent that was able to get to the playoffs one year on the last game of the season.  And thats it.  They were never even a good team.  Good enough to compete, but not good enough to win.  No fourth seeds, no home court advantage, no ten game winning streak.  Nothing.  

And Don Nelson just signed a fat contract.  So he isn't going to be pouring in effort at midnight, talking with players, figuring out the perfect inbounds play, analyzing each teams defenses for weaknesses.  He's too experienced, too old, too fat.  

The Warriors will plummet to the bottom of the NBA.  And along the way they are going to get blown out a lot.  

I think the following factors will contribute most to their defeats:

Games on the road.
Games against teams that are "rising" rather than "established".  A rising team right now would be the Orlando, Atlanta, Miami, New York, Cleveland, Portland, Houston, and New Orleans.  

A few maybe cases are Denver, Milwaukee, Utah, and of course Boston.

The younger and better the team, the more likely they are to blow us out. 

And at start of a road trip the Warriors are more likely to mail in a game.  After a bad loss or two they will try harder to try to salvage a road trip.  But at the end they are less likely to get blown out if the trip has gone badly.  If it has gone well, then they might mail in a game.  

And at the end of the season as the playoff race heats up and we are putting in a lot of "next year's" players.  

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