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.  

Words of Wisdom from Phil Jackson/ Don Nelson

Phil Jackson has been a coach a long time and has some (hopefully) well thought out opinions about basketball.  Two gems from a recent article:

1) The Suns recently complete a trade, shipping out a large portion of their core players to the Charlotte Bobcats in exchange for some role players.  The day they played the Lakers, because of the logistics of the trade, they were short-handed, suiting up only nine players.  The game was very close and the Lakers narrowly won; however, PJ said that he knew it would be a very close game because teams that are short-handed like the Suns always play with extra intensity, and thats what happened.

This ties in to what I read in a book by RJ Miller, where he said that teams of professionals can usually step up their game when they are short-handed, because everyone knows the game will be that much harder.  

The second-level projection would be finding out when teams that are short-handed then have a drop-off in intensity.  Essentially, when do they let down their guard?  I think that would happen very consistenly amongst "effort-sports", such as hockey, basketball, and football.  

I think that all people can maintain a sense of urgency and "extra" intensity for a set amount of time before they drop off to a level below normal levels as a result of the burned energy called forth during the time of crisis.

2)  Coach Jackson said that no team from the West Coast would ever win 72 games because of the time-zone difference.  Teams travelling from the West to East suffer because they lose two or three hours of sleep/travel time, whereas teams going from East to West get extra time to sleep and prepare.  

The Bulls are from Chicago, which I think is in the Central Time Zone, (GMT -6).  

3) An interesting thing I read from Don Nelson in a news article during the 07-08 season.  He essentially said that the Warriors knew they would lose to the Pistons and said they conceded the game, throwing in the subs in the third quarter.  Obviously, it would be great to know when the Coach and team "know" they will lose a game.

Also, it is interesting to note how easily he mentioned it and it sparked no real outrage or commentary, as far as I can tell.