Golden State Troubles

In an effort to double our Christmas content, both C-Post and I will be writing posts on the just now finished Clippers-Warriors game. His will focus on the Clippers and mine on the Warriors. Both will frighten and excite, in equal measure. Both will poke fun at Bill Simmons, but only mine will contain a new Blake Griffin looks analogy. Happy Hannukah!

First this, and now this. Will the people of this eminently livable state ever catch a break? If they ever do they're going to have to change a lot. After watching this loss to the Clippers, I think this team is in serious trouble. Before the game I was quaffing as deep from the Clipper kool-aid as anyone, well anyone who's addiction to basic cable TV show references doesn't dictate their sports coverage (I've truly Broken Bad; also, Justified). After watching that game I can't conclude, as I had before hand, that the Clippers were a top team in the West this year. Yes, Griffin showed signs of being Malone 2.0 tonight. But Deandre Jordan still shoots 2/10 on free throws and Vinny Del Negro is still the coach (and, at one point tonight, that meant that he played Chris Paul, Chauncey Billups, and Mo Williams in an attempt to set the record for most good point guards ever on the floor at one time). Until Billups and Paul stage a coup, that team has a ceiling somewhere around 6th in the West.

But I didn't come here to kick dirt at the Clippers. I came here to say that Golden State is doomed. This team played better defense than in the past, but at the cost of a complete breakdown of their offense. Both Curry and Ellis played frantic, confused, mistake riddled basketball that looked both ugly and embarrassing. Throughout the fourth as the Clips staged their push for victory (a push that merely required Blake to hit a couple of shots, Chris Paul to do a single ankle breaking pull-up, and Jordan to sit on the bench), the Warriors totally fell apart. With greater and greater desperation, Warriors charged recklessly at the basket, shooting wild shots or throwing the ball away to the Clippers, or both. The players on this team revealed themselves to be quite athletic and amazingly fast (especially this new kid, Ish Smith, he should be looked out for, both for his speedy skills and his amazing name), but incapable of playing together. Time and time again, balls were thrown wildly away, passes to teammates were only known about on the sending end; the receivers had no clue they were coming. All in all this team looked like a low-seeded March Madness team, panicking in the last 2 minutes of the game, wildly flailing at the basket with hopes of being national heroes. No one seemed to trust any one else, and Marc Jackson looked physically sick (I can't blame him, this was probably like showing up to your dissertation and realizing you had been studying Biology all these years instead of Chemistry). It seems like the Warriors' gutsy move of playing Curry and Ellis continues to not pan out and that the addition of Ish only complicates things further. The good news, I guess, is that they seem much better defensively. The bad news is that this has collapsed both their offensive abilities and any reason you might have harbored for wanting to watch a Warriors game.

A lot about how the Association will pan out this year seems to have been revealed this first day. Carmelo can and will score at will. Kobe is hitting his ceiling, but he's making sure he'll do as much damage to the ceiling as he can so that it never fucks with him again. The Celtics are washed up. The Clippers aren't there yet; neither are the Bulls. Dwight Howard will almost certainly be leaving the garbagemen around him who make you want to reconsider Varejão and the Cavs' excellence. This season is going to belong to the Thunder and the Heat and, ultimately, to the Heat alone. And Golden State is far, far from being playoff ready. We already almost knew that, but now we do for sure. With the rise of the Clippers, Grizzlies, and (in my humble hopes) the Timberwolves, there is absolutely no room for this team at the top. There isn't even room for it with the Jazz, Rockets, and Suns. All is not lost though. If the team trades Ellis and Jackson works hard at coaching them into something that resembles a team, we could see them back in playoff contention in not too much time. If not, they might be in for a decade of Clipper like status. A fate that not even high-flying Alfred E. Newman look-a-like Griffin and best point guard alive of the week, Paul can get you out of overnight.