LafayetteBear (and others), what's going on w/ GS Warriors?

[Tom McAndrew]

I caught the tail end of the game against the Lakers last week, where Curry's streak of games where he made a 3-pointer ended at 157. (Didn't seem to be anything special the Lakers were doing. He just could not hit the side of a barn.)

So now I see that in the next game, against the Pelicans, he set the NBA record for most 3s made in a game (13). And yet, the rest of his team was way off on shooting 3s in the game. (Thompson was 2-for-7, Durant was 1-for-4, Iggy was 0-for-4; the team outside of Steph was 3-for-18.)

I expected some fits as they adjusted to Durant, and the loss of some of the personnel from last year's team. That said, the adjustment period seems to be taking far longer than I expected.

Yeah, it's early in a long NBA season, so nobody should draw too many conclusions this early. With that caveat, is there reason for concern with this year's Warriors?

 

[LafayetteBear]

The consensus locally is that it is gonna take a little time for the components to fit together and start hitting on all cylinders.

I watch almost every Dubs game, and the most noticeable aspect of this year's team is how much they miss Andrew Bogut and (to a lesser degree) Festus Ezeli. (You can have Harrison Barnes.) Bogut was a very good passer and screen setter, but his biggest contributions were as a rim protector and defensive rebounder. His teammates could take more chances defending the perimeter, knowing he was in the paint. Zaza Pachulia is a work in progress, and is still figuring out how to fit in, but he will never be the kind of defensive player that Bogut was.

Watch for other, younger big men to pick up playing time. Kevon Looney (a 6-9 big man out of UCLA with very long arms and good rebounding ability, has been getting more playing time (he missed all of last season with a hip problem, if I recall correctly). Maybe David West, another free agent pickup, will help inside. But the rest of the Warriors, particularly KD, are gonna have to pick it up defensively to compensate for the loss of Bogut.

On the offensive side, Klay Thompson has been in a bit of a shooting slump. AS you noted, he was 2 for 7 shooting threes last night, but overall he shot 11 for 20. Not too bad.,Steph has not been the Steph of last season. Until last night, that is. He went 13 for 17 from three point land, breaking the NBA single game record of 12. I think he'll be all right.

BTW, you should have seen the Cal boards the day after that Dubs faceplant against the Lakers. Lots of Lakers fans popping off about the Dubs sucking, and about their bandwagon fans. Never mind that the Dubs have sold out every home game for YEARS, going far back before Joe Lakob bought the team and things started turning around for the good. The NorCal vs. SoCal thing on the Cal boards reminds me very much of the Pittsburgh vs Philly thing on this PSU board.