David Lee in a familiar spot: out of position and about to give up a bucket.
Tonight, February 4, 2012, the Warriors lost to the Sacramento Kings. For the 2nd time in 3
games, the Warriors starting 5 was so ineffective, that coach Mark Jackson went
the entirety of crunch time with his second unit. When your crunch time lineup starts to regularly consist of not a single
starting player, there are serious issues with the core of your team. The more often this happens, the clearer the answer
becomes to the biggest question hanging over this franchise.
The answer to “Which Guard do you keep for the future?”
Isn’t Steph. Or Monta. It’s neither, and if you can find a way to send David
Lee packing as well, all the better.
Last March, at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference,
former Portland Trailblazers GM Kevin Pritchard introduced a new term to sports
terminology: “The Treadmill of Mediocrity”.
Both ESPN and RealGM put out excellent articles explaining the details
of “The Treadmill”, but the cliff-notes
go like this: The worst position for a team to be in to build a contender is on
the playoff border, either just barely out, or just barely in. The reason being, teams in this spot aren’t
good enough to contend, yet aren’t bad enough to acquire the elite talent from
top draft picks that would be needed to put them over the top.
One area that I didn’t see explicitly addressed, but one I
think lends credence to the theory of “The treadmill” is that in addition to
teams not being able to land top draft picks to improve their own squad, they
also fail to have the type of talent that would fetch a franchise changing
player in a trade. The Los Angeles
Clippers were able to trade for Chris Paul due to an obscene amount of talent
they stockpiled through their many lottery appearances. The New Jersey Nets got Deron Williams
because they had similar amounts of young talent to attract Utah in a trade. Elite, young talent is a necessity to turn a
struggling franchise into a contender, whether its by the talent blossoming on
your own squad, or using it to swing a deal for a proven difference maker.
Pure talent is not enough to be a winner in the NBA. All the talent in the world needs the right
brain to properly utilize it, and enough heart to push through the inevitable
tough moments. The Warriors core 3 of
Steph Curry, David Lee, and Monta Ellis is obscenely talented, without
question. All 3 show flashes of
greatness that get fans mouths watering and daydreaming about a bright
future. The thing is, those flashes are
just that – flashes, and the odds of them becoming anything more than flashes
is almost nil due to fundamental flaws in each players makeup, either they lack
the head (Ellis) or heart (Curry, Lee).
Monta Ellis is an elite scorer, but that’s all he is good
for. He is a horrid defender due to not
just his size, but his general indifference towards putting in any substantial
effort on that side of the floor. He
has seemingly respectable assist numbers, but when compared to his turnovers,
the assists lose most of their meaning. He’s either unable, or unwilling to
play smart team basketball, which means he’s either stupid or selfish, and
unable to be a main cog on a championship team.
Steph Curry is a phenomenal talent. He is an incredibly pure shooter, and shows
natural point instincts. He can set up
teammates or get his own shot. Unfortunately, all that talent cant compensate
for the fact that he is tissue paper soft. Leaving aside the injuries, which
don’t help matters, Curry shows absolutely no toughness, mental or physical, in
his game. He’s a bad defender already
because of his subpar athleticism, but his unwavering reluctance to try and
make up for it with a more physical effort is troubling. He isn’t mentally
strong enough either, showing almost no leadership in his 3 seasons, and
already mentally checking out on this season. That plus the fact that he said
he looks forward to playing for his hometown Charlotte Bobcats in the future,
and the line of thinking you can build around this guy is laughable.
Monta Ellis may be the 2nd most overrated player
in the NBA, but number 1 goes to David Lee. The heartless big man is a 6’10”
jump shooter with absolutely no interest in playing like he’s 6’10”. He may be the worst defensive big man in the
NBA, with his defensive strategy seeming to be to try and imitate a turnstile
or matador, depending on the night.
That defense also inflates his rebounding numbers, because since the man
he’s guarding is constantly shooting, the occasional miss happens to be right
in his area. David Lee has averaged 20
points a game once in his career. And
he’s getting paid $16 million a year, for 4 years AFTER this one. Excuse me
while I break something.
The Warriors currently are heading right for a permanent
seat on the treadmill of mediocrity.
Only 5 teams in the NBA have missed the last 4 playoffs, the Warriors,
New Jersey, the Clippers, Sacramento, and Minnesota. The Clippers avoided the
treadmill and stockpiled talent, and are locks to make the playoffs. The Timberwolves are one of the biggest
surprises this season, with gobs of young talent headlined by Kevin Love who
has turned into one of the 10 best players in league (seriously). New Jersey was able to use much of their
stockpiled talent to snag Deron Williams, and now are one of the favorites to
land Dwight Howard because of the amount of talent still left on their
roster. Sacramento looks to be in the
same position as the warriors, but with Demarcus Cousins and Tyreke Evans, they
have two players with more upside than anyone on the Golden State roster. If
those two learn how to play together, that is an inside/outside tandem that
could rocket to respectability in a hurry.
After this loss to the Kings, the Warriors have the 9th
worst record in the NBA. Due to a
series of typically Warriors-like stupid trades from the middle of the last
decade, the Warriors lose their draft pick if its any worse than #7. And this upcoming draft is being hailed as
the deepest draft of all-time. If the
Warriors ever want to be a legitimate championship contender and not a team
whose ceiling is the seventh seed in the west, they need to hop off of the
treadmill. If they stay on, they wont be able to draft the centerpiece to lead
them forward, or stockpile enough talent to make a blockbuster trade. The only way to get off the treadmill is to
blow the whole thing up. Trade away
Monta and Steph. Stockpile picks for
this upcoming draft and some young talent.
If someone is crazy enough to take David Lee’s albatross of a contract,
do that too. Otherwise, he stays simply
because he can’t be moved.
I know the Warriors have been “rebuilding” for almost 20
years now. Previous attempts to hop off
the treadmill have not gone well. The
core of this current team does have some intriguing pieces that make you think
“if they can just put it all together…”
But its important to look at things realistically, there is
no evidence that any of the principles involved have what it takes to make the
leap. As they are now, they are a below .500 team. Emotional attachment needs
to be separated, and this situation needs to be looked at honestly, and
objectively.
And whenever I look at it like that, all I can say is “bring
me the dynamite.”
1 comment:
You are right about blowing up this roster. In the past, in a time of less sensitivity people would sometimes refer to autistic children as idiot savants because of the tendency of some of these children to have one great talent but be non-functional in society overall. While it is a cruel way to refer to children suffering an unfortunate condition it is disturbingly apropos in describing this backcourt.
Monta's great talent is explosive speed and the ability to finish while moving at a blur. However, he constantly gets in the wrong position on offense and defense and seems mystified by what to do next. It usually winds up a turnover on offense and a basket allowed on defense.
Steph's great talent is his shooting. The only elite point guard skill he consistently shows is the half-court lob in transition. He has a marginally better grasp of the game than Monta. But, he is not as physically gifted as most guards so he has trouble penetrating and getting penetrated on. The worst part is the indifference in his game. How many times is he going to make a lazy one-handed pass to the opposition before Mark Jackson straps him to a chair and blowtorches his short-hairs to get some fire and focus from him?
David Lee is like over-achieving, good-teammate players at all levels. He just happens to do it at the NBA level. As soon as he goes up against better talent he is stymied because he is missing an edge. Another way I look at it is that he has some similarity to Chris Mullin in his lack of athleticism and great overall understanding of the game but Chris had an assassin's eye and a toughness to take it right to superior athletes and outfox them. I don't see that in David.
I like all of these players to a point but they're all complementary players; there is not a worthy alpha-dog in the bunch. You need an alpha-dog to win big. Unfortunately, we are probably not getting an alpha-dog with this core gumming up the works, so yeah, blow up at least two of them. And if the two are both backcourt players, oh well. Treat some other fan base to clueless end-of-game dysfunction and furious mouth-guard chewing. I'll settle for growing pains with real promise.
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