Had to go back and read this, Daniel. Or, re-read, I do not remember, though I would have; was insanely busy. SUPERB. PROPHETIC, Analyses/Article. Frankly, though Dubs began their Dynasty by taking HUGE risk - Bogut, D.Lee/Dray smallball - they have learned to be ultra-conservative/cautious when dealing with injuries to their stars, ergo, the Wiggins treatment. He is part of the B2B 'ship-aspiring core now.
As Daniel points out, the kids showed up. This game was Exhibit A in the argument for two timelines, with so many of the kids looking closer and closer to being real contributors to the current team.
Obviously, the big story was Wiseman’s defense and rebounding, which came one day after I said here that Wiseman just doesn’t seem hungry for rebounds. He (at least for one game) totally flipped the switch on that one!
If you watch him through the lens of a raw (21-years-old, 3 college games) rookie approximately halfway through his rookie season (56 games), his play over the last few games is really encouraging. As others have said, if he can just do “that”, he’s playable, but suppose he continues to progress, even modestly, the rest of the season.
Poole showed once again that he can be the Batman in the Curry role, but he’ll need some good Robins who play defense for the Warriors to be contenders as Curry descends. Fortunately, surrounding Poole with Wiggins, Kuminga, Looney, Wiseman seems like a great start without a lot of squinting. Add in potential floor-spacers like Baldwin and Moody and a ball-handling steady presence like Jerome (or better yet, figuring out a way to keep DDV) and we’re looking at a deep, solid core that won’t start turning 30 until 2025.
Being that the current team looks capable of beating anyone in a 7-game series if they get (and stay) healthy, Bob looks really poised to actually pull off this “thread the needle” trick that people said couldn’t be done.
The present and future’s so bright for this team 🕶
I also suspect that incidents like observation #4 (Booker’s re-injury) are the precise reason for observation #5 (Wiggs prolonged absence).
All injuries are concerning, but to me they’re made less concerning by Celebrini’s track record of erring on the side of caution and not rushing guys back.
Dec 27, 2022·edited Dec 27, 2022Liked by Eric Apricot
Whataboutism alert, but old friend GP2 was supposed to be ready for the start of training camp, and still has yet to see the floor. Core injuries are a MFer, it seems.
Imagine if on top of the injuries to Steph and Wiggs, we were also dealing with Gary and Otto unavailable for 60 out of 68 possible games, with still no firm timetable for the return of either?
Sooo gutted I missed this epic smackdown of a game! But reading through all these writeups/comments... makes it even more gutting I missed it!! This feels like a turning point in the season I hope we can look back on after #🖐🏽
Boston game felt similar… but Wise looking defensively playable, DDV shooting showing suatainability, beating a contender without Steph AND Andrew, and having a relatively easy 7 straight home games is a bit different than the Boston game. We’ll see how it goes tonight!
Also, Joku continuing his trend of generating assists with three in 17 minutes makes me smile. While he had some turnovers, I'm not too worried about them since they weren't egregious.
I'd consider them less egregious in a game against a worse opponent like the Hornets tonight since that's a better setting for experimentation, but against a team like the Grizzlies I'm not trying to see you try to take a set Jaren Jackson Jr off the dribble, just play your role.
When he sees the floor, he makes good passes. Kerr seems to have been really hard on him for missteps, I’m optimistic that it’s being hardest on the guys you have the highest hopes for and know they can handle it.
Can we give a huge shout-out to Ty Jerome and Anthony Lamb who have been excellent bench players!! Look past the two way player status and see that Ty Jerome has been averaging 7 points/2 assists on 54% from the field and a scorching 43% from deep along with solid defense!! On the other hand, you have Lamb whose been averaging 6 points/3 rebounds on 52% from the field and a sizzling 41% from deep along with excellent man defense!
The front office has found two extremely solid bench players whose skillets are likely playoff transferrable literally off the trash heap! With the young players coming into their own, I truly believe that we will go on a winning streak when Curry returns!!
48 games to pick up approximately 3-4 in the standings. Basically, we have to be ~10% better than Sac, Utah, Dallas, Portland, and Minny to get to the six seed.
Assuming a timely Steph return and no more huge injuries (far from certain) we should be in very good shape. We will have most of our travel complete by Jan. 20. Primed for a stretch run.
It's harder than it sounds. With 5 other teams they need to get past, it's not a matter of playing 3-4 games better than the collective, it's a matter of playing 3-4 games better than the best out of the five, and because of variance, it's likely at least one of the teams will be playing above their heads, and the Dubs have to be better than that.
Which they can be, but it's not as easy as just being 3-4 games better than the collective average of the five teams.
I did think of the exact point you are raising (my post did not mention average .. it said better than). But, of those teams, who do you fear?
Dallas is the only one I think could really go on a tear, and would they do it for 3 months? Guessing not.
Basically, I think a .700 winning percentage gets us there for sure, and I would guess, even .650 might do it. That sounds very optimistic, but given that we have a very home heavy schedule after the 20th and the last big trip we have is much more travel friendly, I think we're in good shape.
Of course there are caveats ... does the play we see in the Grizzlies game carry over? And injuries, always injuries.
Tier 3: The Blazers & Jazz have been quietly regressing for a month now, I have no faith in the Wolves, and the Kings are going to be playing with an injured Sabonis if he can even play. The flying Doncics will prob play better, but they still have no defense.
Tier 2: the Clippers are mediocre without Kawhi, and the Suns are going to be missing Booker AND have a tough road heavy schedule coming up.
Tier 1: Denver, NO, and Memphis prob going to be hard to catch
This seems right to me. Fortunately we don't need to catch those Tier 1 teams as long as we're ready for them in the playoffs. That won't be easy either but it's what we do.
Neither Denver, nor Memphis scare me… I’m wondering if we should fear NO, tho… they’ve got multiple physical mismatches in Zion, Ingram, and Valencunias, a high level bucket getter in CJ, solid defenders in Jones & Alvarado, an a solid/versatile bench. We’d have to count on playing their bigs off the floor, attacking Zion’s and CJ’s defense, and just generally protecting the paint. We have two more games against them, one of which we’re on a SEGABABA and the other game, they’re on a SEGABABA, so not too much to be learned from the regular season match ups given that we have already punted the first two match ups…
Every game I become a bigger fan of DDV. He's proving himself to be a top tier player who will be in demand next off season. What can the Dubs do to incentivize DDV to stay around for the second year of his contract rather than opting out to collect a bag from someone else? The current contract is $4.5M. Based on his play so far, I expect that someone will offer him something north of $10M per.
Same… but this was expected. I try to look at it this way: if he does play himself into a 3y/$40M contract, he will have had a great impact on our Dubs championship chances this year.
Some delicious and well-earned gold-blooded crowing on behalf of the greatest hype man in Dub Nation. A KO punch from Daniel on this here boxing day. Last night was not just a win, it was a punking.
Had to go back and read this, Daniel. Or, re-read, I do not remember, though I would have; was insanely busy. SUPERB. PROPHETIC, Analyses/Article. Frankly, though Dubs began their Dynasty by taking HUGE risk - Bogut, D.Lee/Dray smallball - they have learned to be ultra-conservative/cautious when dealing with injuries to their stars, ergo, the Wiggins treatment. He is part of the B2B 'ship-aspiring core now.
As Daniel points out, the kids showed up. This game was Exhibit A in the argument for two timelines, with so many of the kids looking closer and closer to being real contributors to the current team.
Obviously, the big story was Wiseman’s defense and rebounding, which came one day after I said here that Wiseman just doesn’t seem hungry for rebounds. He (at least for one game) totally flipped the switch on that one!
If you watch him through the lens of a raw (21-years-old, 3 college games) rookie approximately halfway through his rookie season (56 games), his play over the last few games is really encouraging. As others have said, if he can just do “that”, he’s playable, but suppose he continues to progress, even modestly, the rest of the season.
Poole showed once again that he can be the Batman in the Curry role, but he’ll need some good Robins who play defense for the Warriors to be contenders as Curry descends. Fortunately, surrounding Poole with Wiggins, Kuminga, Looney, Wiseman seems like a great start without a lot of squinting. Add in potential floor-spacers like Baldwin and Moody and a ball-handling steady presence like Jerome (or better yet, figuring out a way to keep DDV) and we’re looking at a deep, solid core that won’t start turning 30 until 2025.
Being that the current team looks capable of beating anyone in a 7-game series if they get (and stay) healthy, Bob looks really poised to actually pull off this “thread the needle” trick that people said couldn’t be done.
The present and future’s so bright for this team 🕶
So… Wiggins has been out for 3.5 weeks so far since he last played on 12/3. Some notable observations:
1. Warriors immediately put out articles that they weren’t concerned.
2. Kerr said that there was a possibility he could play in Toronto on 12/18
3. There he practiced on 12/23
4. Booker played on 12/25 after a similar injury, but quickly re-aggravated it.
5. Wiggins remains out.
At what point does this become a little concerning?
When his sap starts running backwards.
I also suspect that incidents like observation #4 (Booker’s re-injury) are the precise reason for observation #5 (Wiggs prolonged absence).
All injuries are concerning, but to me they’re made less concerning by Celebrini’s track record of erring on the side of caution and not rushing guys back.
Whataboutism alert, but old friend GP2 was supposed to be ready for the start of training camp, and still has yet to see the floor. Core injuries are a MFer, it seems.
Imagine if on top of the injuries to Steph and Wiggs, we were also dealing with Gary and Otto unavailable for 60 out of 68 possible games, with still no firm timetable for the return of either?
Sooo gutted I missed this epic smackdown of a game! But reading through all these writeups/comments... makes it even more gutting I missed it!! This feels like a turning point in the season I hope we can look back on after #🖐🏽
Boston game felt similar… but Wise looking defensively playable, DDV shooting showing suatainability, beating a contender without Steph AND Andrew, and having a relatively easy 7 straight home games is a bit different than the Boston game. We’ll see how it goes tonight!
Also, Joku continuing his trend of generating assists with three in 17 minutes makes me smile. While he had some turnovers, I'm not too worried about them since they weren't egregious.
I thought a couple of his turnovers were egregious tbh, especially the one he got benched for
Hoping it'll balance out into a good kind of aggression, but yeah some of his probes are overly optimistic compared to what his handle gives him
I'd consider them less egregious in a game against a worse opponent like the Hornets tonight since that's a better setting for experimentation, but against a team like the Grizzlies I'm not trying to see you try to take a set Jaren Jackson Jr off the dribble, just play your role.
Agreed. Part of the learning process
When he sees the floor, he makes good passes. Kerr seems to have been really hard on him for missteps, I’m optimistic that it’s being hardest on the guys you have the highest hopes for and know they can handle it.
Can we give a huge shout-out to Ty Jerome and Anthony Lamb who have been excellent bench players!! Look past the two way player status and see that Ty Jerome has been averaging 7 points/2 assists on 54% from the field and a scorching 43% from deep along with solid defense!! On the other hand, you have Lamb whose been averaging 6 points/3 rebounds on 52% from the field and a sizzling 41% from deep along with excellent man defense!
The front office has found two extremely solid bench players whose skillets are likely playoff transferrable literally off the trash heap! With the young players coming into their own, I truly believe that we will go on a winning streak when Curry returns!!
I shudder at the alternate reality where we have Mac instead of Ty…
but but.. HE CAN DUNK!! 360 LAYUPS!!
I'll take more fried grizzly in my skillet, please.
They may not be Chef Curry, but for two-way guys they both have very impressive skillets! 😊 🍳
Spurs got an upset win against the Jazz tonight. Jazz fall to 19-17 and #8, while the Mavericks move to #7 in the West.
Nets beat the Cavs. Nets move to #3 in the East while the Cavs fall to #4. Teams #2-5 are only 1.5 games apart from each other,
Although they almost scored enough against us for two wins. 😞
T-Wolves lost, so that means the Warriors move to #10 in the West.
48 games to pick up approximately 3-4 in the standings. Basically, we have to be ~10% better than Sac, Utah, Dallas, Portland, and Minny to get to the six seed.
Assuming a timely Steph return and no more huge injuries (far from certain) we should be in very good shape. We will have most of our travel complete by Jan. 20. Primed for a stretch run.
It's harder than it sounds. With 5 other teams they need to get past, it's not a matter of playing 3-4 games better than the collective, it's a matter of playing 3-4 games better than the best out of the five, and because of variance, it's likely at least one of the teams will be playing above their heads, and the Dubs have to be better than that.
Which they can be, but it's not as easy as just being 3-4 games better than the collective average of the five teams.
I did think of the exact point you are raising (my post did not mention average .. it said better than). But, of those teams, who do you fear?
Dallas is the only one I think could really go on a tear, and would they do it for 3 months? Guessing not.
Basically, I think a .700 winning percentage gets us there for sure, and I would guess, even .650 might do it. That sounds very optimistic, but given that we have a very home heavy schedule after the 20th and the last big trip we have is much more travel friendly, I think we're in good shape.
Of course there are caveats ... does the play we see in the Grizzlies game carry over? And injuries, always injuries.
Let’s get to ASB and see where things stand…
Tier 3: The Blazers & Jazz have been quietly regressing for a month now, I have no faith in the Wolves, and the Kings are going to be playing with an injured Sabonis if he can even play. The flying Doncics will prob play better, but they still have no defense.
Tier 2: the Clippers are mediocre without Kawhi, and the Suns are going to be missing Booker AND have a tough road heavy schedule coming up.
Tier 1: Denver, NO, and Memphis prob going to be hard to catch
This seems right to me. Fortunately we don't need to catch those Tier 1 teams as long as we're ready for them in the playoffs. That won't be easy either but it's what we do.
Neither Denver, nor Memphis scare me… I’m wondering if we should fear NO, tho… they’ve got multiple physical mismatches in Zion, Ingram, and Valencunias, a high level bucket getter in CJ, solid defenders in Jones & Alvarado, an a solid/versatile bench. We’d have to count on playing their bigs off the floor, attacking Zion’s and CJ’s defense, and just generally protecting the paint. We have two more games against them, one of which we’re on a SEGABABA and the other game, they’re on a SEGABABA, so not too much to be learned from the regular season match ups given that we have already punted the first two match ups…
Bummer the Pistons couldn’t hold their 12 point lead over the Clippers for 4m, tho… Playoff P strikes again!
14 point lead with 3:34 left, and Lue had pulled the starters.
Fvck off, Pistons.
Ooohhhhhh yyyyeeeeaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh!!!!
Kuminga with a solid +21 on his son's birthday
Ha, sorry, just a dumb Christmas joke ☺️
But for real, what a game for the youngsters. I for one did not see that coming.
That's a lot of praising of the Warriors. Make sure you don't get a tech for that. 😁
Lots of arrows in Mr. DH’s quiver. Just one after the next being fired off relentlessly!
Looking forward to the homestand turning into a winning streak that expands to the road.
Really hoping for 8-2 over the next 10 heading into 1/19 in Boston
Every game I become a bigger fan of DDV. He's proving himself to be a top tier player who will be in demand next off season. What can the Dubs do to incentivize DDV to stay around for the second year of his contract rather than opting out to collect a bag from someone else? The current contract is $4.5M. Based on his play so far, I expect that someone will offer him something north of $10M per.
They could theoretically go up to the full TMPLE, or about $7M. And after year two, they’d have his Early Bird rights, so could go up to $11M or so.
But yeah, if he keeps playing like this, someone’s likely to offer him significantly more than that.
Same… but this was expected. I try to look at it this way: if he does play himself into a 3y/$40M contract, he will have had a great impact on our Dubs championship chances this year.
And it will help convince someone next offseason to do the same thing DDV did
"...help convince someone next offseason to do the same thing DDV did" .....and GP2 and OPJ.
Some delicious and well-earned gold-blooded crowing on behalf of the greatest hype man in Dub Nation. A KO punch from Daniel on this here boxing day. Last night was not just a win, it was a punking.
This is high-level gloating.
GOAT-gloat
Daniel came with receipts. And that article graphic…
That article graphic, quite curious if Daniel makes these himself or has them made?
That's me Oak!
It.is.AWESOME!
Throwing Hella creative shade.
Love it.
Meeting the high expectations he’s set for himself… his consistent effort and performance are truly amazing