Maybe, but his defense and rebounding were there though. He stops a number of those backdoor cuts in the second half, which could have easily turned the game.
Agreed. Yes he played flustered in the 1st, but you need Dwight in the 4th when you play more half court offense. We gave us so many layups and offensive boards that just don't happen with dwight.
Navicular bone, not knee. But I agree and hope it's nothing fracture or anything starting with the letter "T".
Agreed, and #1 and #3 have been issues for him against GSW historically. He's just a bit slow and robotic offensively, we need him facing up rather than having his back to the basket and also rolling off picks. Still has to be careful of strips (and hacks). Also agree with rimrocker, he was clearly going to be owning on defense and with rebounding. It started hurting after a while when our defense was falling apart / scrambling and we didn't have a big to help with rebounding and interior presence. He and Josh Smith are towering over some of their opponents/match-ups, we need to obliterate them with that advantage. Speights will help them out a lot.
True but at least half of his TO's last night can be attributed to general sloppiness and/or nerves. His TO's are obviously frustrating, but I don't see how we can win this series without him out there. I can live with 7-8 TO's if he's giving us a 20-20 game.
The Rockets are a lot closer to Golden State than people realize. I think Golden State wins this series regardless of whether Howard comes back in game 2 or not. Howard has warts but the Warriors cannot really handle him. I am going to be very excited to see what happens the rest of this series and next year. This feels an whole lot like the Warriors playoff run last year and the Rockets playoff run 20 years ago. Both teams learned how to compete and win in a surprising playoff run and came back competing for a championship next season. I think we will narrow the margin with GS in the off season addressing the point guard and power forward situation.
There's no margin to be narrowed. The Rockets with zero injuries beat this team hands down. The Rockets will improve though. PG and PF. I'm pretty sure we're not going to have all 3 of TJ, DMO and Smith.
Smith loves it here, Detroit is still paying him for the next 4 years so I don't think he'll mind taking a discount to stay.
A healthy Grizzlies team might've beaten Golden State. Remember, they were without Conley in Game 1 and Allen was either out or severely limited in the back half of that series(which so happens to be when the Warriors went 3-0).
Maybe we were seeing different things, but we were pounding them in the paint when Howard was healthy. They seemed helpless. Obviously, when Dwight got hurt and couldn't "do anything", in his words, the advantage goes away. And he played a lot of minutes in this state, and often when the Warriors had Green at center. Thus, it looks like he didn't adjust to playing against the swarming Warriors. He was hurt during that time. That play when Josh threw the alley and Dwight couldn't jump was d***ing. Dwight had 2 turnovers before he got hurt. Personally, I am not taking any observations after he got hit by Smith. He was clearly a different player. Do you really think he would have ended the game with 8+ turnovers? His turnover high before this game was 4. Imagine all of Jones' layup clanks are Howard dunks. Did you see all the tip ins and lay-ups at the end as well? Quite frankly, we were dominating the paint on both ends before he got hurt. Bogut was looking helpless, and do you truly believe Draymond Green at center would be able to keep Howard/Smith off the boards consistently? This advantage clearly outweighs what would have lead to a high turnover and missed FT game.
That 4-5 PnR was killing them. When Smoove had Green switch onto Dwight, Dwight had an easy took over the top. We need to stop posting up and just high screen PnR and go downhill on these guys. I was so frustrated starting that second half and we had no flow. The Warriors had no answer for that play and we never ran it. ESPN ran a segment showing how dominant that play was. I hope Dwight can bounce back. Hopefully the knee is okay and he can mentally move on knowing his knee is physically okay. But we need to punish these guys on the inside. Our best set is when Harden-Smoove-Dwight are on the same side of the court. When Smith sets a pick for Harden and he kicks it back to Smoove on a switch, Smoove has done a great job of interior passing. We can't beat these guys playing small ball. We need that rim protection and play above the rim game. But that 2nd quarter by the refs was atrocious. Moving screens, hacks on drives, and no calls. Meanwhile they call an offensive foul on Dwight trying to establish position and Terry barely touching Curry's jersey on his drive. Unbelievable.
I love Dwight, but he's now damaged goods. Been that way all season. Do we expect his body to get better as time progresses? Not likely DeAndre Jordan is now a FA. He's also at odds with CP. C'mon DeAndre! Harden & Jordan would make a formidable duo. Just sayin'
Uh, Dwight's looked fantastic this season when his knees are healthy. Including in the previous series when he outplayed DeAndre.
