| Little Jack Or Baby Jack, Warriors Better With Morrow Authored by Christopher Reina - November 21, 2008 - 3:19 pm
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The Warriors started Andris Biedrins, Corey Maggette, Stephen Jackson, Kelenna Azubuike, and Anthony Morrow in Tuesday's 111-106 victory against the Portland Trail Blazers. Each of those five players were on the floor for at least 33 minutes, and the other player on the Warriors with more than 11 minutes was C.J. Watson, who played 35 minutes.
There are two very interesting things with that six-man rotation:
1. Four players that are essentially shooting guards
2. Three of those players went undrafted (Azubuike, Morrow and Watson) and another (Jackson) didn't play an NBA game until three years after he was drafted.
(Rob Kurz and DeMarcus Nelson are two other members of the Warriors who went undrafted.)
When it comes to money and salaries, the Warriors are similar to George Costanza in that they are 'extremely careful' with it. A polite and indirect way to say they are notoriously cheap.
How do you offset the departure of Baron Davis, the injury to Monta Ellis and the talent drain of not having Al Harrington? How do you also offset the complete waste of a future first rounder that has become Marcus Williams?
Find undrafted rookies like Morrow.
When this game was scheduled a few months ago, would Anthony Morrow have even been considered in the conversation for who the best rookie on the floor would be?
Definitely not; we thought he would be playing in the Ukraine by now.
But even though anyone reasonable and realistic still expects Greg Oden, Jerryd Bayless, Rudy Fernandez and Anthony Randolph to have more successful careers than Morrow, he truly was the best rookie in this game.
Randolph got a DNP.
Bayless made the regular Portland point guard rotation of Steve Blake and Sergio Rodriguez look like All-Star veterans in comparison.
Fernandez shot 3-7 from distance, finishing with 13 points and seven rebounds, with three assists, five fouls, two steals, two turnovers and one block.
Oden, playing nearly 30 minutes due to the foul trouble and overall ineffectiveness (-1.8 Game FIC Score) of LaMarcus Aldridge, had 22 points and 10 rebounds. But he had five turnovers, five fouls and a -11 +/- mark.
Morrow scored a game-high 25 points on 8-12 shooting from the floor, 4-5 from beyond the arc and 5-5 from the line. These are not 25 points coming off of Baron Davis kick outs or transition points off rebounds in which the Blazers' defense is not setup. These are buckets off the dribble and tightly contested three-pointers.
The Blazers knew very well that Morrow had scored 37 points on Saturday and also knew 'how' he scored those points. Surely there was a thought in the game plan to dare Morrow into attempting to have another high volume shooting night, but that quickly went out the window after he made the next four shots he attempted after his initial miss.
Don Nelson, who is uncharacteristically falling in love with a rookie, sat Morrow for the majority of the 4th quarter. The Warriors subsequently struggled to score buckets from the field during that final frame, shooting 6-18 and were saved by the 12 fouls committed by Portland and their 19-19 response from the line. Morrow's +/- was +10 and even before Tuesday's game, the Warriors were almost 18 points per 100 possessions better offensively with him- not just because of his own scoring but also the attention he already commands that frees up the other scorers. Jackson is shooting just 37.1% from the floor and needs 'Little Jack' (or 'Baby Jack' as my preference) to free him.
He and the Warriors will subsequently be freed or more appropriately, bolstered, by a healthy Ellis and the inevitable return in some sort of useful body that they get for Harrington.
But in the meantime, the Warriors will have the best rookie on the floor on most nights. |
