What's the Point?: High-Scoring Golden State Still in Need of a Floor Leader

(Photo by Jed Jacobsohn/Getty Images)

A few weeks back in his weekly podcast, ESPN’s Bill Simmons was awestruck when he looked at the Golden State Warriors roster.  It boasts, as Simmons claimed, seven players who could score 35 or more points in a given game. 

An intriguing statistic, no doubt, but I was incredulous as to whether a team, even the second most prolific team in the league at 108.6 points per game, could possess such a number of eruptive scoring potential.  I had to look it up.  And, sure enough, my skepticism was unwarranted, and Simmons was right.

The Warriors have at their disposal seven players who could detonate for 35 points on any particular night: Monta Ellis, Stephen Jackson, Anthony Morrow, Corey Maggette, Kelenna Azubuike, Stephen Curry, and Anthony Randolph.

The inclusion of Azubuike, having never before scored 35, may be a reach, but with a career high of 33-points and an improving game that raised his scoring average to 14.4 from 8.5 in 2009, it’s only a moderate stretch. 

And the listing of Stephen Curry and Anthony Randolph are a bit presumptuous, I realize.  But Curry is the purest shooter to come out of college in recent years, and fused with Don Nelson’s offensive philosophy he is bound for multiple 35-plus nights (of course, offset by a few clunkers; inconsistency is expected with all rookies).

There may be a few hiccups here and there, but it will be a successful marriage.  Then there’s Randolph who, in his young career, has a personal best of just 24-points.

But his stellar Summer League performance (26.8 points, 8.5 rebounds, 2.2 steals, 3.0 blocks per game, .609 shooting, and one 42-point outburst against the Chicago Bulls) is a welcome indication of his realized potential, and it should result in a blossoming season.  A godsend, as the Warriors are in dire need of an offensive threat in the post.

So count ‘em up.  That’s seven deadly scorers.  Seven players opponents must body up and defend at all times—an unrelenting wave of points.  That’s more weapons than the Phoenix Suns, the highest scoring team in the league; and that’s a larger arsenal than the Los Angeles Lakers, the NBA’s most well-rounded offensive team.

The Warrior’s roster, overflowing with firepower, is a match up nightmare.

But oftentimes objects with a surfeit of power are highly unstable—unless there is a stabilizer.  In basketball, this usually comes in the form of a point guard who can evenly distribute the ball and run an offense either on the fast break or, preferably, in the half-court.

The Warriors lack just this.  A missing point guard, along with an absent defensive philosophy, is their tragic flaw.  They got 4.3 liters, eight-cylinders, and 550 horses under the hood, all ready to burn rubber, but no driver.

All the force in the world is useless, sometimes self-destructive, without harness and direction.  The Warriors almost always implode for this very reason.

Here’s their projected point guard rotation:

Monta Ellis
Stephen Curry
Speedy Claxton
Acie Law
C.J. Watson (if he re-signs)

Yikes.

All of us in the Bay Area love Monta Ellis, even after the moped debacle.  But he’s a pure scorer, not a distributor.  His bread and butter is the mid-range game and he possesses a preternatural feel for finishing at the hoop. 

But it’s not in his DNA to run an offense.  Monta is of the Tony Parker and Gilbert Arenas ilk, who prefer to score and are more effective when geared toward doing just that.  Ellis isn’t the prototypical half-court orchestrator needed to succeed in the slow-paced game of the NBA Playoffs. 

His game lends well to the pick-and-roll, but the Warriors lack of a jump-shooting big man, which nullifies Ellis’ effectiveness in these situations.  And while he’s better on the break than he is in the setup offense, he lacks the court vision and passing ability to create for teammates on the fly. 

Forcing him to fit that mold, however, isn’t the solution; in fact, it would be counterproductive.  Monta is a two-guard and that’s where he should play.  Asking him to be like Steve Nash would devalue his true worth as a scorer.  But, unfortunately, what the Warriors need is a Steve Nash-type player.

Ditto for Stephen Curry.  Having played only one season at the helm of the

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