Before the season began, much hype surrounded the possibilities of a revamped Golden State Warriors lineup.
They locked up Andrew Bogut to a reasonable deal (although some initially disagreed with the size of the contract), signed Andre Iguodala and brought in useful veterans like Jermaine O’Neal and Marreese Speights. They also had Stephen Curry coming off an incredible playoff run and looking to become a legitiate superstar in the league. Heading into the All-Star break, they expected to be better than 31-22 and eighth in the Western conference, which is where the team currently stands.
General manager Bob Myers has already made one trade, acquiring the services of Jordan Crawford and MarShon Brooks while giving up on Toney Douglas, who failed to play a significant role off the bench through the first half of the season. Based on some of the team’s struggles this season – particularly on the offensive end – Myers is likely not done shaking up the roster. According to Sam Amick of USA Today, the Warriors are aggressively involved in the market as the trade deadline approaches:
According to a person with knowledge of the Warriors’ situation, Golden State is on the lookout for bench help and is hoping to use its trade exceptions as a way to facilitate such a deal that would likely need to involve three teams.
As for the possibility of a bigger deal being done before the deadline, rival executives told USA TODAY Sports last week that anyone outside of point guard Stephen Curry and center Andrew Bogut is, to varying degrees, up for discussion. That includes second-year small forward Harrison Barnes, the Warriors reserve who is known to have sparked serious interest from a long list of suitors but who is unlikely to be traded unless it was part of a package for a big-name player. Even with Barnes’ struggles (he shot 33.7% from the field in January while averaging 6.9 points per game), he still has no shortage of fans within the organization.
One thing is for certain: there are plenty of disappointed people when it comes to how the Warriors have played this season (particularly at home), and owner Joe Lacob is among them. He isn’t overly concerned, though, and here is his candid interview with Tim Kawakami of Mercury News:
-Q: Are you at all bothered by the way the team has stumbled lately, mostly at home?
-LACOB: Here’s the thing, it’s pretty simple: Expectations for this team obviously by the media and by the fans and to some extent by us as well were high this season… And the goal was to get into the top four in the West and get home-court advantage in (the first round of) the playoffs.
But at home we’ve lost a couple games—to Minnesota and to San Antonio when they played their scrubs, if you remember… and Denver and Charlotte. Maybe another, four games that we just absolutely should’ve won.
We didn’t. And I’m not sure why.
We’re not that far off. I’m not as discouraged as some of the fans seem to be. Let’s wait ’til the end of the season to see where things end up.
We obviously need to fix this consistency thing, but we’re still within spitting distance and still have some tie to achieve our goal, which is to get to fourth in the West.
So my answer to your question overall: I’m a little disappointed,. But not overly concerned yet.
Lacob also touched on how he feels about the job Mark Jackson has done this season:
-Q: Are you happy with the job Mark Jackson and his staff is doing?
-LACOB: I think you’re always evaluating everybody, whether it be the players, the coaches… It’s hard to know, if you don’t quite win a few games you should, is it the coach’s fault? Is it the players; fault? It’s hard to say.
I do think our coach has done a good job—we have had some big wins, a lot of wins on the road, and that’s usually a sign of good coaching.
But some things are a little disturbing—the lack of being up for some of these games at home, that’s a concern to me.
Of course there’s pressure on him. Just like there’s pressure on the players, there’s pressure on Mark, too. There’s on me, pressure on Bob Myers…
And you know what? We should all be happy we have that pressure, because the truth is that means we’re relevant.
And here is one more note from the interview about circulating rumors of who they’re willing to trade:
-Q: There’s been a widely circulated USA Today report that you’re wiling to talk about trading anybody on the team except Curry and Bogut. Is that accurate?
-LACOB: That specific statement has been out there. But I think we’d be very reluctant to trade any of our core pieces; we like our core.
WHEN DAVID LEE GUARDS LEBRON JAMES:
This is what happens.
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