Two people with knowledge of the negotiations say the Golden State Warriors are close to signing guard Nate Robinson, who was released by the Oklahoma City Thunder last month.
This could be interesting. Nate has shown he can score and can carry the backup role behind Steph and Monta. I think his question marks have always been attitude and defense. Not sure the defense has improved but maybe Mark Jackson can fix the attitude.
Tests revealed Curry didn't sustain any ligament damage and the repairs made in his offseason surgery are still intact.
Some good news for the Warriors. There's no reason to play Steph in the first two games. Let him rest up a full week and play against the Knicks in the 3rd game of the season. And if the Warriors somehow beat the Clippers AND the Bulls, I would rest him until they go on the road against Phoenix the following week. No season was won or lost on the first few games and if he hurts that ankle again, he could be out for months instead of days.
Center Kwame Brown has agreed to a one-year, $7-million contract with the Golden State Warriors, according to a Yahoo! Sports report.
Kind of scratching my head on this one. $7M for a back-up center who has had a history of underachievement? So now we have two centers who aren't worth their contracts?
Sources said that the Hornets have actually been trying to convince the Warriors to part with Curry since before last season's trade deadline in February.
On the surface, Chris Paul for Stephen Curry sounds like a no brainer trade. But before people think this is another Speedy Claxton for Baron Davis, there are some big pitfalls involved. First, Stephen Curry is a much better player than Speedy Claxton ever was and at 23, he's yet to reach his prime. Second, the market for Baron Davis circa 2004 was limited. Remember this was the disgruntled, slightly overweight Baron Davis who clashed with Byron Scott, a coach who had taken the Nets to back-to-back NBA Finals. The Warriors knew they could sign Davis to an extension with not too many suitors out there. Chris Paul on the other had is one of the Top 3 point guards in the league. Every team with cap room will make a run at him and he knows it so why sign an extension when you can play for a year and get the gold rush in the summer of 2012? Curry for a one year rental of Paul is not a good move.
Paul has stated he would be more willing (though not guaranteed) to sign an extension with a team that acquired his buddy Tyson Chandler. The Warriors are pushing towards that and he would be an upgrade over Biedrins - some offense, good defense/rebounding, veteran leadership, playoff experience. Still, I don't see a starting 5 of Paul/Ellis/Wright/Lee/Chandler as anything more than the 4th or 5th best team in the West. Definitely an improvement but nowhere near what it would take to be a contender.
The Golden State Warriors have hired Rick Welts as their president and chief operating officer, the team announced Monday night.
Another piece to the puzzle. Phoenix has been a winning franchise for a long time and adding Welts will help Golden State. Lacob and Guber seem to be making all the right moves. Now if the lockout would end...
The Golden State Warriors hired Jerry West on Friday to work with the front-office team in an advisory role and be a member of the executive board. West will assist the basketball operations staff and the business arm of the team, reporting directly to new owners Joe Lacob and Peter Guber.
This is HUGE! Just look at what he did for the Lakers and Grizzlies. A big step in the right direction.
This is a wait and see kind of signing. I remember when Thornton used to torch the Warriors when he was with the Clippers. He's fallen off the face of the earth with his exile to the Wizards but let's hope a change of scenery will improve his numbers. It'll be interesting to see where he'll find his minutes. He'll most likely come off the bench to spell Wright and could fill the same niche that Corey Maggette and Al Harrington had a few years ago. He could bolster a thin bench that only really has Reggie Williams and Vladimir Radmanovic.
We're experiencing some pretty amazing times in Bay Area sports (Raiders and 49ers aside). Giants are up 2-0 in the World Series and looking stronger than ever and the Warriors just opened the season with two good wins. Going into the offseason, I had my ideas about what they needed to do and of course, I had my opinions about the moves they made. Obviously, the biggest news was the sale of the team which trumps pretty much all other news. On the personnel side, they picked up David Lee but lost some players in Anthony Morrow and CJ Watson to free agency and Maggette to a trade to the Bucks. They also drafted Ekpe Udoh with the 6th pick.
Overall, I thought the moves were good. Getting Lee was great - a solid workman like 20-10 guy. Maggette was always going to be a defensive liability and never really made any team he played on better (a hollow 18-20pts a game). Udoh was a head scratcher but there wasn't anyone drafted after him that stood out. Plus with him being hurt, his grade is an incomplete for now. The one that I disagreed with the most was letting Morrow go and replacing him with Dorell Wright for virtually the same money. Why would you let one of the best young 3 point specialist go and pick up a scrub that never scored more than 8pts a game? Well after watching Dorell play in 2 games, I can begin to see the reasoning. He's not a flashy player but he's smart. Though he's a career 36.3% 3pt shooter, I saw him pass up a bunch of threes and instead pump fake and step in on his defender for easier mid-range shots. Morrow may be more accurate from outside but I doubt he has the maturity to take what a defense will give him. He'd rather force up a three as oppose to getting that closer shot. Though it's a long season, Morrow's currently averaging 8.5pts a game versus Wright's 19.5pts. But the reason I have more faith in Wright is that he doesn't seem like he's forcing anything. Plus he plays much better defense - something the Warriors need to focus on to make it to the next level. We'll see how he and the W's fare against their biggest test to date - at Staples against the Lakers on Sunday...
And Clevelanders, because they were the bigger-city kids when we were growing up, looked down on us. ... So we didn't actually like Cleveland. We hated Cleveland growing up. There's a lot of people in Cleveland we still hate to this day.
This is an excerpt from a GQ interview with LeBron. Of course, I don't agree with his method of leaving Cleveland (The Decision) but I never had an issue with him wanting to go somewhere else to play. It's a free country and he can go any where he wants. As we know loyalty is only skin deep when it comes to players and owners.
The above quote should give people some insight into LeBron's mind though as it relates to Cleveland and his true hometown Akron. I hear a lot of folks bash LeBron because he turned his back on his hometown. But that's simply not true because LeBron never considered Cleveland his hometown. A more closer to home example for me would be if someone from the East Bay called San Francisco their hometown. It ain't. Two different cities that might as well be separated by 100 or 1,000 miles than just 10 culturally speaking.
Finally. Nuff said.
