LOS ANGELES, CA — When I last left off, aside from the shootaround before the Saturday 11/16/2013 game against the Utah Jazz, Draymond Green was busy on the near court doing post up moves. One thing I missed reporting was that he did a short video segment with Monte Poole. I noticed the Zephyr bio-harness that Dray was wearing and here’s the link for the CSN Bay Area site, although the video on the page doesn’t seem to be the right one.
Again, I missed shootaround the following day. That night, the Golden State Warriors demolished the Jazz, then took off for Salt Lake City, took the day off on Sunday, took care of business Monday night in Utah, then flew back to Oakland.
TUESDAY PRACTICE, 11/19/2013
Mark Jackson started the interview session answering the obvious questions about holding out Stephen Curry from the forthcoming game against the Memphis Grizzlies. When asked if Harrison Barnes would start, Jackson used it as a chance to take a dig at the reports that Brian Scalabrine was being considered to replace the injured Jermaine O’Neal.
“I’ll figure that out as we get closer to the ballgame,” Jackson said, “Safe to assume that I will not be playing and I will never assign one of my assistant coaches and that has never been considered.”
This came at the heels of a report from Rusty Simmons of the SF Chronicle two days prior, where, after the Warriors beat the Jazz at Oracle Arena:
…two of the team’s top decision-makers stood deep inside Oracle Arena and discussed how to replace injured Jermaine O’Neal.
The conversation got so extreme that they entertained asking assistant coach Brian Scalabrine to come out of retirement to fill the void.
If you Google “scalabrine jermaine o’neal”, a whole host of blogs ran with that has the headline of a story. Jackson ended his interview with the same reference to Scalabrine. Make of that what you will, but it could be Jackson poking fun at media or said top decision-makers.
Jackson then talked about Andre Iguodala running the point, Nemanja Nedovic and Kent Bazemore getting an opportunity, and the Andrew Bogut and David Lee matchup against Marc Gasol and Zach Randolph. Here was Poole’s pregame report.
Lee then took questions and I put my report in the preview for the Grizzlies game.
WEDNESDAY MORNING SHOOTAROUND, 11/20/2013
Shootaround began that morning with a lot of activity emanating from the closed doors of the practice facility. It almost sounded like there was a mini-practice, but as it turns out, Steph and J.O. did not practice.
First up was Klay Thompson and he discussed how he takes 50 jumpers on game days and 200 to 300 on non-game-days. I tweeted how that information might have helped me in my younger years:
Knowing that Klay shoots 50 jumpers in the mornings on game days would've been of great help during my clueless HS varsity years.
— Poor Man's Commish (@poormanscommish) November 20, 2013
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I recall during game days, I wanted to have a good shooting night. Sometimes I’d go to the park and shoot around, but sometimes I’d end up wearing myself out. So I didn’t really have a good system. Now, kids everywhere can learn from Klay’s routines.
The Chronicle’s Scott Ostler was hot on the beat and resulted with post, including questions about Jerry West‘s influence. Ironically on the same day, our Ryan Brown also posted a story on Klay, in particular his dominance at Oracle.
I got the chance to ask Klay about how his numbers are eclipsing that of Ray Allen‘s in 2007-08, when the Boston Celtics won the championship. I’ll have a story on that soon and rope that back with some of the things Klay said, such as his routines, and that weren’t covered in Ostler’s report.
Finally, we got a chance to sit down with Baze. Marcus Thompson got his questions in about the opportunities at point guard, then Thompson dashed off and posted this. Meanwhile, Baze continued with Ostler, and he described how he has bonded with O’Neal as well as the rest of the team.
One interesting note was that Steph had setup a group chat among the team, so that they could all text each other, such as having dinner together in whatever city. I’ll corral those quotes together and do a post on that, which will be a good companion piece to J.O.’s #WeAreAllWeGotWeAreAllWeNeed thread.
I got to ask Baze about J.O.’s injury and framed it in terms of if Jermaine had reported any pain. It was interesting to hear Baze’s response, that O’Neal doesn’t like to show any weakness, so he hasn’t given Kent any information on it.
WEDNESDAY NIGHT AT ORACLE VS MEMPHIS GRIZZLIES, 11/20/2013
After Wednesday night’s loss, I posted this editorialized report. Btw, here’s Sarah Todd with a more detailed recap.
But one thing I did manage to do after the game in the locker room was (finally) ask Bogues about the Kiwi vs Aussie rivalry. He said he didn’t want to comment on it because Steven Adams is “only a rookie”. I took that to mean that he didn’t want to say anything that could light a fire under Adams, who is very young, hungry, and probably doesn’t have a bigger perspective on things yet.
I’ll report on the quotes I have left over from Adams from the OKC game when I can, perhaps before the next matchup vs OKC.
The team left for LA that night. Yesterday, MT2 filed this on Curry’s progress.
I am currently in Los Angeles, but do not have a media credential for the game. I did have clearance to attend Warriors shootaround this morning, but was informed that it was moved to a “private location”. The ultimate insider, MT2 later revealed where this was:
GSW shootaround at home of Steve Jackson, neighbor of Jerry West who has a regulation-sized replica of the Staples Center court at his house
— Marcus Thompson (@gswscribe) November 22, 2013
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And as I finish this post, MT2 has the report that Steph will not play tonight:
Steph Curry is out
— Marcus Thompson (@gswscribe) November 23, 2013
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He had this earlier post as well.
I will, however, report my experience from Staples. It’s only my second time here.
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