Comments on: Game #6 Preview: The Night Where We Find Out If Early-Season Trends Are Meaningful

By: Amadou O'Bird

Amadou O'Bird — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 17:34:44 +0000

So how’d your predictions turn out?

“The team probably won’t stop Golden State from putting a ton of points on the board … they should be able to hold them to around 45% shooting from the field.”

They shot .402, and .267 from the arc and scored 94 points in a quick game.

“…if this team [Indiana] can’t put 100 points up tonight, it really is time to start to worry where the scoring is going to come from.”

Mission accomplished. 18 turnovers for the Pacers, though, really undermines their offense (four each for Hibbert, Dahntay, and Granger)…

By: Amadou O'Bird

Amadou O'Bird — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 07:23:07 +0000

The defense is ahead of the offense. Three victories over teams with problems, so it’s hard for Indiana fans to get elated; still the rotations are looking pretty good, ball pressure is much improved, and they’re even getting turnovers. As I write, Indiana is eighth in DRtg. Washington couldn’t get anything going until the Pacers relaxed and started giving up offensive boards; better job against GS – Monta Ellis got hung up shooting jump shots and taken out of the middle of the floor. The Warriors had success using Maggette against Hansbrough; as soon as Tyler came in, they started working it. Tyler got most of it back, though, on the other end. Indiana did a very effective job of taking them out of a team game, and out of their transition game. It has to be said, though, that the Warriors looked tired, and the drama between Jack and Coach was right out in the open – that can’t have been good for morale or team energy.

By: Tim Donahue

Tim Donahue — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 03:09:13 +0000

18 tonight was too many, but offset it by just killing them on the glass..ORB% was a .327, and DRB% was .820, for a combined 1.147. The last three games have been top ten by DefRtg (pts allowed per 100) during the O’Brien administration, and it’s the first time they’ve held the opponents under 100 on DRtg since late November/early December 2007.

Of course, it’s useful to remember that the DefRtg was around 103 last November, so…long season to go.

Great to see Danny hitting some shots. Awesome game by him.

By: kester

kester — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:40:51 +0000

I’ll chime in for watching the steals and turnovers…the Warriors have a plus-20 TO ratio, again, mostly based on their murder of Minnesota…and they stole the ball 22 times vs the ‘wolves. Those figures aren’t typical of their other games, but they’ll be trying to turn us over, and we’ve shone ourselves vulnerable to that before.

By: Jared Wade

Jared Wade — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 22:19:22 +0000

Indeed, TD. But even 15 per is too many — even at Indy’s pace.

Basically, all these numbers are dumb until mid-December at the earliest. But they are all we have to go off of until then. And it’s not like I’m going to actually analyze the Warriors roster. I mean, even I don’t have that kind of time to waste.

By: Vic De Zen

Vic De Zen — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:41:57 +0000

This really should be a fun game. Could have both teams scoring in the 120′s, easy.

By: Tim Donahue

Tim Donahue — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:29:51 +0000

One game can make a huge difference this early in numbers. The Pacers turnovers are skewed by the 25 TO game at Atlanta (averaging 15.0 pg in the other 4, which is average), while Golden State’s offensive numbers are really skewed by the Minnesota outburst on Monday…that game took their OffRtg from under 103 to over 108.

The worry here for the Pacers is GS’s shooting ability. If the Pacers have another bad shooting start, and Golden State’s shooters get hot, then it could get away from Indy really quickly.

Also, I’m sure this has been noticed and commented on before, but I find it amusing that the three letter abbreviation used by the NBA and most of their sites for the Warriors (GSW) is also used as an Emergency Room/Cop acronym for Gun Shot Wound. Seems like there’s some mileage to be made from the coincidence.