First of all, I am a fan of fantastic basketball, and the Warriors are lucky to have a player that is as fun to watch as Monta Ellis. Ellis put in a fantastic performance tonight that was on par with what Wolves fans got to see with Love's 31/31 game and Rudy Gay's dominant performance earlier in the season. It really is fantastic to see players performing at that level, even when they are on the other team. Ellis was 10-20 from the floor with 7 steals and he was everything the Warriors needed from their go-to guy.
As for the Wolves, this was a game that they absolutely needed to have. A team within the SRS rankings with home adjustment and on the 2nd night of a back-to-back. At the 1/2 they had the Warriors' best rebounder in foul trouble and they came out in the 3rd quarter stale and with little to no imagination on offense. Everything that could have been going in the Wolves favor was working at the 1/2. They withstood amazing shooting by the Warriors, Kevin Love was out-rebounding the entire opposing squad, and they were still in the lead with a far superior frontcourt at home.
Then it all fell apart. How could a similarly-talented team come out and dominate a 1/2 like the Warriors did with all of that running in the Wolves' favor? I don't have a good answer for that, but I do know that this team is starting to fall into a very bad place with an extremely tough December schedule on the horizon. I'll leave this initial recap with a comment I left a few weeks back:
The expectation is that they’ll pick up some easy wins late in the year, but they really don’t have too many games before the new year that they should win. Between December 1st and the 26th, they play 14 games with 10 of them on the road and 4 back to backs. Cleveland and Detroit are going to be about as close to must wins if they want to get above 20 this year. They’re also going to need 2-3 wins in the next 8 games. If they win 2 of the next 8, they’ll hit the crazy stretch at 4-13. Then they’re looking at a 2-3 win December and 6-27 or 7-26 on New Year’s.
If that’s the case, they will need to play .387 ball to get to 25 wins. That’s a pace unequaled since the days of Dwane Casey. If they play at a 20% clip, they get to 16 wins.
They really need to get it done in home games where the SRS spread is below 5. They can’t screw up too many more of those games if they want to get to 25.
They screwed one up tonight. There are a lot of nice individual stories on this squad but it's time that they start to put together some nice team stories. Darko and Beasley's performances have to start turning themselves into wins otherwise this team is right back where we hoped they wouldn't be: In Wittsville.
What say you?