S.F. Examiner: Warriors turning smallball into large difference in series

By Art Spander
San Francisco Examiner

There's a phrase for everything in sports, isn't there? We had "Billy Ball" for the move-'em-along style of baseball the A's played in the early 1980s. We had "Hack-a-Shaq" for the way opponents repeatedly fouled Shaquille O'Neal, because he couldn't make free throws.

And now we have "smallball," which seems to be anything in the NBA involving athletes 6-foot-9 or shorter.

Read the full story here.

© 2015 The San Francisco Examiner 

Warriors continue the streak that coaches try to ignore

By Art Spander

OAKLAND — Oh yes, the Bay Area, where suddenly nothing makes sense. Where Colin Kaepernick, the silent one, becomes an orator. Where a drought turns into a storm of biblical proportions. Where the Warriors fall behind the Houston Rockets by 11 points.

This seemed the perfect day for basketball perfection to stop. Andrew Bogut on the bench with an injury. The Warriors missing nine of their first 10 3-point shots. Sooner or later, the run has to end, right? Of course, but it wouldn’t end Wednesday night.

So Kaepernick, the 49ers' QB, talked. And talked. And the weather people warned us that we would be washed away if we weren’t blown away. But good old (well, good young) Golden State would not be defeated.

They played the fourth quarter the way the sellout crowd at The Oracle expected them to play every quarter, tight defense, effective offense and, outscoring the Rockets 32-17 in the quarter, won 105-93. It was their 14th straight victory, a franchise record.

Although coach Steve Kerr tries to stay as reticent about the subject as Kaepernick had been down Santa Clara way about another subject, himself. Kaep didn’t want to let us in on what wasn’t happening. Kerr barely will let us in on what is happening: The winning.

“The coaches don’t talk about it,” said Kerr, the usual answer when teams streak one way, winning — the Warriors haven’t lost since November 11, a month — or the other, losing. It’s the famous “one game at a time” admonition. Even though you don’t get headlines for one game. Unless it’s the one that keeps the streak alive or brings it to a close.

“I’ve heard the guys say things like, ‘Let’s keep this thing going,’” Kerr conceded. “You don’t want to put more pressure on yourself. It’s tough to win in this league. There are so many great teams.”

At the moment, off their record, 19-2, the Warriors are the greatest. And if Kerr isn’t the greatest coach — let’s see, for a start there’s Red Auerbach and Red Holzman, Phil Jackson and Gregg Popovich — he is the first to begin his NBA career at 19-2.

When asked what it meant, the rookie answered properly, “It means I’m the luckiest coach in NBA history. I inherited a team that was already really good.”

Absolutely, with people such as Klay Thompson (21 points Wednesday), Stephen Curry (20) and Harrison Barnes (20). But he also means that he has them playing with passion and intelligence. Playing defense, because that wins (teams are shooting more poorly against the W’s than against any other franchise). Playing courageously.

An off game Wednesday night, the big man Bogut not on the floor (then again, neither was the Rockets’ Dwight Howard) and Houston’s quick James Harden shooting well (34 points). And yet the W’s came out ahead. Encouraging.

They go on the road now, Dallas, New Orleans, and Memphis. Surely one of those will be a loss. Maybe all of those. Still, what the Warriors have accomplished to this point is, well, remarkable. Fourteen straight wins? That doesn’t happen these days.

That doesn’t happen to the Warriors.

“It took us so long to break through,” said Kerr. “That’s a helluva team they have over there. They defend like crazy and make it hard to guard because they have all those shooters around Harden.

“The last six or seven minutes we had just tremendous efforts from everybody on the floor. Harrison was great, and Steph and Klay made big shots.”

The Warriors, down 86-83 with 6:20 remaining, just smothered Houston.

“They attacked us off the dribble,” said Kevin McHale, the Rockets' coach, “and we didn’t handle it very well. They got some open stuff, and when they went small, it bothered us.”

Small is a relative word in pro basketball, meaning people who may not be 6-10 or 6-9 but don’t buy their clothes off the rack at Macy’s, such as 6-foot-7 Shaun Livingston and 6-6 Andre Iguodala.

“We wanted to do small down the stretch,” said Kerr. “What more can you say about Draymond (Green, who is 6-7) because he guards (7-foot) Donatas Motiejunas and fronts him and steals the ball a couple of times and then switches out and guards (the 6-5) Harden. Then he jumps out on Patrick Beverley or Jason Terry.

“The versatility defensively of what Draymond brings is remarkable.”

The Warriors are passionate in their basketball, selfless. They do what is required. Most of all, they play defense when it matters. Good teams always do that.

Lakers: Plenty of talent, very little heart

Here are the conceivable excuses available for the Los Angeles Lakers, reputedly a basketball team of championship caliber, if not championship character.

* The game in Houston started at 9 p.m., past the Lakers’ bedtime.

* But 9 p.m. in Houston is only 7 p.m. in Los Angeles, so maybe the Lakers hadn’t awakened from their afternoon naps.

* The Lakers lost concentration because Yao Ming, unable to play, was a spectator, and rarely had been watched by anyone taller than an even 7 feet.

* The Lakers were so amused by the Nike commercial with Kobe and LeBron as Muppets characters, they couldn’t stop laughing until the Rockets were ahead 17-1.

* The Manny Ramirez situation has everyone in the L.A. area so distracted, nobody can think about anything else, Lakers included.

Yes, the Lakers will win Sunday and will take the series and move on to face Denver. But they shouldn’t. Not the way they stood around in Game 6 for the first six minutes.

You can’t call the Lakers gutless. They did rally to get within two points in the third quarter on Thursday night before losing, 95-80.

But you can call them heartless. No team with that much talent, with that much momentum, the Lakers having beaten Houston by 40 points on Tuesday night, should play that badly.

And you can call them clueless.

They were baffled by the Rockets’ Louis Scola, who scored 24 points, many of them on baskets about four inches from the rim. Scola’s from Argentina, so maybe the Lakers were looking for a guy with chaps and a Gaucho hat singing about Eva Peron.

The Lakers and Boston Celtics both have Game Sevens at home. The Celtics, the anti-Lakers, a team that scraps and hustles, earned that seventh game, showing more than enough fight in the loss at Orlando. No Kevin Garnett. Guys in foul trouble, but the Celts kept trying.

The Lakers earned a sneer. The Rockets were not only without Yao but also Tracy McGrady. And they had lost, 118-78, two evenings earlier. They had the right to, as Sinatra sang, roll up into a big ball and die. Instead it was the Lakers who were in a funk.

Phil Jackson, the Lakers coach, has nine NBA titles (six with Michael Jordan), so seemingly he understands not just the technical side of basketball but the psyches of the men who play it. Yet as Houston kept making points and L.A. kept making mistakes, Jackson was no more adept at making corrections than Madonna.

After the game, Jackson said that the Lakers play on the road “concerns me, but what are we going to do about it now? We can’t stew on it.’’

Others can. There’s the issue of pride. Champions – and hasn’t everyone all but conceded the finals will be between the Lakers and Cavaliers? – play like champions. That doesn’t mean necessarily that they’ll win. It does mean necessarily that they don’t embarrass themselves.

Or pro basketball.

You win by 40 points and 48 hours later lose by 15? Just because Jack Nicholson isn’t sitting courtside? Something is wrong.

“You know what, you’ve just got to grind these things out, man,’’ Kobe Bryant told the media after the game. “The key now is to win by any means necessary.’’

Not to question Kobe, who got his 32 points (if on 11 for 27 shooting), but isn’

t that the idea every time a team takes the floor or the field or the ice, to win?

To show up and show some courage. You’ve heard more times than needed that defense is simply hard work. Maybe the shots don’t fall, but there’s no reason you can’t do everything possible to keep the opponent’s from falling. The Lakers early on did nothing of the sort.

Scola was scoring. Aaron Brooks, 26 points, was scoring. Who would you rather have, Kobe and Pau Gasol or Louis Scola and Aaron Brooks?

Houston, the town, had given up. “Pulse faint for Crutch City Rockets,’’ was the headline in Thursday’s Houston Chronicle, a reference to McGrady and Yao. Houston the team had not given up.

Los Angeles the team? We can debate that.

Phil Jackson said he was “looking forward to Sunday’s game.’’

Coaches always talk like that. What happened in the past, even the very recent past, is never discussed openly (although you can bet there were some aggressive conversations in private.)

In a way, the Rockets are also looking forward to Sunday’s game. They never figured to get that far. Not with the Lakers having beaten them four straight in the regular season. Not with the Lakers holding the home-court advantage. Not with Houston losing star players.

“We play differently on our home court,’’ Kobe Bryant insisted.

Is that an explanation? Or an excuse?