The Warriors were one of the main highlights of the league on the past two seasons. In 2006, they caused one of the biggest upsets ever on the history of the NBA by eliminating Dallas in the first round of the Playoffs, who was coming from a 67-15 regular season. And last season they "managed" to finish the regular season with a 48-34 record and still stay out of the postseason. If we ask the coaches of the league if a 48-34 is enough to reach the Playoffs, most of them would say yes. And let's also remember that just 3 teams in the Eastern conference had a better record than the Warriors.

For this season, Don Nelson is still the coach of the team, so the electrifying run and gun system will remain in Oakland. They scored less than 100 points in just 9 games last season and coincidently or not, they lost 8 of them.

The big news of this season for the Warriors is the absence of Baron Davis, who moved to LA and this will be the key factor of the team for this season. Davis, together with Ellis and Jackson, averaged 20 ppg last season and it was the first time in many season a team had 3 players averaging 20 ppg! The three players averaged a combined of 62.1 ppg! Impressive!

However, the absence of Baron won't be concerning in terms of scoring, as Corey Maggete was a great addition to the roster in that department. Maggete is a natural scorer and in the current system of the Warriors, he won't have any problem in averaging 20 ppg this season (he is actually coming from a season where he averaged 22.1 ppg for the Clippers). The main problem for the team will be to play on a run and gun system without a natural leader, who can pass the ball very well.

Baron Davis was the team's playmaker, while being also a great scorer. On the four season he was in Oakland, Baron averaged 8.3, 8.9, 8.1 and 7.6 apg! So, who will be the team's leader now that he's gone? Monta Ellis will be the starting PG, but we all know he is a pure scorer and he averaged just 3.9 apg last season and if we add the 2.13 TO/game he had, Ellis finished last season with a A/TO differential of 1.76!!! The player with most assists barring Baron was Stephen Jackson with 4.1 apg, but he has also averaged almost 2.7 TO/game!

So, the team doesn't have any player in the roster ready to organize the offense of the team in a consistent way. Marcus Williams came from New Jersey and he has potential, but he doesn't seem to be mature enough to command the offense of the Warriors, even though he will have a lot of minutes in the beginning of the season, due to Ellis injury, but his task will be very tough.

Monta Ellis is the franchise player of the team and the Warriors showed that by giving him a $66 millions contract during the Summer. Ellis is almost unstoppable due to his speed and dribble ability and if his numbers exploded in the 2006/2007 season, Ellis became a elite player last season, with 20.2 ppg and 53.1% FG! However, he didn't start the season very well, as he suffered an extra-basketball injury and besides not being able to play until December, he won't receive a dollar until the 31st game of the team.

Besides the addition of Maggete, the Warriors have also hired Turiaf from the Lakers. Turiaf was one of the fan favorites in LA and his fighting spirit will be useful to the team, as he is a center with some mobility and Don Nelson will take advantage of that. Even though, he is a natural PF, he will be mostly used as a backup center.

The rest of the roster is the same from last season and the Warriors will be the team we are all expecting them to be: a very athletic team and who won't be concerned in finding ways to stop the offense of their opponents. The way almost all players shoot from the perimeter will make the team struggle in the rebound department. Last season, they were second last in rebound margin with -3.85 reb/game (they were dead last in 2006/2007 with -5 reb/game) and this weakness should continue this season.

The main problem for the Warriors is that they need good shooting %'s to win games, as they are a jump shooting team. Will they be able to shoot always better than their opponents,  when they face the top teams in the West? That will be the big challenge of Don Nelson this season. They didn't reach the Playoffs last season, even with a 48-34 record. Will they be able to at least to repeat that record this season?

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