The NBA season is right around the corner and the Golden State Warriors 2013 NBA Championship Odds are currently at 250-1 ($100 bet pays $25200). They are 150-1 to win the Western Conference and their over/under season win total projection is 36,5. Below is the overall season preview by Pregame Pro André Gomes. 

Last season was Golden State’s last try at being competitive under the duo Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry. The team didn’t add any relevant player to their roster and they wanted that their “new” Coach Mark Jackson would be able to take the maximum performance from the little collective talent he had at his disposal.

2011-12 Regular Season Numbers:

The truth is that Mark Jackson was able to make the Warriors into a competitive team on the first half of the season, even though Golden State was having serious problems on rebounding.

Golden State Warriors month-by-month record:

The key moment of the season for the team happened in March, when the organization decided to finally end the Ellis – Curry duo and it was without surprise that Monta Ellis was the sacrificed player and ended up being traded to Milwaukee in exchange for some players, where the main figure was clearly Andrew Bogut. It was known that Bogut was injured and he wouldn’t play a single game for the Warriors over the past season, so after this trade, they entered on a “tank mode” in order to look up for a good draft pick for the following season.

Offseason moves 2012-13:

The Warriors knew about the importance of having a good draft position when they entered on tank mode a good month before the end of the regular season. The team invested a lot on the draft by selecting three players that in my opinion will be useful on the team’s future: Harrison Barnes, Festus Ezeli and Draymond Green.

Unfortunately, Stephen Curry doesn’t offer a full guarantee in terms of his physical shape in the near future and so, the Warriors decided to find a credible alternative to him and they signed veteran PG Jarrett Jack.

To improve their frontcourt, the Warriors  are waiting for Bogut to finally have a season without injuries, while they also signed Carl Landry in the expectation that the team finally stops being the worst rebounding team in the league.

A talented backcourt with a lot of future

With Monta Ellis out of Golden State, we can finally say that the Warriors now belong to Stephen Curry. It’s true that Curry has been having a tough NBA career with some injuries, especially on his ankles – he played just 26 games last season, but he has also shown that he is an excellent player with one-of-a-kind shooting skills, as his numbers last season of 49% FG, 45.5% 3pts and 81% FT are only matched by Steve Nash in the whole league and this says a lot about Curry’s quality.

Unfortunately, Curry is now injured again on the ankle and Coach Mark Jackson has already announced that he won’t play in any other preseason game and so, I doubt that Curry will remain healthy throughout the whole season. With Curry, the Warriors are a dangerous team in the West, capable of winning a game on any arena, but without Curry…

Besides Curry, the Warriors have also Klay Thompson and Harrison Barnes for the backcourt. Thompson was one of the players that mostly took advantage of the tank mode from his team last season to win importance on the team over the last month of season. Curiously, during the month of April, he received more minutes per game and took advantage of them to improve all his numbers, but this also coincided with a raise of his efficiency. It’s hard to project these numbers on a full season because he will have more responsibility and pressure under his shoulders this season, but Thompson has indeed revealed himself as a player with good offensive skills, but who still needs to work a lot defensively and on rebounding.

On the other side, Harrison Barnes will have a free role to develop during this season. In his early college career he showed that he could be a possible #1 pick on the draft, but his development as an inefficient scorer in North Carolina caused him to fall into an mid-first round position on the draft. With a talented PG-SG backcourt on offense, Barnes will be more important in other areas for the game, like on defense and on rebounding. 

The Warriors will count on Jarrett Jack to be the starting PG in several games due to Curry’s physical problems. They will also have Brandon Rush and Richard Jefferson for the backcourt and even though they aren’t the best backcourt second unit in the league, we are certainly in front of a very competent unit, especially for a team that isn’t a playoff contender for this season.

Will Andrew Bogut lead the frontcourt?

On the seven seasons that he has been playing on the NBA, Andrew Bogut was only able to play in all games of a season just once… and that happened on his rookie season! Bogut has been suffering multiple injuries and he has a recurrent problem with migraines that will certainly prevent him from playing some more games in the future.

The Warriors have been constantly one of the worst rebounding teams in the league over the last few seasons and by looking at their roster for this year, just a healthy Bogut can prevent that from happening once again this season. Before the past season, Bogut managed to have three seasons in a row where he averaged more than 10 rebounds per game and his evolution on defense has been very good. The Bucks with Skiles and Bogut were constantly one of the best defensive teams in the league, especially in protecting the paint and with Bogut at 100%, Mark Jackson will finally have a legit center capable of helping the team in both ends of the floor, as Andris Biedrins will never be able to offer the same thing to the team.

Bogut’s presence on the court becomes even more important when the starting PF of the team will be David Lee, who has been a very solid player on offense (+50% FG and +75% FT on every season including his rookie season), while having an average of 3 offensive rebounds per game. The problem is that Lee struggles on defense, especially when his coaches insisted in putting him in the center position where he can’t basically guard anybody. His backup will be Carl Landry, who is curiously a David Lee v2.0 and so, it’s imperial that Bogut is fine to play the whole season. He is questionable to play the first game of the regular season and so, let’s see how his physical conditions keep evaluating throughout the whole season.

Final Thoughts

If everything goes well for the Warriors, especially in terms of the physical condition of both Stephen Curry and Andrew Bogut plus a good adaptation of Harrison Barnes to the league, then the Warriors are clear contenders to the playoffs in my opinion. The team has offensive talent on the backcourt and they have a player that will be the team’s defensive pivot in Andrew Bogut.

Without Curry, the Warriors have still a good backup in Jarrett Jack, who has been showing to be a good player over the last few seasons, but we can’t say the same about Andrew Bogut, whose impact will be bigger on the team when compared with Curry’s.

Mark Jackson debuted on the league last season as a coach and he actually made a good job if we think that the Warriors had an 18-21 record before Monta Ellis got traded. He had some curious decisions like in the famous home game against Orlando, where he told the plays to perform a “hack-a-Howard” to Dwight Howard, but realistically he couldn’t do much more than he did, having in account the problems the Warriors had on rebounding.

The Warriors’ future looks promising because the team has only David Lee as the sole player with more than two years of contract, so they have a lot of flexibility in terms of the decisions they can take in the future. This team can suddenly surprise the league already on this season, but if that doesn’t happen, the Warriors will have another high draft pick next season and therefore, the team won’t be disappointed in any of these two cases. 

Follow Andre Gomes on Twitter @GomesCapper

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