Got back from the game, what a ride.
Chase Center is amazing. Of course, it's brand new, but there were a ton of empty seats. Understandable, but the arena is genuinely miles better than Oracle.
Unfortunately, that was the highlight of my experience. The Blazers came out with no effort and basically expecting the Warriors to roll over. That got settled quick.
Some observations:
Dame played really well offensively. Defensively, he mailed it in. He basically wasn't trying on defense in the first three quarters. Despite that, he's the only guy that I could say played well overall.
Hassan Whiteside is not the problem, but he's definitely not the answer. Put him in any sort of movement on defense and he's like a fish out of water. He never gets back in transition. When he only has to stay in one position to defend a shot he's quite good. But my main problem is that the Blazers look so bad offensively when he's in the game. Particularly Dame just looks like he's struggling to get to his spots. Hassan is such a slow roller and Dame is so explosive the combination doesn't seem to work. Interestingly enough, the CJ/Whiteside pick and roll looked good a few times, maybe because both guys move at the same slow pace. Might try to exploit that bit more. Really though, Hassan is a backup center on a championship team....
Speaking of CJ, what the fuck is going on? My friend, who doesn't really watch the Blazers basically said during the game "I never knew CJ was such a ballhog". The Warriors treated him like Dame and blitzed him with two guys all night. Seems teams are now actively taking away his midrange jumper, and CJ is responding by making awful attempts at the rim and jacking up contested 3s. Good god.
This Warriors G-League team passes better than us. Why does our team never pass the ball? In the 4th quarter when the Blazers were playing full court press the Warriors group broke the pressure with no problem. Watching the Blazers try to break full court press is an exercise in trying not to gouge your eyes out.
The irony with Stotts's offense is that he empowers guys to be creators, but doesn't put them in position to do so. For better or worse this is what we're stuck with. There's no point firing him now as there's no way someone can come in and install a new offense/defense in the middle of the season.
