by David Zizmor

OAKLAND–After the Warriors beat the Philadelphia 76ers they can take in very little as they play the Miami Heat on Wednesday night at the Coliseum Arena. While beating the 76ers by 44 is great, it gives the starters a chance not to have to exert themselves especially going into a big game against Miami, but you don’t learn too much by beating Philadelphia by 44 because the Sixers are a very bad team.

They lost to the Warriors and the night before they lost by 46 to the LA Clippers by a almost identical score, really what it tells you is not that the Warriors are good but that the Sixers are bad. The best it does is paper over some of the problems the Warriors have had lately. The looked great against Philadelphia but if they want to succeed going away they really need to work on several things.

Not least of which is figuring out which ways to score that don’t involve isolation plays every other possession. That’s the biggest problem that head coach Mark Jackson is having right now and it’s just a lack of creativity on the offensive end of the floor. Obviously defense and consistency on defense is an issue with the Warriors. Their not as strong a defensive team as you would like but their improving over the previous years with Andre Iguodala getting healthy.

Clay Thompson has improved on the defensive end and Iguodala and Thompson are making a big difference. On offense this team runs hot and cold when their shots don’t fall they get in a lot of trouble a good way to counter act that is try to score inside. The Warriors don’t do that, they don’t cut to the lane, they don’t drive, they don’t throw the ball inside enough.

What they the Warriors end up doing is they end up doing isolation plays and having guys shoot 18 footers for three pointers and when those shots aren’t falling they basically give up and they start falling behind by huge amounts and their not able to come back or they have to spend so much effort and energy coming back by the time they get to the end of the game they just can’t sustain it anymore.

The fact that their running isolation plays on a team where all five of the starters are excellent passers and Clay Thompson is the worst and he’s not a bad passer. Steph Curry he’s a great passer, Iguodala and Bogut are great passers. Bogut for a big guy is a great passer and David Lee is a great passer and to not have ball movement to have one guy take the ball and take the shot when he gets open is criminal, it’s really lousy offense. The Warriors cannot have a lousy offense when the face the Miami Heat on Wednesday night.

David Zizmor covers the NBA for Sportstalk Radio