by David Zizmor

OAKLAND–The Warriors need to begin the second half of this NBA season with a good start and work on the consistency on this team. That wasn’t the case or the issue against Miami last Wednesday night at Oracle it was a nail biter right down to the buzzer beater by LeBron to win it for Miami.

The Warriors have to make sure that they stay in these games a little bit more and keep it close. They were down by 19 at one point to Miami and they still managed to come back and make it a game against the NBA champs.

The Warriors ended up losing it by one 111-110 on crazy three pointer by LeBron James at the buzzer. The Warriors don’t want to get down by 19 ever to anybody whether it’s the Heat or anybody else, whether it’s the best team in the league or the worse team in the league you want to keep it close at all times that’s what the Warriors have to work on or maybe they should take a 19 point lead themselves.

You have to give the Warriors a little bit of credit they were playing without any of their starting centers. Andrew Bogut, Jermain O’Neal, and they were a little thin up front and once these guys get healthy and when center Festus Ezeli comes back from his injury they’ll have a lot more defensive presence up front.

The Warriors are looking to have more depth up front to help them down the stretch, that will be a big factor as the Warriors go forward. In the second half the Warriors will look at the trade deadline coming up so they might be looking for a little bit of bench help. Their starting five is as good as anybody in the league but their bench is really bad.

During the course of the season the bench has gotten a little bit better with the addition of Jordan Crawford but their still struggling. You like to see Harrison Barnes doing a bit more off the bench, Draymond Green has been very good, he’s improved a lot this season and he was already pretty good.

Barnes is the guy you’d like to see and the Warriors expect to see a lot of him in the second half. Barnes has been all over the place, there have been a few games where he has come off the bench and has been a real spark plug for the most part. Barnes hasn’t really found his place in that offensive set coming off the bench.

David Zizmor covers the NBA for Sportstalk radio