by David Zizmor

OAKLAND–The Warriors who had three games this past week and they played the Kings, Rockets and Nets and won all three games. They played on back to back nights with the Kings and Rockets and a had a home victory against the New Jersey Nets on Saturday night and it shouldn’t have been a tough stretch for the Kings on the road and Houston at home but the thing is the Warriors have had trouble with both of those teams for whatever reasons it didn’t help that the Warriors Andrew Bogut was out in these games.

The Warriors weren’t guaranteed a victory by any stretch, against Sacramento the Warriors were playing a vastly inferior team. The Kings are having a lousy season yet again. As far as the game against the Kings is concerned the Warriors did exactly what they were suppose to do. They came through and they played great basketball.

Even without Bogut in the line up they were scoring left and right and when Sacramento made a run late in the game the Warriors shut it down and did a great job of winning that game. Against Houston that was a tougher game as the Rockets are a playoff caliber team their competing against the Warriors for one of those last playoff spots in the Western Conference.

Again in that game the W’s didn’t have Bogut when your playing Houston that’s a big deal because the Rockets have Dwight Howard in the middle and he can beat a guy like Bogut and slow him down. Bogut wasn’t there but the Warriors defensive unit did a great job of defending and harrassing Howard all the way, he had an awful night he was something like 4-13 which is bad in it’s own right.

When you consider Howard typically shooting well over 50 percent because he scores from inside so easily so that’s more impressive for the Warriors. It was a tough one as the Warriors put it into overtime with a great lay up by Stephen Curry with four seconds left and they pulled away in overtime but it was a really good game and the Warriors kind of proved that they weren’t going to play down to the competition.

Then this week the Warriors made a big trade before the trade deadline, they dealt away Ken Bazemore and Marshon Brooks to get Steve Blake. This is a great trade for the Warriors, one of the big problems that they have had is their second unit has not had a true point guard to direct the offense and Blake is a true point guard.

Blake isn’t a guy whose going to give you 20 points a night but he can dish the ball and he’s a great passer and a great floor leader and he has a decent outside shot as well, which always helps and what this is going to do is allow Blake can play 20 minutes a night, he can let Curry rest a little bit more and the Warriors will be comfortable with the knowledge that Blake can run the offense.

David Zizmor covers the NBA for Sportstalk radio