by David Zizmor

OAKLAND–It’s great that the Warriors are finally showcasing their depth early in the season their second unit, their bench team was just not complete they hadn’t figured out what their rotation is going to be. There were going to all kinds of combinations of guys and it just didn’t seemed to be working. For the Warriors week end and week out, part of that was becuase they didn’t have a legitment back up point guard.

The Warriors didn’t have a true point guard who could distribute and that kind of hampered any kind of efforts on the part of the bench to get any kind of flow going. To get the flow going you need someone who could direct traffic and the Warriors just didn’t have anybody.

The Warriors had Tony Douglas who gave the Warriors some hope to be successful back there, give credit to Bob Myers he’s been very open to making changes on the fly. As the season progressed the first move was getting George Crawford from the Celtics for a very cheap price and he wasn’t great as a point guard option that was kind of a failed experience, the guy can score off the bench.

They hope that Douglas can fill in for five to 15 minutes and at one point and when that became pretty obvious in January Myers hit the phones again and when Kent Bazemore and Marshawn Brooks went to the Los Angeles Lakers to get Steve Blake off of that sinking Lakers team which is really a genius move. Blake is a very solid true point guard he’s a guy who can dish.

By putting Blake at the point Crawford slides over to Harrison Barnes and Draymond Green and comes in as the three and the four. Jermaine O’Neal could be at the center spot that is a solid second unit. It’s not going to necessarily beat eveybody everytime out. These guys can score their dynamic they can hold their own through 15-20 minutes in a game and give the starters a rest.

You can push those guys in the line up every now and then and give the starters a rest and have them play with the other starters. Blake could go in with the first team or Green, having Blake back is giving the Warriors a full deep bench. That is one of the big reasons why the Warriors have a resurgence here in February and March because they’re able to get quality minutes that they weren’t getting before.

The Warriors had the worst scoring bench in the league in fact if you look at the scoring of the bench in the last three or four weeks that’s not the case any more the bench is probably in the middle of the pack if not higher.

David Zizmor covers the NBA for Sportstalk Radio