Shuffling the deck

Warriors hope revamped roster will maintain progress

John Hollinger, SI.com

Warriors at a Glance Head coach: Eric Musselman 2002-03: 38-44 2002-03 Stats Key Additions SG Mickaël Pietrus (draft) PG Nick Van Exel (Mavericks) PF Clifford Robinson (Pistons) PG Speedy Claxton (Spurs) SF Calbert Cheaney (Jazz) PG Avery Johnson (Mavericks) Key Losses PG Gilbert Arenas (Warriors) SF Antawn Jamison (Mavericks) SG Bob Sura (Pistons) PG Earl Boykins (Nuggets) SG Jiri Welsch (Mavericks) SF Chris Mills (Mavericks) PF Danny Fortson (Mavericks) Projected Lineup Starters Reserves PG  N. Van Exel S. Claxton SG  J. Richardson M. Pietrus SF  M. Dunleavy C. Cheaney PF  T. Murphy C. Robinson C  E. Dampier A. Foyle

Led by the rapid development of three second-year players, the Golden State Warriors won 38 games in 2002-03, a 17-game improvement from the year before. So it might seem like an odd time for them to nuke the entire roster and start over.

Yet that's what the Warriors opted to do this offseason. In part, their hand was forced. Star guard Gilbert Arenas flew the coop as a free agent when Golden State was unable to pay him the big bucks due to a salary cap loophole. But part of the problem was the Warriors' lack of foresight in getting into a position to pay Arenas. Now they've lost one of the NBA's rising stars, a player they had stolen in the second round of the 2001 draft.

In the wake of that loss, the Warriors pursued several other moves, mostly with an eye toward reducing some outlandish salaries. Most notably, they sent forwards Antawn Jamison and Danny Fortson to Dallas for Nick Van Exel, with several other leftovers thrown in as salary ballast. Unloading Jamison and Fortson should allow Golden State to get under the cap in 2005, and adding Van Exel will partly offset the loss of Arenas.

The club also added Clifford Robinson in a trade with Detroit, which hopefully will improve what was a pathetic defense last year, and signed point guard Speedy Claxton to replace departed sparkplug Earl Boykins off the bench. All told, more than half the roster turned over from a year ago.

Shooting. Last year's Warriors scored points in bunches, finishing a close second to Dallas in scoring, and led the league in offensive rebounds and made free throws. Despite the roster overhaul, offensive explosions still will be a common occurrence at The Arena in Oakland (apparently calling it Oakland Arena would have been too easy).

However, while last year's squad thrived on forays to the hoop by Arenas and Jamison, this year's team has more of a perimeter twang to it. Of the five starters, four are deadly outside shooters. Van Exel shot 38 percent on 3-pointers for Dallas last year and can get scorching hot in stretches. At shooting guard, Jason Richardson shot 37 percent from downtown while canning a team-leading 123 trifectas. Small forward Mike Dunleavy replaces Jamison and, like Van Exel, will add much more of a long-range threat. He made nearly as many bombs as Jamison a year ago (52 to 65) despite playing 2,000 fewer minutes, and should see his attempts and accuracy increase with another year of experience and increased playing time. At power forward, Troy Murphy has one of the sweetest 18-foot strokes in the league, and he supposedly added 3-point range over the summer. Only center Erick Dampier is a non-factor on the perimeter. Off the bench, Robinson is one of the best shooting big men in the game, and while Cheaney and Mickaël Pietrus are one-dimensional offensively, that one skill is -- you guessed it -- outside shooting.

The change to a perimeter game should have another effect on the Warriors -- reducing their offensive rebounds. Golden State has led the league in offensive rebounding by a wide margin for most of the past decade -- considering they went 38-44, it's astonishing to think they had nearly 200 more than any other club last year -- but the change in personnel will impact their board work. In particular, Dunleavy will be far less active on the offensive boards than Jamison, and Robinson is one of the most board-allergic big men of all time. The Warriors will hope to make up for having fewer shots by shooting more accurately.

Defense. The Warriors went 38-44 despite finishing second in the NBA in scoring. Do the math: their defense was horrible. They were poor at forcing turnovers, and allowed opponents to shoot a high percentage (45.2 percent), especially on 3-pointers (37.2 percent, second-worst in the league.) Most mystifying of all, their prowess on the offensive boards suddenly disappeared on defense, where they finished last in the league by rebounding just 68 percent of opponents' misses.

Obviously, effort played a big role. For all their offensive talent, the Warriors saw defense mainly as something to keep them entertained before they took the ball out of the basket. Golden State's offseason moves recognized the problems, importing defensive-oriented veterans Cheaney, Robinson and Claxton in the offseason. First-round pick Pietrus also was regarded as the best perimeter defender in the draft.  

That should make Golden State's second-unit much stronger on D -- especially with the back line manned by their one legitimately excellent defender from year ago, Adonal Foyle. But the starters could be even worse. Van Exel never has been interested in defense, and Dunleavy might be even more of a matador than Jamison was. The worst offender, however, is Richardson, who rarely was on the same side of the Bay as the man he was allegedly guarding. Richardson has the athletic skills to be a good defender, and one of Eric Musselman's biggest challenges will be to convince him of the importance of playing both ends of the floor.

Can Dunleavy do it? By trading Jamison, Golden State is gambling that Dunleavy is ready to fill the gap at small forward. In fact, based on last season, it qualifies more as a blind leap of faith than a calculated risk.

Dunleavy struggled early and often in his rookie season. He was supposed to be an offensive player, but he shot just 40 percent from the field. He didn't show the skill to get his own shot, either, instead relying on the guards to set him up for a jumper, and was unable to take advantage of his 6-foot-9 height against other small forwards. Defensively, he wasn't highly regarded coming out of college, and immediately proved everyone right.

The Warriors are optimistic for a couple of reasons. For one, Dunleavy is an excellent passer, and should help the other shooters get good looks at the basket. Second, a number of players improve sharply in their second seasons. In fact, Dunleavy can look to his teammate Murphy, who exploded into a nightly 20-10 threat in his sophomore season, as motivation.

The shooting stroke should come around, based on how well he shot the ball in college, but there's still a lot of unfinished business before Dunleavy can be a starting NBA small forward. The Warriors just have Cheaney as their fallback position, which means their hopes of repeating last year's 38-win season largely depend on Dunleavy's development.

A step back. The 38-win season might be the high-water mark for a while longer, because the Warriors took a huge step back when Arenas left as a free agent. The good news is that Golden State should be better defensively, and actually could have one of the best second fives in the league on that side of the ball. But for the Warriors to have any chance of challenging for a playoff spot, Musselman needs to get the starters to play some defense, and Dunleavy has to prove his critics wrong. Both are possible, but neither is likely.

John Hollinger covers basketball for SI.com and is the author of Pro Basketball Prospectus. Click here to send him a question or comment.