Jack Giveth and Jack Taketh Away

The Warriors are a fun team. No question about that. Unfortunately "wildly entertaining" doesn't necessarily translate to "really good". We saw that last night.

Look, after the miserable hoops years we've had here by the bay I'll certainly gladly take wildly entertaining and mediocre. It's a hell of a lot better than boring and crappy, which is what we had come to expect. But let's be clear about this team, they are entertaining, fun, edge of your seat exciting, but they aren't really good. Last night was a microcosm of what the W's are about, and Stephen Jackson, the emotional center of the team, is also the best example of all that is both good and bad with the Warriors.

You see, the Warriors are dependent on Jack. We all know the team started out 0-6 as Jackson served a league imposed suspension, and how the season suddenly turned around upon his return.

But Jackson, like the Warriors, is like the little girl with the curl....when he is good he is very very good, and when he is bad he is horrid. Unfortunately whether he's good or horrid the Warriors depend on him, and as he goes they go.

In some ways Jackson is having a great year...he's averaging a career high 21.5 points per game, good for 16th best in the NBA. He is the emotional core and co-captain of our resurgent Plucky Little Warriors. For a guy considered poison by most NBA teams because of off the court issues he's having a fantastic year, better than they could possibly have hoped for when they traded for him.

And yet, he's shooting only 40% from the field, 30% on 3s (while hucking up almost 7 a game on average). For all the points he is putting up he's also giving away a lot of possessions with bad shots or, like last night, just plain missing key good shots. Jackson had a wide open 3 to take the lead with 9 seconds left last night...he clanked it, and with it went the game.

Jackson, who missed 10 of his 15 3 attempts and 18 of his 27 shots total, said after the game "The team relies on me to score points, so I just have to shoot better. If I'm going to take that many shots, I'm going to have to hit a higher percentage of them."

And herein lies the problem. The Warriors do rely on him to score points. And some nights he is very good at it. Unfortunately, however, on some nights he is horrid. And when he is, like he was last night, so are the Warriors.

So are the Warriors wildly entertaining? Yes. Are they a lot of fun? Yes. Am I thankful to have them? Absolutely. But we all have to accept that they are, like their emotional leader, also wildly inconsistent. Some nights Jackson and the Warriors look unbeatable, but many nights they look as they did last night, dependent on a mediocre shooter for key points at big moments. And that's not really good.