Warriors 116 - Clippers 100

Looking at the box score after the game, I was at first tempted to invent unlikely scenarios in which the Clippers would have been more competitive.  "If the Clippers had made a higher percentage of their free throws..." (they missed 14) or "if the Clippers had just made a couple of three pointers..." (they were 1 for 14).  And yes, by the raw numbers just a little bit better shooting would have closed a 16 point gap pretty quickly.

But there's another number in the box score: Baron Davis, 27 minutes.

The simple fact of the matter is, after starting the game super-model-married-to-a-European-in-the-NBA hot, the Warriors built a comfortable lead and never really worried much after that.  The Clippers showed a little grit to cut what had been a 26 point lead down to 11 with a 15-2 run spanning the third and fourth quarters, but Monta Ellis quickly put things back in order for the Dubs, and if he hadn't succeeded, Baron would have.  

Still, it is beginning to get annoying the way teams seem to save their best shooting night for the Clippers.  Hell, you can have a mediocre night and still beat this team - why the bombardments?  But Orlando made 7 threes in the third quarter last week.  Then Atlanta made 7 straight in the third on their way to a 9 for 13 game.  And tonight the Warriors made 7 out of 11 threes in the first.  You know, you really should go a whole season without teams making 7 threes on you in a single quarter - it's happened three times in 5 games.  Last night the Warriors were 5 for 27 from beyond the arc.  Tonight the start the game 7 for 11 and build a cushion that was just too much for the Generic Clippers to cope with.

Atma Brother ONE, in his game preview on Golden State of Mind, referred to the Clippers' current lineup as "Corey Maggette and a bunch of guys who make nice backups, but wouldn't start on the overwhelming majority of the teams in the league."  Well, that might be true of Tim Thomas and Cat Mobley, but it flatters Josh Powell and Dan Dickau, quite frankly.  These are third stringers at best in this league.  The Clippers just don't have nearly enough talent to win games right now.  

Still, a few guys played reasonably well.  Tim Thomas was basically unstoppable in his time on the floor.  He finished with 20 points on 9 for 12 shooting in 27 minutes.  Corey Maggette and Al Thornton earned an eye-opening 35 trips to the line between them - too bad they only made 23 of them.  Maggette was uncharacteristically bad from the stripe, missing 8 of his 19 attempts.  But after Thornton (24), Maggette (21) and Thomas (20), the next highest scoring Clipper was Dickau with 9, and after that a handful of guys had 6.  The Warriors give up points in bunches.  But apparently none of these guys wanted to have their season high tonight.  Thornton also had a career high 13 rebounds.

Last thing: not that it matters, but it's hard to figure how Fazekas only gets 4 minutes of garbage time in this game.