Warriors Plan Backfires, Lose in New Orleans

Oakland, CA - Golden State was hoping to avoid a repeat performance of what happened on November 8th against the Pelicans, when Anthony Davis erupted for a triple-double. While the team still pulled out a victory in the high scoring game (136-133), heading to New Orleans they wanted no part of The Brow. Especially considering this time, he'd be going head to head with David Lee and Andrew Nicholson, opposed to Enes Kanter or Tyson Chandler.

So when the team faced the Pelicans tonight they had one gameplan in mind, zone like hell and force the Pelicans' guards to win the game. Bad decision. On paper it sounded great, as the Pelicans only shoot around 32% from long range but the strategy definitely backfired. Telling future Hall of Famer Marcus Smart to win the game on his own was just stupid because he willingly rose to the occasion. Smart poured in 34 points while Greivis Vasquez added 30 of his own off the bench. To make matters worse, Davis still went off against the Warriors frontcourt, putting up 23 points, 14 rebounds with 8 blocks. In order to stop Anthony Davis with the Warriors normal gameplan, they are going to have to bring in a major defensive presence as David Lee and Tyler Hansbrough will never be able to tame him.

Golden State lost the game 139-110.

Tough game for you. I got nervous inputting your strategies when I saw you went with the heavy zone. I had no idea how my team would respond to that but with our ISO offense, we go the ball to our best scorers and told them to get us buckets and thankfully they did. Davis didn't shoot as well as he usually does but Smart and Vasquez went bananas.

I did the same with Jazz - they played single post with Favors and I decided to zone - same result. He still dominated and they won  

It could have worked if you had played at home perhaps...