The Warriors lost all their preseason away games, but on the bright side, writes Jared Cowely of the Press-Democrat.com Warriors blog, “real basketball is finally here.” And by that he means the improvement on defense:
On defense, the team was an interesting study in preseason. Statistically, they were much improved from last season. They allowed only 100.3 points per game (112.4 in 2010), allowed opponents to shoot just 43.2 percent from the field (48.5 in 2010) and 36.6 percent from the 3-point line (37.5 in 2010) and outrebounded their opponents 47.1 to 43.0 on average (outrebounded 48.1 to 38.4 in 2010). That’s a huge improvement. If the Warriors maintain those numbers in the regular season, this team will be much better than most have predicted. We must caution that this was preseason, but even so, this team looks to be better on defense.
This is great news, of course, but the Warriors stlil lost quite a few games to some rebuilt and injury-recovering teams, like the Warriors themselves. It’s strange though that in spite of holding defenses to a lower shooting percentage, the Warriors ability to score, too, goes down.