Warriors' Mark Jackson defends decision to play small against Nuggets

With Andrew Bogut's injury and the inconsistent play of Andris Biedrins and Festus Ezeli of late, the Golden State Warriors played without a center during much of their 107-101 loss to the Denver Nuggets on Saturday night. Head coach Mark Jackson tried to explain why he decided to go with a smaller lineup featuring forwards David Lee and Carl Landry down the stretch to Matt Stenmetz of CSNBayArea.com:

"Carl Landry and David Lee are my two best big men. That can't be debated. That's just the way I was thinking in that situation."

Jackson also noted that his choice to go with Lee and Landry had a lot to do with the Nuggets putting a smaller roster on the floor – Kenneth Faried at the five and Danilo Gallinari at the four – but added that his choice had more to the current state of affairs rather than a long-term commitment:

"When we're forced to have a big guy out there, he'll be out there. I can take a wild guess and say that Andrew Bogut is going to be finishing games for us no matter what lineup the other team goes to. Because if you decide to play a smaller guy, you're going to pay the price. We're going to post him up. But our big guys today, we're not going to post them up closing out ballgames. So it's advantage opposing team."

The Warriors will host to the Atlanta Hawks on Wednesday night at Oracle Arena. Tipoff is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. PT.