David West Agrees To 1-Year Deal With Golden State Warriors
David West is championship chasing. Last stop was the San Antonio Spurs, now his next stop is the Golden State Warriors.
David West left $12 million on the table with the Indiana Pacers to join the San Antonio Spurs in a effort to get win a championship last year. Unfortunately, San Antonio was knocked out by the Oklahoma City Thunder and their Big Three of old is, well, old.
Then Kevin Durant made his free agency decision and changed the basketball landscape in the NBA by joining the Golden State Warriors.
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David West saw that San Antonio would struggle to win a championship, so he agreed to sign with the Warriors on a one-year deal at the veteran minimum of $1.29 million, according to David Aldridge from TNT.
Now, there is nothing wrong with making a choice to chase a championship. After all, it is why you play the sport in the first place.
West is a top level defender, a solid player that teams were built around. Now, he is simply a role player who comes in to do a job, hopefully helping his team win in the process.
West has made some good money out of basketball, $90 million so far. Yes, there is always more money to be made, but West is now driven by a championship. By the looks of it, he will move from team to team until he wins one.
Last season with San Antonio, West averaged 7.1 points and 4.0 rebounds per game and I am expecting that his numbers will go down again this season.
I will be interested to see how West and new Warriors center Zaza Pachulia get along this year. It was only back in February that they had an altercation when San Antonio took on the Dallas Mavericks.
I think that chemistry will be an issue for the Warriors next year with all the players that have been added and taken away.
Harrison Barnes for Kevin Durant sounds like a perfect swap. Barnes is a good player, Durant is a great player.
However, one thing that I do know that in basketball there is only one ball. You can’t have Stephen Curry shooting at the same time as Klay Thompson and Durant, not to mention the other of the scary big four, Draymond Green.
Now what else did the Warriors lose to sign Durant apart from Barnes? They lost Andrew Bogut. What is the problem with losing his 5.4 points, 7.0 rebounds and 1.6 blocks per game?
Simply put, it is not Bogut’s stats that were important. He is a better rim protector than either West or Pachulia. LeBron James was able to attack the basket from the point of Game 5 onwards without fear of his shot being blocked or altered by anyone the Warriors tried to put in front of him.
Sure his shots would get blocked, but Bogut was a one-man wall, changing the thinking of James for the first four games.
Neither West nor Pachulia have as much capacity to do this. Yes they are tremendous defenders, but neither has the shot-blocking prowess of Bogut.
Golden State has also lost Leandro Barbosa, Brandon Rush and Festus Ezeli.
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Depth is potentially the only issue for the Warriors now.