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		Taking a look at the road Warriors By David Zizmor March 10, 2008

	OAKLAND--When your three time zones away anything can happy especially when your hop scotching cities along the way. That they did in Charlotte, Miami and Orlando. The Warriors who lost against Charlotte and when you play back to back nights your tired and exhausted but Golden State found their mojo rocking Miami and Orlando's world with two wins in a row. But talking about NBA travel it's really tough to get the energy level up to compete hard two nights in a row. Comparing games on the trip in the Charlotte game you can see from the Warriors they just didn't have the energy to play defense. The Warriors will get some rest now as their next game is in Oakland Wednesday night against the visiting Toronto Raptors before moving onto Phoenix the next night marking it their fourth trip in five games. But those back to back trips back east it's even worse and the Warriors in the Charlotte game their defense was lacking but they woke up big in Miami and Orlando to get some big wins there. The Warriors as of Monday night's press time were two games on top of ninth place Denver for the last and final spot in the western conference for eighth place for the final playoff spot. The Warriors are doing well without Andreas Biedrens whose out of the line up and they're certainly doing well without Chris Webber and were seeing some improvement from Brandon Wright the rookie first round draft pick who is still playing really, really well. Monta Ellis has been just on fire for Golden State for the last two months and he's one of the best shooting guards in the league. Ellis may not be right up there with Kobe but he's on that second tier of shooting guards now a days but Ellis' defense could use a little improvement. Nobody could shoot like Ellis when you get him inside 20 feet it's automatic and Baron Davis is having his normal great season as is Stephen Jackson. So these guys are doing really well and held their own their doing a good job holding onto that eighth spot in the Western Conference for the playoffs. The Warriors are looking to move up a little bit and it's the Warriors hope in the conference that Houston can falter a little bit now that Yao Ming is out. The Warriors have to fight for that last spot and the Warriors will hope that Denver will fade a bit and the Warriors would have a good shot down the stretch at making another run at the playoffs. Three point happy Warriors: The Warriors may jack up the three pointer just a bit but that's head coach Don Nelson's game plan and from anywhere on the floor and by allowing everyone the green light from three point range for Jackson and Davis and everyone else Nelson is spreading the floor that's how he gets his spacing because Nelson knows that other teams knows that the Warriors will shot the ball at any other time. Now on the nights that the Warriors go completely cold it's brutal because they just brick them up there and the other teams will get that long rebound which pushes them back for a fast break. If the Warriors can hit about a third of them then their in pretty good shape then their hitting in the 40-45% range then the Warriors are unstoppable and you can't beat them on those nights. When the Warriors are at 30% on one third of their shots from the three point range their fine and the fact of the matter is the Warriors shoot way more on the three pointers than they probably should. At the same time the W's have a lot of good three point shooters Al Harrington, Jackson, Davis, among others, Ellis shoots a lot of threes he's one of a few guys on the team that realizes that he doesn't have the range yet maybe in a couple years he will right now he's actually scaled back with his three point shooting from last year. So when the Warriors are on the Warriors are unstoppable the fact that these guys are deadly all around the perimeter opens up their offense and because of the offense they have to shoot like this because their defense is never going to be great, they're never going to be a tremendous stopper team so they have to look to their other advantage on offense. That's one of the Warriors advantages for offense and spread the floor and shoot with anybody and you have to cringe when you see Jackson and Davis pull up for just no good reason and shoot the three just because they feel like it. David Zizmor covers Warriors basketball and co-hosts Sportstalk on 1690 KFSG Sacramento.