FanHouse Stephen Curry

Warriors coach Don Nelson has gone out of his way to compare rookie Stephen Curry to a young Steve Nash. That's a nice comparison and one any young player would likely take.

But Curry's already got a mentor, thank you, and it's tough to argue with his choice: Chris Paul.

Curry and Paul, both from North Carolina, go back a few years. But this summer their friendship grew, the result of spending nearly a month working out together at various venues in the South.

SACRAMENTO -- It's probably a little early to say that Warriors rookie Stephen Curry is having trouble shooting the ball at the pro level. After all, he hasn't played a regular-season game yet.

At the same time, Curry has begun to assemble his professional body of work -- with a full summer league behind him and six exhibition games. And if that's all you've seen of him, it certainly seems fair to ask: "Is this guy really a good shooter?"

On Saturday, Curry again struggled from the field, going 3-for-9 in Golden State's 101-94 loss to the Kings. Unfortunately, it was just the latest in a string of bad shooting performances.

Warriors haymaker Stephen Jackson is again talking to Yahoo!'s Marc Spears about the injustice of it all, in which "it all" is a $30-million extension from a bad team who has apparently broke its promise to stop sucking. Clearly, in the grand scheme of the Golden State's familiar foray into bleakness, Stephen Jackson is the victim, according to Stephen Jackson.

But he's also a cause, and not because of this latest impetuousness. The very fact that Jackson is considered the Most Valuable Warrior -- or even a valuable Warrior -- helped get Golden State into this mess.

INDIAN WELLS, Calif. -- For the second straight year, the Phoenix Suns hosted an outdoor preseason game at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden in California. Only this time, the weather cooperated to make it a fantastic event in an atmosphere about as unique as they come by NBA standards.

The NBA FanHouse team has been posting previews of all 30 teams prior to the start of the 2009-10 season. Along with each preview they examine a player to watch. In the case of the Golden State Warriors, Matt Moore examined Anthony Randolph. In keeping with the theme I decided to highlight a bench player on the Warriors who might turn into an impact fantasy player this season.

These are the kind of numbers that fantasy ballers just love to see: 108.2 points per game (2nd of 30) and a 98.2 Pace Factor (1st of 30). The Warriors ran wild last season, focusing solely on trying to outscore their opponents. Their defense, on the other hand, was one of the worst in the league. They allowed 112.3 points per game (30th of 30) and had a defensive rating of 113.3 (28th of 30) -- meaning they allowed 113.3 points per 100 possessions. The Warriors not only became a fantasy goldmine on offense, but they were one of a handful of teams that you circled on the schedule hoping to exploit the defensive matchup.

FanHouse previews a player to watch from each NBA team in advance of the 2009-10 season.

Point forward. The final frontier.

These are the voyages of the... okay, that joke ran out of gas before it even started (much like the Warriors' playoff hopes. Hey-O!). The point is, the point forward position, the true point forward position is essentially the Holy Grail. Long rumored, we have specific evidence to support its existence (Magic Johnson), and often imitated (LeBron James), but no one has seemed to find it in years.

Enter Anthony Randolph and the Temple of Nellie.

FanHouse previews all 30 NBA teams in advance of the 2009-10 season.

The optimists around the Bay Area like to say that the Warriors' 29-win season in 2008-09 was primarily the result of too many injuries and a very young roster.

The pessimists say that last year's significant step-back-- from 48 wins the season before -- was mostly the result of poor management decisions that yielded a mismatched roster with too much overlap on the perimeter and not enough bulk on the interior.

The goal in 2009-10 is to figure out which side was right.

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OAKLAND, Calif. -- Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry weren't on the floor together at any point during the Warriors' 108-101 preseason opener against the L.A. Clippers on Sunday night.

That's going to change. Warriors' coach Don Nelson said so.

And you know what? Ellis, who at first wasn't crazy about the notion, seems to be coming around to the idea.

"You can't take anything away from him," Ellis said of Curry. "He can shoot, pass, defend, all of that. He's got the whole package. ... He's better than I thought he was."

Three days after Black Monday, the issue no longer is whether or not Monta Ellis and Stephen Curry are going to play together. That's going to happen. Heck, it's happening already.

The real question is, how much?

"We had a scrimmage (Wednesday night), the last 20 or so minutes we were on the same team," Curry said of Ellis and himself. "He was running the point and I was running the two. Defensively, we played against Kelenna (Azubuike) and Corey (Maggette). It was fun because offensively we got into the open court and we had (Anthony) Morrow on the other side.

OK, so maybe Monta Ellis can play alongside Stephen Curry -- every once in a while, here and there a little bit, and maybe when the matchups dictate.

That seemed to be the consensus coming out of Warriors' training camp one day after Ellis said "you just can't" play he and Curry together because "you're not going to win that way."

Ellis certainly didn't backtrack from his comments from the previous day, but he did acknowledge that, yes, there might be times a smallish, quick-ish backcourt of Ellis-Curry could be used. But it's not like he was embracing the idea.

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