Anthony Morrow can still walk without incident from his downtown hotel to the BART trains that sometimes take him to the Golden State Warriors' arena. Most of Oakland's famously enthusiastic hoops fans haven't yet put a face to the name that hit their favorite team's starting lineup like a thunderbolt last weekend.
After back-to-back dazzling games in his first two NBA starts, the undrafted rookie from Georgia Tech probably won't be unknown much longer. Morrow followed up his 37-point starting debut against the Clippers last Saturday with 25 more Tuesday night against Portland in a game that began with a standing ovation.
Not every Warriors fan knows his face yet, but they can't wait to see what Morrow will do next.
"We're the only real basketball team around in a city that loves basketball, so that's great for us,"
Morrow said. "It's exciting to get that kind of reception for what you do."
Just a few weeks after Morrow was wondering whether he'd have to play in Ukraine this winter, he is Golden State's starting shooting guard. Corey Maggette and captain Stephen Jackson already see him as an equal, and coach Don Nelson is talking about building parts of his famed offense around Morrow.
"He's the real deal, and we haven't even learned how to play with him yet,"
Nelson said. "I told the team that we'd better know where this guy is at all times. We'd better get him open, because he looks like the real deal."
Nelson suspected he had something special in Morrow since July, when he looked good on Golden State's summer league team. Still, Morrow was the final man to make Golden State's roster last month, and his agent was making contingency plans in Ukraine.
Morrow hadn't done much until last Saturday, when he set the NBA record for points by an undrafted rookie making his first start. That breakout game against the Clippers was an out-of-nowhere stunner made all the more unlikely by its Saturday afternoon setting in front of a listless Staples Center crowd.
"Who was that guy?"
Clippers point guard Baron Davis said. "He came out of nowhere. He got hot, he got hot, he got hot."
By the final minutes of Morrow's 15-for-20 shooting performance, the Los Angeles fans were chanting the name of a player few had heard of just two hours earlier. His teammates then gave him a standing ovation in the locker room.
"It's not a hard game to play,"
Morrow said of the Warriors' pell-mell offense. "Everybody doesn't need a lot of moves. That's what the coaches tell me. I just keep it as simple as I can."
Morrow showed similar efficiency against the Trail Blazers, scoring his 25 points on 8-for-12 shooting that included four 3-pointers. He even sat out most of the final seven minutes while Nelson played his veterans, but returned to hit three straight free throws with 5.6 seconds left in Golden State's 111-106 win.
"We needed some help, and he's been giving us the help we need,"
Jackson said. "I'm happy he's coming on like this. He's getting less than 15 shots and getting a high number of points, which is what we need. We're all just giving him support."
Morrow was a solid player at Georgia Tech, leading the ACC in 3-point shooting as a senior and setting a school record for career free-throw percentage, but he had little more than a perimeter game that didn't draw much attention from the NBA. He thinks his low profile has been an advantage in his pro career's earliest stages.
"There's not really any pressure, because none of the guys put pressure on me,"
Morrow said. "They just tell me to play off of them, and just do what I do."
Morrow's emergence suddenly has solved several lineup problems for Nelson, who is still tinkering with the spare parts left from last season's 48-win team after Davis' defection to the Clippers and Monta Ellis' extended absence with an injured leg from crashing his motorized scooter.
If Morrow can be a consistent outside threat, Nelson is free to play Maggette at power forward in a small Golden State lineup that causes nightmarish matchup problems for most opponents.
For instance, Maggette was too quick for Portland's LaMarcus Aldridge, who fouled out in 19 minutes. Morrow's spot-up shooting alongside Jackson also will prevent many teams from playing zone defense against Golden State.
"It's not just him scoring,"
Nelson said. "It's the threat of him scoring. You see guys flying at him. When he comes around a screen, both (defenders) are up on him now. It just opens the court for other people, and if we learn how to negotiate that, it (will create) a lot of openings for a lot of different people."
"They're going to have to pay an awful lot of attention to him,"
Nelson added. "I think the guy can do that every day."
