EIGHT-MAN ROTATION
Pos	Player	Key Stat	Skinny
PG	Mookie Blaylock	.379 FG %	Shooting .413 from field for career
SG	John Starks	.370 FG %	This backcourt is old and can't shoot
SF	Antawn Jamison	6.4 RPG	His second year will be much, much better
PF	Jason Caffey	8.8 PPG	Either him or Terry Cummings. Yuck.
C	Adonal Foyle	43 blocks	Holds down fort until Dampier returns
SF	Donyell Marshall	11.0 PPG	Could play 35 minutes or 20, who knows?
SF	Chris Mills	10.3 PPG	Steady veteran should be playing the 2
PG	Vonteego Cummings	rookie	Why not let him play? Can't hurt

		The Warriors have to establish themselves as capable of winning. They are going to play hard, but they have to prove to themselves that they can win with this group. They may be a team that wins 30-35 games, but not much more. Their lineup is decent with Mookie Blaylock, John Starks, Jason Caffey, Chris Mills and Erick Dampier as their starters, along with Donyell Marshall, who is still developing. Antawn Jamison has been a disappointment. Terry Cummings is well past his prime. On a given night when Starks is knocking down threes and Blaylock and Marshall are having big games, they can beat anybody. But they won't be able to maintain the consistency to be a playoff team.

Now they have to prove that the changes they made were enough.

On the surface, they weren't. Essentially, all the team did was turn over one position, unloading all three of last year's point guards and bringing in two new ones. The other moves look more cosmetic than anything else; the Warriors' big free-agent addition was Tim Legler. They won't miss the players they lost -- Bimbo Coles, Muggsy Bogues, Felton Spencer, Duane Ferrell and Tony Delk -- but they still have much of the same pieces of a team that wasn't good enough to get into the playoffs. They're putting a lot of faith in those pieces, particularly their young front line of Antawn Jamison, Erick Dampier and Jason Caffey. But they've opened themselves up for some instant criticism.

"We didn't end up making a lot of the moves we wanted to," general manager Garry St. Jean says. "And you can point the finger directly at me."

He probably didn't have to remind anyone of that. With owner Chris Cohan saying publicly at the end of last season that he wanted a playoff team (after five years in the lottery), the pressure is on St. Jean and coach P.J. Carlesimo, who are starting their third year together -- giving them a longer tenure than that of the men they replaced, Dave Twardzik and Rick Adelman.

Already among Warriors fans, the team is being identified with the player it didn't get: Mitch Richmond, the No. 1 free-agent target of St. Jean, his former coach in Sacramento. Their success will also be constantly compared to that of the two rookie point guards they passed on by trading the No. 10 pick in the draft for Mookie Blaylock: Jason Terry, with Atlanta, and William Avery, with Minnesota.

Perception-wise, the Warriors are already in a hole. Their greatest hope is that on the court, they'll prove the cynics wrong.

	Player to watch
	Jamison When the Warriors allowed Antawn Jamison to play significant minutes, which happened about a third of the time, he gave them numbers, 16.4 points and 9 rebounds, to be exact. So why didn't he play more? Well, this year he will. Watching that Carter guy go off in Toronto while Jamison underachieved must have hurt. Expect Jamison to make up for it this season.

Point guard
It was the only big move the Warriors made, but it was the one they needed most to make. Blaylock is a huge upgrade from the trio of Coles, Bogues and Delk. Blaylock is not the player he was three years ago, when he could lay claim to being one of the NBA's elite at the position, but he still brings a lot to the table that will help the team. He'll run the break, push the tempo, penetrate, offer a 3-point threat, pressure the ball on defense and, in general, make opposing defenses respect him. In theory, that will make everyone on offense more effective.

Still, not only will Blaylock have to justify the Warriors' faith in him, he'll probably have to play a lot of minutes. Rookie Vonteego Cummings will have to adapt to the NBA quickly to solidify a role backing up Blaylock. He has the tools to do so-he can score and create for others, in the mold of most of today's young point guards-but he's still a rookie playing a tough position at which to make an immediate impact.

Shooting guard
John Starks put the "shooting" in shooting guard-and not just in '99, when he led the team at 13.8 points a game but misfired on 63 percent of his attempts. Starks has always liked to put the ball up, and as bad as the Warriors' offense was last season, he had little reason not to. Still, Starks is far more effective when he's driving the ball to the basket, getting to the rim himself or feeding an open man. When he's hoisting 3-pointers all night, he takes himself out of the game.

Starks' passion and intensity shook the team out of its losing attitude last season, and the same is expected of him this season. Those intangibles are invaluable, but they would be more valuable if he were a sixth man, with someone more consistent in front of him. Depth remains a problem: Starks' backups are Tim Legler, who has battled injuries for three years; Chris Mills, who's a natural small forward but will get most of his playing time here; and Cummings, who can swing to 2-guard in certain matchups.

Small forward
The Warriors are counting on this being Antawn Jamison's breakout season-or at least their offseason of inactivity would indicate that. Jamison welcomes the challenge. "I know this is going to be a better year for me than last year," he says. "I just feel more comfortable about what I'm doing. I'm ready to become that kind of player for us."

Last year he had no regimented summer workouts because of the lockout; this offseason he did team-organized and team-supervised drills and attended Pete Newell's big-man camp. He sharpened the small forward skills that he never mastered last season while making the transition from college power forward. This is his chance to show them off.

Mills and Donyell Marshall were shopped over the summer, but their big contracts (part of the reason they were shopped) were a hindrance. Both will play behind Jamison, but both will get court time at other positions.

Power forward
Jason Caffey has to do better than he did in his first full season as an NBA starter: 8.8 ppg, 5.9 rpg, .444 shooting and noticeable defensive struggles in an injury-plagued season. The belief around the team is that as long as he's in shape and healthy, he'll be exactly what it needs at power forward and will be the player who convinced it to commit to him after his excellent final two months of '97-98. The biggest problem, however, might be that Caffey is just 6-8 in a world where some guards are that tall and power forwards are simply bigger and more physical.

Terry Cummings, who dusted off his game at age 38 and was named a captain in the preseason, is an ideal backup at the position. But he will also be backing up at center, as he did last year, and the concerns remain that too much weight is being put on his shoulders.

Center
Erick Dampier has to prove that last year's dismal showing was an aberration and that the seven-year, $49 million contract he signed over the summer was not a mistake-and that he can do this despite preseason knee surgery. He admitted when he signed the big contract that his upcoming free-agent status had affected his game; one can only hope any knee pain doesn't negate the relief he feels from getting financial security. One can also hope that his hands get better and he polishes some of the low-post moves he briefly found two seasons ago, then lost. Yet if he rebounds and plays defense the way he's capable of, the team will be more than happy.

Cummings will see most of the time as the backup here, but Adonal Foyle continues to lurk at both center and power forward. Injuries slowed Foyle greatly his first two seasons, and he was raw to begin with. This could be the year he proves that drafting him eighth overall in '97 wasn't a foolish move. But that's asking a lot.

Coaching
P.J. Carlesimo probably redeemed his reputation last season as much as his chief tormenter, Latrell Sprewell, did. Contrary to widespread opinion, Carlesimo's players neither quit on him nor tuned him out last season; the more mature roster helped, but the coach also grew slightly more accommodating and less abrasive. He still comes off far stronger and more rigid than most NBA players would like, though, and he hasn't produced the results that would give such an approach credibility.

Meanwhile, Carlesimo has made yet another promise to open up the offense and let his players run -- and to let them make decisions on their own. But his history shows that he holds the reins too tight, runs an offense that's too regimented and is too in love with big men, to the detriment of everyone else.