But Can It Continue?

Warriors want the start of this season to be like the end of last.

The Warriors will be conducting a physics experiment tonight when they take the floor at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. They will be trying to see just how long momentum can last.

Can it stretch over an off-season? Can momentum survive for five hoop-less months?

``It was a long summer,'' forward Mike Dunleavy said Tuesday. ``We need to start some new momentum.''

There haven't been such high expectations since the 1994-95 season, when the team was coming off a 50-win season and had a rising star in Chris Webber. But everything disintegrated during Chris Cohan's first year of ownership. The Warriors have been a mess since, frantically moving players and coaches in and out and never winning more than 38 games.

But they're still the Warriors, so we know that if something can go wrong, it probably will. That swingman Jason Richardson's status for tonight will be a game-time decision, because of a sore knee, is a familiarly ominous sign.