Quick Grades: Spurs @ Clippers -- Nov 7, 2012

[timvp]

Tim Duncan C-
Not decisive enough on offense. Defensively, easily his worst game so far.

Manu Ginobili C
Offensively, never found a rhythm. His defense was a step or two slow.

Tony Parker D-
Total lack of energy doomed San Antonio's chances.

Kawhi Leonard C
His defense was fine but his hesitancy on the other end was a liability.

Danny Green B
One of the few Spurs who looked alive. His hot shooting continues.

Boris Diaw B-
Better aggression offensively, although his defense took a step back.

Stephen Jackson B-
His toughness was commendable but his actual production wasn't noteworthy.

Gary Neal D
Simply overmatched by Eric Bledsoe's athleticism on both ends.

Tiago Splitter C+
Flashes of high-level play overshadowed by bouts of softness.

DeJuan Blair C
After a heady outing, reverted to playing like a bull in a china shop.

Matt Bonner B-
Nothing particularly good or bad tonight.

Patrick Mills C-
Looks extremely uncomfortable on the offensive end right now.

Nando De Colo Inc.
Defense didn't look very good but offensive potential is enthralling.

Pop C
Continues his mad scientist routine. Didn't seem interested in adjustments.

[Stabula]

When Danny Green is your top scorer with what was it? 12 points? You know you had an awful night.

[gee]

Thanks for the write up :toast

Poor, poor showing tonight from everybody.

[TDMVPDPOY]

duncan looked slow tonight when he had the ball, too many reach in disrupting the inlet pass to him

as for the rest of the team especially blair, neal, bonner....hahahahahahahahaa

[racm]

The problem with Pop is that you give him a stacked team and he'll throw games to experiment with lineups.

Then again, I don't think he's the type of coach to play his best players all 82 games when possible to chase RS records or let his best players stat pad in a game already decided.

[99 Problems]

Could we have a good look at how Heat are rotating the point between Chalmers, Wade and Cole. I apprec' TP been ballin but I think we can improve. C'mon Pop.

[racm]

Could we have a good look at how Heat are rotating the point between Chalmers, Wade and Cole. I apprec' TP been ballin but I think we can improve. C'mon Pop.

The Heat's biggest secret is that despite having 3 guards who can all play the 1, they have a fourth playmaker in LeBron.

[DapDaGenius]

I sometimes believe they purposely play bad games to get the attention off of them.

[Em-City]

The Heat's biggest secret is that despite having 3 guards who can all play the 1, they have a fourth playmaker in LeBron.




http://img37.imageshack.us/img37/2222/2uzp509.png

the secret has been revealed!

[justinandimcool]

Back from the game, been a fan for a LONG time, but it was my first time ever sitting in a lower level and it absolutely blows my mind how different the game is up close.

General obvious thoughts:

-dat SPEED. how quickly it takes for these guys to get from point A to point B is just mindblowing. 2 of their steps are like 10 strides for me.

-Everything's so much easier to keep track of. Who missed a defensive rotation, who missed a boxout, a player's footwork, you notice every single screen and cut being set. Obviously you can see all this on TV, but it just felt more salient live. For someone who is crazy for nuances and sets and ball movement, I was more immersed in every facet of the game than I've ever been- you take in so much information every possession. The game goes by a lot faster, too.

-Sitting in the middle, looking up and seeing all these people and all this noise. I can't imagine tuning all this out while trying to execute, concentrate, all while listening to your coach.


Anyways, once the novelty disappeared, it was upsetting http://forums.realgm.com/boards/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif

Duncan didn't look as spry as usual. DJ looked super motivated and just engulfed him pretty much. Didn't seem like Tim ever had a lot of space to do much work. I'm scared, tbh.

Manu/TP looked like they were sleepwalking. Can't say anything good about either.

Kawhi looked like he had zero energy. His hesitation was annoying. Everytime he had the ball he seemed to be at a crossroads between going in all the way or settling for a midrange. Guy needs more confidence in his game.

Bonner and Neal are 10x slower in person. Impressed with Matt on the boards though. He can do it, he just needs that hustle gene.

Nando's speed stood out to me. He will be in heavy rotation by the end of this year. He's too versatile of a weapon to be kept on the bench. His shot needs work though.

Diaw's greatness just shines. His strength, his passing, his instincts, his overall IQ. Just wish he made his open shots.

Patty looks totally lost, he looks more pointless now than last year, tbh

DeJuan's improvement stood out a bit as well, except when he tries to do too much. He seems to get better at finishing at the rim every year, once he gets some more mental toughness he'll be a welcome addition to the rotation.

Tiago's dunk made me and my friends go wild. But his fundamentals are just so awful, so much worse in person. His inability to finish, his lack of physicality, his defensive softness. So horrible.


The DJ dunk was SPECTACULAR though. Crawford is a lot of fun as well.

the Clippers know exactly what we want to do on defense- too predictable IMO. They know our weakside big comes to help every time, so they go baseline like we force them to and if the weak help comes they can always just throw the lob to DJ for an easy one. If the individual man defense isn't good, then the Spurs have no chance against this team. Luckily it looked like the on-ball D just took a night off (I hope), while the jumpshots we were able to force them to take all went in. If our guys stay home on the bigs, they're forced to take a jumper every time. Too bad tonight 90% of them went in. On most nights however, teams won't make as many tough two point jumpers. Hate to say it, but the Clippers just got hot and made low-ish percentage shots (sound familiar?). Points we lost on transition though....that's a COMPLETELY different story.

Definitely shelling out the big bucks for games from now on though.

[Hoops Czar]

It's always nice when your coach decides to pull the plug late third quarter. When the Spurs cut it to 11 with eight minutes to go, pop should have put his starters back in. And it's always nice when the FO decides to go against the grain in another failed offseason. De Colo clearly isn't ready and could have benefited from another year overseas. But bringing him over was more important than shoring up team weaknesses. The team obviously needed more guards in the worst way.

Splitter looks completely wacked out there. If he doesn't get his head out of the clouds, the Spurs have no backup to Tim Duncan. Thank god the Spurs held onto Neal. While he may not be your prototypical backup pg, Mills has been beyond bad in his cameo appearances, struggling in garbage time. And I can't quite put my finger on it, but Ginobili doesn't look right in the early going. The Spurs are actually very fortunate to be 4-1 and not 1-4.

[Spurs da champs]

Kawhi has to be a integral part of the offense as he's so much more then a 3 point shooter, their needs to be pick n'rolls, cuts & just many more plays that should be run for him & through him.

[NZ Spurs]

Burn the tape. Next.

[AussieFanKurt]

Outside of Duncan and Diaw we have D-league big men

[jestersmash]

The game really came down to non-existent penetration off screens (I happen to think most of our offensive woes most of the time ultimately boils down to this fact). I thought Tony came off screens at the wrong angles probably 85%+ of the time during this game. There was a lot of "east-west" screen and roll movement and not enough north-south movement. "East-west" screen and roll movement is usually good enough to set the big up for a semi-open jump shot. Not the most efficient shot attempt in our repertoire. In contrast, "north-south" screen and roll penetration where the big (usually Duncan) properly screens off Tony's man and Tony gets a step on the big who was originally guarding Duncan leads to 3 vs 3.5/4 (depending on how much of a "step" Tony manages to get on the big and therefore how much defensive help Tony attracts near the rim) situations which in turn opens up options for everyone. Floater/layup attempts for Tony. Semi-open or sometimes even wide-open corner 3 point attempts. Wide-open elbow jumpers for Duncan. Frantic opposing team defensive rotations that - at minimum - sets up for a pump fake-->step in (wide open) jump shot for someone on the perimeter.

Moreover, I felt like Tony had too much of a "pass first" mentality instead of a "read-and-react, open man gets the shot no matter what" mentality.

I mean he took 7 shots in 24 minutes. One would expect the focal point of our offense to have more shot attempts in that amount of time. I feel like if you replayed the exact same game with the same defensive schemes from the Clippers, Tony should've had at least 10-11 shot attempts versus 7 if he properly followed the "read-and-react" protocol on the mostly "bad" east-west screen and rolls he was involved in.

Dribbling mostly east/west in screen and rolls is bad enough. Tony wasn't even executing that properly in my opinion, though.

Manu was pretty disappointing with his "read-and-react" skills this game as well. There was a beautiful screen and roll with dejuan blair last game where dejuan rolled hard to the rim and Manu faked a pass to Dejuan only to actually pass it to a wide open Matt Bonner for 3. I remember Sean clamoring about this play and emphasizing how it doesn't work if Dejuan doesn't "sell" the roll.

I saw Manu try to run that exact same play, only it was as if he was determined to pass the ball to Bonner regardless of how the defense actually reacted. He passed the ball to a well-guarded Bonner who then evoked cringe-worthy reactions from Spurs fans everywhere as he initiated his usual "pump-fake-->dribble drive-->look around frantically for someone to bail him out" scheme.

[angelbelow]

I was able to catch the Clippers vs. Warriors game last Saturday (my only game so far this season) and the Clippers looked horrible. They went to Blake for iso basketball in the post for 75% of the 1st half. This led to clumsy offensive execution and set a negative tone for the rest of the game. Their defense was terrible as well. DJ doesn't give 100% but makes up for a lot with his athleticism. Surprising to see that we lost, but not a big deal.

[Bruno]

Back from the game, been a fan for a LONG time, but it was my first time ever sitting in a lower level and it absolutely blows my mind how different the game is up close.

General obvious thoughts:


Nice post, justinandimcool. :tu

[scanry]

Timvp's grade/analysis for Stephen Jackson: Showed toughness.

[timvp]

Real work interrupted my Game Thoughts. And I was having fun ripping on the players for a change . . .

I'll finish later in the day. Thanks to justinandimcool and jestersmash for their great posts in this thread :tu

[Horry For 3!]

Back from the game, been a fan for a LONG time, but it was my first time ever sitting in a lower level and it absolutely blows my mind how different the game is up close.

General obvious thoughts:

-dat SPEED. how quickly it takes for these guys to get from point A to point B is just mindblowing. 2 of their steps are like 10 strides for me.

-Everything's so much easier to keep track of. Who missed a defensive rotation, who missed a boxout, a player's footwork, you notice every single screen and cut being set. Obviously you can see all this on TV, but it just felt more salient live. For someone who is crazy for nuances and sets and ball movement, I was more immersed in every facet of the game than I've ever been- you take in so much information every possession. The game goes by a lot faster, too.

-Sitting in the middle, looking up and seeing all these people and all this noise. I can't imagine tuning all this out while trying to execute, concentrate, all while listening to your coach.


Anyways, once the novelty disappeared, it was upsetting http://forums.realgm.com/boards/images/smilies/icon_lol.gif

Duncan didn't look as spry as usual. DJ looked super motivated and just engulfed him pretty much. Didn't seem like Tim ever had a lot of space to do much work. I'm scared, tbh.

Manu/TP looked like they were sleepwalking. Can't say anything good about either.

Kawhi looked like he had zero energy. His hesitation was annoying. Everytime he had the ball he seemed to be at a crossroads between going in all the way or settling for a midrange. Guy needs more confidence in his game.

Bonner and Neal are 10x slower in person. Impressed with Matt on the boards though. He can do it, he just needs that hustle gene.

Nando's speed stood out to me. He will be in heavy rotation by the end of this year. He's too versatile of a weapon to be kept on the bench. His shot needs work though.

Diaw's greatness just shines. His strength, his passing, his instincts, his overall IQ. Just wish he made his open shots.

Patty looks totally lost, he looks more pointless now than last year, tbh

DeJuan's improvement stood out a bit as well, except when he tries to do too much. He seems to get better at finishing at the rim every year, once he gets some more mental toughness he'll be a welcome addition to the rotation.

Tiago's dunk made me and my friends go wild. But his fundamentals are just so awful, so much worse in person. His inability to finish, his lack of physicality, his defensive softness. So horrible.


The DJ dunk was SPECTACULAR though. Crawford is a lot of fun as well.

the Clippers know exactly what we want to do on defense- too predictable IMO. They know our weakside big comes to help every time, so they go baseline like we force them to and if the weak help comes they can always just throw the lob to DJ for an easy one. If the individual man defense isn't good, then the Spurs have no chance against this team. Luckily it looked like the on-ball D just took a night off (I hope), while the jumpshots we were able to force them to take all went in. If our guys stay home on the bigs, they're forced to take a jumper every time. Too bad tonight 90% of them went in. On most nights however, teams won't make as many tough two point jumpers. Hate to say it, but the Clippers just got hot and made low-ish percentage shots (sound familiar?). Points we lost on transition though....that's a COMPLETELY different story.

Definitely shelling out the big bucks for games from now on though.

I can for sure agree with you on shelling out the big bucks. My sister's bf and I sat 3rd row behind vistors bench last year for a game and I will never sit much farther than that anymore. We just got tickets to the Spurs-Blazers game in March 4 rows behind Spurs bench. Pretty excited about that.

[benefactor]

Saw this one coming from a mile away. Clips were embarrassed last season and played like it. The Spurs had won their first four and were fat and happy. Nothing much more to take from this.

[RodNIc91]

Wasn't able to watch the game. Im glad though, it sounded like an awful outing. Timvp's predictions in the game thread were about right. It's a shame the opening streak ended though.

[Gagnrath]

Part of this game was energy part of it was the spurs not being able to buy a basket on wide open shots at times.

When you can't buy a jumpshot you have to go inside and the Jordan, Griffin combination inside when they are both playing fairly smart is pretty good.

Jordan is becoming a better player he still needs to develop a game outside of 5' from the basket, but he's not doing stupid things anywhere near as much anymore. I see him getting a foulshot next year.

[AFBlue]

Burn the tape. Next.

Actually they need to do the opposite. The super-athletic Clippers played swarming, overaggressive defense and it knocked the Spurs back on their heels. This is the same type of inspired D that OKC and Miami are capable of playing with similar athletes. The Spurs need to study this tape and talk through exploiting the opponent's overaggressiveness.

Honestly though, the Spurs' lack of athletic players to match up is glaring. Outside of Tony, Kawhi and maybe Splitter, they look like the slick-passing Euro national teams that got overwhelmed by the US in the Olympics.

[benstanfield]

Nando's speed stood out to me. He will be in heavy rotation by the end of this year. He's too versatile of a weapon to be kept on the bench. His shot needs work though.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik-2M9bL_no&feature=g-high-u

[justinandimcool]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik-2M9bL_no&feature=g-high-u

Crawford's been in the league 12 years. There are more guards that have been embarrassed by Jamal's handles than guards that haven't.

Also, most guards would have given up and let Crawford blow by him, Nando fouled Jamal and made him earn it. Womp womp.

[justinandimcool]

I can for sure agree with you on shelling out the big bucks. My sister's bf and I sat 3rd row behind vistors bench last year for a game and I will never sit much farther than that anymore. We just got tickets to the Spurs-Blazers game in March 4 rows behind Spurs bench. Pretty excited about that.

Yeah definitely aiming for behind the bench next time, I wonder if you can hear the huddles :lol

[Boomersgold]

Back from the game, been a fan for a LONG time, but it was my first time ever sitting in a lower level and it absolutely blows my mind how different the game is up close.

Nando's speed stood out to me. He will be in heavy rotation by the end of this year. He's too versatile of a weapon to be kept on the bench. His shot needs work though.

Definitely shelling out the big bucks for games from now on though.

Are you sure you weren't watching Manu? The words Nando and speed should never be used in the same sentence.

[bus driver]

its only the 4th game, you dont want to show this team all of your cards

[superbigtime]

Clippers clearly had this game circled. Spurs played with no rhythm. I think this one falls on TP. Splitter will not improve without more minutes. DeAndre Jordan looked amazing.

[Horse]

Anybody worried about this game is just being silly. You could tell in the first quarter when we had all those open shots and a chance to jump out to a big lead that they just didn't want it last night. There was little effort, they overlooked the clippers, then la got hot. jordan is not that good neither is green or bledsoe. F the clippers that will probably be the high moment of their season.

[-21-]

The Clippers played with intensity, the Spurs did not. They did a great job using their youth and athleticism against us tbh.

[Obstructed_View]

The game in a nutshell: Tiago Splitter takes the ball down the floor, makes an amazing dunk after faking a pass. Then is slow on a rotation at the other end of the floor and gives up an easy bucket.

The record-setting hottest Spurs team ever to start a season is more than entitled to lay an egg on national television.

[lmbebo]

4-0 I guess is record setting, but nothing to write home about ...

Its 1 game out of 82. Don't care. Hopefully they don't have many of these games this year, but they happen to all teams.

[Baseline]

I sat two rows behind the Clippers bench, as I have for probably 20 games over the last couple of years, and I've never seen the Clips so animated. They were treating this game like a Game 7 in the playoffs.

Meanwhile, the Spurs looked like they'd rather be at the movies, and their energy looked like the third night of a back 2 back 2 back. The Spurs looked like themselves in jumping to a 5-0 lead, but after the first four minutes (the first time out), the Clips led 11-9, and it was apparent that the Spurs couldn't make a shot. And their energy level followed. The Clips seemed to get faster as the game went on.

As the Clipper fans around me always say, the Spurs come into town and mow you down with their precision - precise cuts, quick and purposeful passes, attention to detail, and execution on every level. Well, none of that was happening. We looked more like the Wizards last night.

As Pop would say, there was no "nasty" out there. Or concentration. But it was only one night, so it's an aberration. Too bad it was on national TV. It's almost like CIA Pop did it so everybody would stop talking about us and the 4-0 start. So now he can say, "Remember? We're old and slow, so forget about us."

But we'll be okay. If Parker had come out with any energy whatsoever, it would have been a close game. DeAndre gets in foul trouble most nights, which drastically changes the Clippers' dynamic. A normal Parker living in the lane would have accomplished that. Neither Chris Paul nor Willie Green can stay in front of TP. But the Spurs' energy level followed Parker's, and it was a very long night.

[phxspurfan]

I'm not impressed by DeColo at all. Just b/c he's Euro and plays with "flair" doesn't mean he has potential to me. So many of these Euro guys look good and then flame out in the NBA (Jasikevichus (sp), Marko Jaric, Spanish Manu, etc.).