in defense of Pop...

[apalisoc_9]

Hearing so much hate, maybe rightfully so..but I thought pop made the right decisions here.

- In theory, playing boban minutes outside.of his regular minutes on paper would have been poor because hes generally a bad matchup against the LA starters.

-The anderson plays that posters hated today are all just an attemept to get the players to play at a more familiar set. It was a actually a genuis decision. The spurs were out of rhytem and it was kinda clear they were confused offensively.

-it was clear after the first half the spurs needed some sort of magical pill to get the team going. I thought he waived the white flag early but probably was the smart thing to do with a game tom.

- Cslf tightness is a bitch. Kawhi.would have played in the playoffs..he played in the asg and orlando game with the same injury. Just stupid to risk anything since.calf tightness.could.lead to other shitty injuries if you apply too much pressure on it.

[AFMadison]

-When has Boban seen minutes against the LA starters?

-A more familiar set that would encourage the entire team to run the offense through KA.... Yeahhhh

-seemed like the guy who you said was generally a bad matchup seemed to help put the team on a run when he came off the bench

-obviously

[Kawhitstorm]

- In theory, playing boban minutes outside.of his regular minutes on paper would have been poor because hes generally a bad matchup against the LA starters.


Boban should have stayed on the floor as long as Cole was on the floor & FUCK THE SWITCHES.

[Ditty]

Always believed that we should of kept rolling with the players that got us back in the game. Pop has done it in the past, even during regular season. Think the game tomorrow worried him, but it's not like we are traveling and got much to lose in a regular season game.

[apalisoc_9]

Boban should have stayed on the floor as long as Cole was on the floor & FUCK THE SWITCHES.

Bro, pop has been overreacting every time he cant figure something out. The switches isnt a surprise.

The 45 has been shitting on Pop since last year and he keeps on doing the same stupid shit.

[Kawhitstorm]

Bro, pop has been overreacting every time he cant figure something out. The switches isnt a surprise.

The 45 has been shitting on Pop since last year and he keeps on doing the same stupid shit.

Maybe he should study Carlisle's defensive skim from the 2014 series.......oh my bad, scouting is beneath Pop.:wakeup

[Cowboys_Wear_Spurs]

Boban should have stayed on the floor as long as Cole was on the floor & FUCK THE SWITCHES.

Boban was making both Jordan and Cole his bitch last night. Neither could handle him and then Pop pulls him out when the Spurs made that huge comeback. I hate when Pop does this, but this is a game he intention threw IMO.

[Spurtacular]

http://i2.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/531/989/5a4.jpg

[skulls138]

Boban was making both Jordan and Cole his bitch last night. Neither could handle him and then Pop pulls him out when the Spurs made that huge comeback. I hate when Pop does this, but this is a game he intention threw IMO.I wonder. Before the game started I thought this should be an all hands on deck type of game. No more Pops tinkering and having fake injuries to our star players. It just felt like that type of game to me so when I heard Kawhi was out I thought, "Pops tinkering again and now he went too far". Too much tinkering sends the message that the players arent good enough, that without this tinkering we wont be successful.

But on second thought, I think that it may be needed and sure enough, it exposed LMA to the work he still needs to do. Kawhi is good, we know that, but to be successful LMA has to learn how to operate in these chaotic games with good swarming defenses. Watching last night he seems to need things...in...a...specific...way. Hes very rigid in his style and its very old school. Teams aint going to let him get set...feed him the ball...let him back down his lone defender, nice and slow and methodical.

And again, where are his rebounding numbers? One defensive rebound? Thats total BS. So in summary, I think Pops keeping Kawhi out could be a good thing to show LMA what he needs to improve upon because we're not winning without him.

[EVAY]

It seems to me that Pop likes to imagine that he can run the same offensive sets against any team in the league, regardless of who is on the floor for us. When the starters have to play against
one of the better teams without the offensive contributions of Kawhi (including not only his scoring but his ability to move without the ball), the opposition defense is far better at stopping the normal entry passes and set-ups than they can possibly be when he is there. That was so painfully obvious last night, when Parker kept trying to dribble into the defense to get the offense moving, and he was repeatedly denied because there was so little offensive movement. So, being Parker, he just kept bringing the dribble out and trying to start again, with no more help the second or third time, and it was a miserable offensive effort and ugly as hell to watch.

By the time the second half started, there was far less over-dribbling, but it didn't help because there was still little to no movement that advanced the ball toward the rim. No one could penetrate the defense last night, regardless of who it was or how hard they tried.

Aldridge is not very flexible when it comes to making something out of a busted play. If he can't get the ball when and where he expects to get it, he doesn't respond well. Parker just keeps trying to move somewhere that he can dribble so that he CAN make the right entry pass, but when he can't, the team runs out of time without a quality shot, as it did over and over again last night.

It is fine to say that Parker over-dribbles. God knows he did it repeatedly in the first half. But that wasn't the problem in the second half.

The problem, imo, is that Pop is not quick to realize that the normal offensive sets CAN'T work in a given situation, and then call different plays.

There is an advantage when our starters have been together for so long they know exactly where each other will be at any given time, but that can also hobble them when there is a newbie in the starting line-up, particularly on the wing. More than once last night, we watched a pass go to where Kawhi would have been, but KA was maybe two feet way, just enough for the ball to end up in the stands. Finally, when KA gets the ball he is not going to move as quickly or as predictably as Leonard does. That is not necessarily bad, but it does mean the offense looks pretty bad at times because it is not fluid. IF KA were to stay a starter, everyone would adjust, so it might not look as bad as it did last night, but it is never going to look as good without Kawhi.