Quick Grades: Spurs @ Blazers - Dec. 13

Tim Duncan B-
Energetic and spry early on. Half of his field goals were dunks. Unfortunately ran out of gas.

Manu Ginobili C
Back looked stiff all night. No burst on offense and his defense was a struggle. Still produced, somehow.

Tony Parker C
Poor on defense; couldn’t contain Lillard. Scored efficiently enough but playmaking was lackluster.

Danny Green C
More mental errors. Was quiet for much of the night on both ends. Didn’t look confident in his actions.

Gary Neal C
Another sour shooting night. Defensively, he was caught standing around a lot but boarded well.

DeJuan Blair D+
Continues to look hobbled. Can’t jump at all and can hardly run. Why is he even allowed to play?

Tiago Splitter A-
Could have boarded better but otherwise really good. Effective on D. Potent on O. Impressive passing.

Boris Diaw D+
Not sure what’s wrong but he’s totally out of sorts. Passes going astray. Defense starting to suffer.

Patrick Mills C+
Scoring-wise, he was fine. Playmaking was non-existent. Defense oscillated between bad and really bad.

Matt Bonner C
Extremely weak defensively. No presence on the boards. Spacing helped a little on O but that’s it.

Nando De Colo B-
A few blatant defensive errors. The rest of his game was fine. Scored going to the hoop on nifty reverse.

Pop C-
I don’t think the Big 3 should have played due to fatigue. Never found potent offensive grouping.

Lets just throws this damn game away here. Move on fast.

Thanks TIMVP ... because the ILP website is down currently I am not able to watch the replay so its good to read the quick grades to get a first grasp of what the players were up to ...

Splitter should just leave this team tbh
make up some fake injuries so he can sit out eric gordon style
he was the only one trying defensively during that 3rd quarter and his teammates messed up all his good effort by getting their shots blocked

I like that Tiago's minutes are increasing. I think he is finally starting to break out into the Spurs second big man, in part due to Boris stinking up the barn with horrible play.

This was Tiago's sixth consecutive game with 10+ points and 5+ rebounds.

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Originally Posted by timvp

Pop C-
I don’t think the Big 3 should have played due to fatigue. Never found potent offensive grouping.

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How could he? When you addressing all the time the fatigue factor?

He still played big 3 to a reasonable amount of minutes

shit game, surprised it was kinda close, stupid TOs, average

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Originally Posted by timvp

DeJuan Blair D+
Continues to look hobbled. Can’t jump at all and can hardly run. Why is he even allowed to play?

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Because the Spurs got too many injuries. I asked myself the same thing and that's what I came up with.

whether the scrub can jump or not, doesnt make a difference...dude is still a scrub

Pop has some repair work to do behind the scenes. He completely mishandled the Green situation, which wasn't even a situation until Pop mishandled it. Green looked like a man haunted by the feeling he had just let his team down. It's fine that Pop wanted to send a message to Green. But hanging a loss publicly on a young role player on a team with seasoned veterans is not a recipe for success. Green was in a funk most of the night. Pop made it worse by subbing him out at key points during which he could have helped restore Green's confidence (the last play of the first half and most of the fourth quarter). Without Kawhi and Jack, the Spurs need Green to be 100-percent there mentally.

Parker was trying to play the hero too much last night. He didn't get it going on either end. It seems to me he doesn't trust Green anymore. After that fastbreak faux pas, Parker pretty much refused to pass it to him on the break, which resulted in Parker repeatedly getting blocked while Green watched alone behind the three-point line. One of the keys to the Spurs' run last year was Parker and Green's chemistry, especially defensively. That's disrupted now for several reasons, the fact that Green is playing as a forward rather than a guard chief among them. But it was clear the chemistry in general wasn't on last night, and that's going to have to change for the Spurs to stop losing games against physical and athletic teams.

I think the Green situation will resolve itself when Leonard/Jack return. Words cannot properly express how big of a hole they have left in the lineup.

You're right, most of the problems stem from the lack of a true small-forward. Green has been playing out of position, and it's really starting to affect him. Beyond that, there are no small-ball options and no one to guard large perimeter players. Neal is having to guard starting shooting guards or small forwards, and the bench's scoring has really taken a hit without him to help power it. These past couple of weeks' worth of games have been a valiant effort and a testament to the team's depth, but they really can't weather this storm against teams with more than one good wing.

But I still think Pop will have to fix the Green thing explicitly. It'd be one thing if he was letting Green work through it while criticizing him. But Pop seems to have combined his comments with a quick hook. I imagine that hook will get even quicker once Pop has more wing options to use.

Chalk this up to injuries, poor health, and fatigue. I won't count this team out until they get all there guys back and are rested.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzduINMcW-c

The Spurs have been run through the gauntlet concerning away games and back-to-backs. It will great to get Kawhi and Jack back. If you recall Jack did a great job guarding Aldridge in their first meeting. Not to mention Kawhi can guard any point guard, Lillard included.

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Originally Posted by Boomersgold

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rzduINMcW-c

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Very nice!

timvp, do you think Pop sits the big three in this game had it not been for Restgate?

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Originally Posted by DisAsTerBot

TIMVP, do you think Pop sits the big three in this game had it not been for Restgate?

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A dark possibility :D

It was rediculous when the commentators were comparing Parker and Lillard's rookie season implying how much better player is Lillard, Parker being 29-30th pick at the time and Lillard 6th. No matter how retarded you know the 6th overall pick is going to produce right away, while the 30th pick will be a project. Lillard has a long way to make several all-star teams, win 3 'ships and one finals mvp.

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Originally Posted by dunkman

It was rediculous when the commentators were comparing Parker and Lillard's rookie season implying how much better player is Lillard, Parker being 29-30th pick at the time and Lillard 6th. No matter how retarded you know the 6th overall pick is going to produce right away, while the 30th pick will be a project. Lillard has a long way to make several all-star teams, win 3 'ships and one finals mvp.

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The comparison was lacking, thats right. But as you said, they only "implied". But they were raving about how good Tony Parker is and how Lillard tries to model himself after Tony. At least they compared Lillard to somebody who actually played in that game and not to Rose, Westbrick or others. Lillard looks like he could make more All-Star Games, but the championships and finals MVP are highly in doubt ...

Agree with you Timvp on the fatigue. Tim looked tired after the half. Manu showed signs of fatigue when he passed. Tony had no one to work with and had an all around poor game. The role players and bench bunch have no excuse for being tired. They dont play the heavy minutes that the Big 3 play and are a lot younger.

But again, give Portland some credit. As the game started, I looked at my wife and commented that the game was starting the same as the Utah game. I knew we were in for a rough night.

Thanks

Fatigue doesn't throw cross court passes that only Tim Duncan on a 10 foot ladder would have caught. Fatigue would have been a shorter and lazier pass picked off for a dunk. The defense needs to shore up better, way too many drives down the lane with little help defense allowing Portland to score easily.

I've always thought Diaw (and Jackson) are two of the most important players on the Spurs since day 1. It's not suprising to me that we lost and looked that bad, and to come in here and find out that he got a D.

this team is able to cover up the big 3's age due to its deep bench but missing leonard and jackson forces guards like ginobili/neal/green to play against bigger SFs, which would make them more tired. i predict the spurs will continued to look even more fatigued until leonard comes back, which hopefully is soon.

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Originally Posted by dunkman

It was rediculous when the commentators were comparing Parker and Lillard's rookie season implying how much better player is Lillard, Parker being 29-30th pick at the time and Lillard 6th. No matter how retarded you know the 6th overall pick is going to produce right away, while the 30th pick will be a project. Lillard has a long way to make several all-star teams, win 3 'ships and one finals mvp.

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Compare Lillard's season with Parker's at same age (22) and this evens out a lot more. Many people conveniently forget Parker was 19 in his rookie season. By age 22 (2003-2004) he already had a ring and was playing much better. I wish all the best to Lillard and he's having a great rookie season on a crappy team so far. If he ends up with half the career Parker had, I'm sure he'll be happy already. If he does the same or more, he'll be in the HoF :)

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Originally Posted by Beaverfuzz

Fatigue doesn't throw cross court passes that only Tim Duncan on a 10 foot ladder would have caught. Fatigue would have been a shorter and lazier pass picked off for a dunk. The defense needs to shore up better, way too many drives down the lane with little help defense allowing Portland to score easily.

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Those 10ft high passes werent the only bad passes he made.