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i dont see it being a bad idea, although its not going to save the season
In order to save season, Pop should start Ginobili
Mike Monroe
Near the end of the 2008-09 season, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich declared that his “Big Three” of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili needed to reunite in the starting lineup.
The quote from Popovich, about an hour before Ginobili was to make his second start of the season, at Indianapolis on April 3: “I just think Manu coming off the bench has run its course. It's time for the three of them to play together. They're our three best players. They're going to make each other better on the court.”
By game's end, Ginobili had scored 16 points with seven rebounds and seven assists in a 126-121 Spurs victory.
Popovich's theory seemed sound.
Two days later, Ginobili limped down a hallway at Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena after playing 23 relatively ineffective minutes and told the Express-News' Jeff McDonald and Buck Harvey he needed to have his right ankle checked out again.
It would be his final game of the season, and when he came back from a summer of resting and rehabilitating a stress fracture in the ankle, a limitation of minutes seemed medically sound. The best way to facilitate that and still have Ginobili on the floor in crunch time: bringing him from the bench again.
Ginobili has joked that he never wants to return to the starting lineup, simply because bad things happened last April.
Now Popovich has made another declaration about his starters. Before the Spurs played the Lakers on Monday night, he said the starting lineup he had used in the first four games of the rodeo road trip — Parker, Duncan, Richard Jefferson, Antonio McDyess and George Hill — likely will be his starting lineup for the remainder of the season.
Ginobili may find this a welcome relief, but you wonder if Popovich might want to rethink things when this stretch run arrives.
If “the three of them playing together” optimizes the productivity of the Big Three, then getting them on the floor together from the start has merit now, just as it did last April.
Doug Collins, the former coach of the Bulls, Pistons and Wizards who has become the best TV game analyst in the business, worked two of the Spurs' recent games for TNT. Those two games convinced him it is Ginobili who still has a chance to make this edition of the Spurs a special unit capable of making noise in the postseason.
Plenty of other things will have to happen, too. It would be nice if the Spurs started to get better return on investment from Jefferson, their key offseason acquisition. McDyess is only now beginning to get a feel for working in tandem with Duncan defensively.
But it is Ginobili, Collins said during a Tuesday phone interview, who remains the key.
“If they have any hope of doing anything in the playoffs,” he said, “Jefferson has to play better, but Ginobili is still the guy who makes them special.”
Collins still marvels at Duncan's consistency. He wonders if the first real dropoff in his play shows more at the defensive end.
The difference in Ginobili?
“He doesn't seem to be on balance shooting his perimeter shots,” said Collins, the No. 1 overall pick in the 1973 draft and a keen analyst of shooters.
The numbers bear out Collins' eyeballs. Never in Ginobili's seven previous seasons has he shot worse than 41.8 percent. He will take the court in Denver on Thursday at 40.4 percent for the season.
Collins knows shooting.
He knows intangible value, too.
Ginobili has it.
i dont see it being a bad idea, although its not going to save the season
More lineup changes 50 games in..
Parker, Hill, Ginobili, McDyess and Duncan should be given a look if the tailspin continues. Maybe RJ feels less pressure off the bench and begins to play better.
P.S.
Monroe missed something that fit right into the article: The one time Manu started this year he got hurt. It was that game against the Mavs and Manu missed the next five games.
LOL @ Doug Collins being the best anything..
The Spurs rotations this season have been a mystery. I know this much: We need to have always at least 2 of the big 3 in there all the time.
Don't know too much about what's going on with the Spurs these days but isn't one of your problems playing too much small ball?
I think starting 2 PG's and a SG at SF would not help the cause.
But hey if RJ comes off the bench maybe he would be more effective. I think you guys want him to be a Bruce Bowen type of guy (great defender and can hit the big jumper even if he rarely touches the ball throughout the game.)
But RJ's game is more of a scoring type where he needs to get in a rythm. This is probably more likely if he comes off the bench, where he can be a go to guy for 5-8 minutes to get in that crucial rythm.
Wouldn't hurt to try at these point I guess. How much worse can it get?
Right. And Manu himself said that he got the heebie jeebies about starting again after his groin injury in the one game he started.
If Manu gets injured again (oh no please!), then its curtains.
they've got to go back to this. i've said it before. with TP playing so poorly, Manu has got to shore up the offense of the starting unit.
and start Mason as well. go with a Mason, Manu, TP, backcourt. it's small, and horrible defensively, but start Ratliff or Mahinmi and let them funnel their man to the interior where they'll have to shoot over one of them or Timmy.
bring RJ of the bench along with Blair, and let Blair eat up RJ's misses. RJ can score against other teams' second unit more effectively and he can dominate the ball more, which i think he needs to do, but can't on this team as a starter.
I don't think it would help at all. Besides, the bench has been one of the team's strengths. No one would be hurt more by this move than DeJuan Blair. He and Manu have developed a nice chemistry with one another.
I'm curious whom would be that special playmaker coming off the bench if Manu starts. Outside of TP and Manu of the Gs/SFs, no one else has that ability to do it effectively in my opinion. This is where Brent Barry is fairly missed.
The Spurs can't afford to spread the big three out over their patchwork roster anymore. They need to recapture the synergy that those three have when they feed off each other.
Meanwhile, if RJ's problem is that he should be option 1 or 2, not a 3 or 4, then the bench makes perfect sense.
RJ could play more individual offense and worry less about meshing with other more talented scorers.
His confidence could be restored if he is once again a "big fish in a small pond" on offense. If his offense was restored he might actually start playing better in other areas. Well, we could hope . . .
I like the move if its coupled with moving RJ to the bench. I think RJ may really build his confidence going against 2nd units; plus he'll get a chance to defer less on offense that way too. A Hill-RJ-Blair combo off the bench could be great.
I'd try starting the following: TP - MG - Bogans - TD - Dice
Now does Pop have the guts to sit his $14M SF?
Keith Bogans shouldn't be a starter for anybody..I wouldn't pick him on my team on the streets..
The only thing Pop needs to do to save the season is to stop with the small-ball bull , I know it's not an original take but there's a reason for that.
My dream scenario would be having Ian starting alongside Duncan but I know that won't happen so I settle with him or Theo beign part of the rotation and having two legit bigs on the court at all times, if Pop doesn't trust Ian and/or Theo to give them rotation minutes then trade for one he trusts. Many of our problems will be put in the shade just by adding a little size, specially the defensive ones. I still think we could make some noise in the playoffs but Pop has to play the right guys.
Also we're lacking a little shooting in the starting line-up so starting Mason instead of Hill could be a good idea too.
I have preached RJ coming off the bench this whole season as the one thing Spurs need to experiment with. Please let the fruition make my life complete.
I would. Remember, there aren't 6 fouls on the streets.
They both shoot 38% from 3, and Hill shoots better overall from the floor. I don't see the point of starting Mason -- especially factoring in D.
LOL @ HarlemHeat and Timvp thinking they know more about basketball than Doug Collins.
That's 'cause Hill only takes three pointers from the corners, he isn't much of a threat from 3 from anywhere else, Mason on the other hand can hit three from everywhere and never passes on a wide open look, George does this 'cause he still doesn't trust that aspect of his game too much.
Everything Collins has said this week sounds right to me. I agree Ginobili should start, and that the Spurs made a huge mistake thinking that having a big next to Duncan who could shoot threes and space the floor was more important than a big who was a defensive presence... he's spot on. He's also a thousand times the commentator that Sean (I'm-an-embarrassing-homer-just-like-Tommy-Heinsohn) Eliott is.
At this point, he doesn't look much worse than RJ, who was a flat-out mental midget going up against Artest.
Remember that sequence vs the Lakers when they got 4 or 5 offensive rebounds before Odom made the and1? Our "bigs" looked so helpless against Gasol and Odom.
small ball.
Last edited by pookenstein; 02-10-2010 at 07:42 AM.
I actually thought the turning point in the laker game was in the 3rd quarter when Odom just abused Blair several times (one was an uncontested blow by dunk) and Artest burned Finley driving right past him to the basket. After Pop called a timeout he subbed out Duncan for Jefferson for his normal run of small ball and Artest went ape on Finley with no interior defenders present.
Why does Popovich keep going to this Jefferson small ball crapola? The only thing I can think of is he's trying to make the frontcourt more athletic...
All this pretty much illustrates to me how badly the spurs could use a guy like Tyrus Thomas who could guard a guy like Odom and (hopefully) keep Pop from using small ball.
Stop Small Ball Pop!
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