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Honestly I can understand wanting to keep Derozan, but the Spurs really should trade LMA.
Yeah, we'll see if he can play himself into game shape per his m.o. The older you are, though, the harder that is to do.
Honestly I can understand wanting to keep Derozan, but the Spurs really should trade LMA.
Dejounte makes so many re ed mistakes and his ball handling is terrible but I'm proud of the kid so far this season tbh. Coming back strong after that garbage game vs the Jazz shows something...
ah, back in the good old days when we could complain about our scrub players during a 20+ point win
Yup. Is pop finally seeing it?
Let's look:
These are all Kawhi's field goals with the exception of Kawhi's breakaway dunk, Chinook.
FOUR of his 22 field goals were guarded by Keldon as shown by these .gifs.
4/22 = 18% of his field goals.
Look at this bull ass shove by Kawhi:
this weasel
Patty's grade of A is even a bit low. I'm no fan of Patty - because he's so limited, and his limitations can be so irritating - but he's on the team to score, primarily with 3s, and that is exactly what he did, in a winning effort. Did his job superbly, in a win, should get him an A+.
I'm also no fan of Poeltl - that problem of limitations again - but I thought he should have been on the floor to close the game. He was having a fine game, 19 minutes with no fouls! His size might have been helpful, and made the last 3 or 4 minutes a little less of a struggle. Who Poeltl should have replaced? DeRozan.
DDR's patented move (of dribble drive, stop, pump fake pump fake, shoot and miss but draw the foul) was not required in the game, and definitely not at the end. I don't think the Spurs will ever need that again. The Spurs need to let DDR go at the end of the season, if they can't trade him sooner. Which they probably can't, because of his high contract price. But it's becoming increasingly clear that the young players are taking over.
Keldon had the best chance of keeping in front of the s bag, at least a hand in his face every time. Lonnie seemed to got tossed with a bump. The s bag is really strong.
While Murray had success in fronting him with his long reach, even stole a pass to Kawhi, made a contested jumpshot missed. But I doubt DJ could guard Kawhi one-on-one. Kawhi would break him.
I didn't see Vassell tried. He emulates Kawhi's game, which is good for this youngster.
It's hard to keep Poeltl in the last possessions thought if he's not gonna make his freethrows. The guy seemed to got worst
Yeah, Vassell was assigned to Lou, Bev, and Kennard. Like I called it before the draft through my scouting of these players, his best defense comes against guards, not wings.
He needs to gain strength first before thinking about being assigned to Kawhi. He would get wrecked.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but I do think that some of the way you or whomever you're using to determine defensive responsibility has to you miss possessions. Like on with Lebron, his first bucket was a blow by of Johnson that was counted as a score on the help man instead. In these gifs (and thank you for them btb), you can see Kawhi on guys like Mills and Aldridge or Murray. How did that happen? It's clear those guys aren't the main Leonard defenders. They got caught having to switch. How many of those were good/necessary switches as opposed to broken rotations or poor screen-navigation? Many of the metrics ignore that and just look for data on who's closest or whatever. That's helpful analysis, but it lacks some important context.
Regardless, I don't think you can look at this and say that Johnson was a better Kawhi defender than Walker last night. Leonard had more success after the switch than before it. At best, it was incidental that Johnson didn't slow Kawhi down (and/or didn't stay on him for a lot of possessions). The ad-hoc results seem to suggest Kawhi had a higher PPP against Keldon than most players.
Absolutely.
Yup he gets the rebound, would get fouled and miss both.
Don't be the pessimist. Poeltl hit a free throw last game. He could go 1 of 2, which is as good as Patty did.
I mean, it's why the league is trending more towards having versatile players at each position. Switches are going to happen and broken rotations are going to happen. The next man up has to be capable to guard the guy they switch onto. My point was not that Keldon did a better job than Lonnie, but it was just to point out that this game was not a full blown Keldon vs Kawhi matchup. Man to man defense is what I'm assessing here, and to me, in this very small sample size Kawhi wins round 1. The man has many practice hours under his belt to make difficult shots. Like you or someone said, Kawhi is a finesse player than an energy bully ball guy, and Keldon does a great job on the latter. Hopefully, he learns a thing or two from this game and adjusts for next time.
Last edited by Dejounte; 01-06-2021 at 01:47 PM.
Not sorry. Seeing him skitter out of frame to avoid being on Keldons poster was sweetness, itself.
I like Poeltl to get in there because his defense is better than Aldridge, BUT his FT is a liability. He needs to get better especially after that new contract.
That Patty Mills miss was unfortunate, but you wouldn't want anybody else in the team taking that shot.
I think a match-up with both squads fully healthy would go differently. White is the best Leonard defender on the team. That would've let Walker and Johnson guard PG and come in as secondary defenders later on. I don't think Johnson has done a bad defensive job at any point this year. He's made some mistakes, but that happens to everyone. I just worry that he's going to get the Murray treatment where he gets a lot of credit for things he didn't do on that end, and it's going to cause Pop to improperly evaluate his defensive pieces. Johnson's been a fine defender and may develop into a very good one. But the team still needs a defensive PF with actual size. Johnson is holding his own, but if you constantly remove possessions where he is able to stay the closest defender, then you automatically bias the results to only include times where his defense worked. That methodology also unfair punishes rotating players since they're being judged for trying to stop a guy coming at them with a head of steam or being caught on an aborting switch or having an irrational size disadvantage.
Win or lose, this squad is such an improved product over last year.
I feel we are 1 or 2 pieces away from being a very good team. An uber-athletic power forward with strength and skill would be very useful.
A 6'8" point guard might do the trick, too.Some decent options in this draft class.
Should have traded him a long time ago after one of his 50 point games. Might have been a few gullible GMs then. Not now.
A young, promising big + more to go with this young core? That would be sweet to see. To have seen 1.5+ years ago.
Stop making it so fast go.Look at this bull ass shove by Kawhi:
this weasel
Is there a way i can slow the replay down?
Dejounte "not a PG" Murray
These were clutch passes that would have given us a comfortable lead. Too bad Rudy blew it.
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