Has he ever been in ?Mahinmi out for the year.
Well, Luke Walton is playing on a great team and he IMO should be in the D league
Has he ever been in ?Mahinmi out for the year.
ok, watkins and tolliver suck. name me an option that wouldnt have coming out of camp? sims was probably the best option after camp, and hes sitting behind amundson's 4 pts and 3 rebs in pheonix right now.
these guys are fodder, and nothing more. they come in during camp, run their asses off for 3 weeks, collect a nice little check, and are out the door to go play in the dleague, china, tajikistan or if they are actually any good, a decent team in europe.
best case scenarios for these guys are the once-a-year showings from guys like amundson or moon from last year. their production is enjoyed by their teams fans because expectations were nil going in, but they are still usually flawed players.
Ian really looks as if he was assembled by Citroën.
Guess I can keep my sig.
I knew you were going to say that. It's not my job to find that player. It's the Spurs FO job to find that player. I'll start looking for that player if they want to hire me . IMO Watkins would have been better for the team than Tolliver. I don't care how much you think he sucks I think he would have been a bigger help than Tolliver.
Do you agree with me that I think the Spurs looked at the wrong type of player in Tolliver?
yes and no. in hindsight, of course. at the time, tolliver was to compete with bonner, which was a compe ion many were willing to concede to tolliver before it even started. but bonner has played his best basketball as a spur, and tolliver forgot how to shoot (or never knew how, which id bet is the case).
as for whether watkins would be a bigger help than tolliver, id probably say yes. but only because tolliver was of no help. but as i said before, if watkins was on the team right now, he would probably be as much help as ian. no way he sees minute one on the court. so whats the point?
*double post*
I really don't think we're that bad, but with someone like Watkins even contributing 5-10 minutes a game to take some of the load off of Tim I think we could be a lot better.
There's still things we can do now to tweak the team. We're not that bad at all. We can still improve a lot.
Last edited by Ice009; 01-26-2009 at 11:44 AM.
Holy crap, I hope his get weel for next season!
Ice has hit the nail on the head. Many of us were calling for the Spurs to keep Watkins around at the end of the preseason. However at the time, the argument was "he's not ready to contribute on the NBA level". With the shaky state of the frontline, Wakins was the logical keep. He most certainly could've provided an additional shotblocking and rebounding presence the Spurs are sorely lacking - even in a support role. He could've even spent some time in D-league, honing his game in preparation for a midseason callup. Just so long as he had a roster spot. After all, that's the same strategy they took with Tolliver. Now the Spurs will be forced to scramble to come up with some trade scenario to sign a big, who likely cost more than they have assets for.
It was unthinkable for Pop and R.C. to have come into this season with this frontline deficiency. Especially with the full knowledge that Splitter wasn't coming and Ian being injured. It boggles my mind why the FO didn't hedge themselves against this possibility with some big-man insurance. Even if Ian would've successfully returned from injury, Watkins would've been a good stop-gap solution in the interim.
Duncan isn't superman anymore. He's a 12-year veteran susperstar forward, who shouldn't be in a position where he is expected to carry the entire frontcourt responsibility, at both ends of the court, in order for his team to win. Sadly, that is exactly where he is in his career. It's a shame that as he gets older, he doesn't have the frontline support needed to decrease his workload. I totally agree with you Ice, the Spurs FO really screwed Duncan over this year.
Last edited by SenorSpur; 01-26-2009 at 10:40 AM.
thing is, i dont think watkins can give you 5-10 minutes at an nba level. and even if you just run him out there for the sake of being out there, his production isnt going to be any better than having fab or KT out there instead. im all for adding that type of player, but watkins isnt it. sims might have been it, and ian probably has/had about as much chance as sims. but i can almost guarantee the spurs wont find it sifting through camp fodder.
how many playoff teams right now are giving any run to undrafted camp fodder? off the top of my head i can think of the aforementioned amundson, chris anderson (who went undrafted and played in china before finally sticking), and james singleton (has been to europe twice now).
I don't think they ever relied on Mahinmi to provide anything this season.
This Watkins debate is a no-goer as well, as we've seen where he's ended. Even the best big men from the D-League are far from contributing and I don't think Watkins is on nearly the same level as Sims for example.
What's interesting though, is Pop's approach for the type of big man we need. Surprisingly ( or not ) he doesn't appear to be looking for the rebounding/shot blocking type, he's clearly looking for a shooter. It has been mentioned a few times that this season he's stressed much more on the offense compared to previous seasons, so a player like Watkins/Diop, or even Oberto, who'd stagnate the offense, aren't going to get minutes. I'm inclined to think this could be part of the reason while we're seeing less and less of Bowen this season even though he's not lost a step IMO compared to last season.
I certainly can't argue that point. It looks like he's sold on the Robert Horry model for a big. Which, if true, it's a flawed strategy because it places a much bigger burden on Duncan. Horry was a rare bird and his type is harder to find than a shotblocking, rebounding big.
True, but Horry played good defense as well as being a good shooter. I don't think the Spurs are able to find a big whose defense/shot blocking/rebounding is good enough to outweight the offensive stagnation they'd bring on the other end of the floor. Thus Pop is sacrificing some defense for better offense.
Ian will be 22 by next november.Translation :
End of the season for Mahinmi!
At 20 years old, the true start of his career is again postponed (only 6 regular season games played in 2007)
Then he shouldn't expect or complain that his team has dropped to middle-of-the pack in the one important defensive statistic that he tracks - FG% defense.
I'd be very surprised if the Spurs haven't been on the phone talking to teams about Bigs they feel can help, trying to come up with some kind of trade but realistically the Spurs have little to no trade assets that intrigue teams with bigs we NEED and CAN use.
We know the kind of market the Spurs are in, the economy and all that so the Spurs are probably just looking for bargain bigs to do patch work for a run and keeping cost down for the future. Look we have Hill, Mason and Hairston as a nice young nucleus to build upon with vets that are class guys to bring them along niccely, plus we have one of the best coaches in the game teaching. We hopefully will have IAn next season who can grow in knowledge by listening to the coaching staff and Timmy and we will be in a position this off season and the following to make a run at some solid free agents, plus we'll know where these young guys are by then and have some experience under their belts. We can make a run a Sheed this summer and perhap in 2010 we can make a big splash depending on who is on the team. We are not spending tons of money this year nor on any of the young guys coming off the bench so financially we should be in a good position for the future, just grabbing someone and getting them to come is the problem but remember Jermaine O'Neal almost came and so did Kidd, thank GOD they didn't.
We just have to be patient, see how this Feb trade deadline pans out and just be grateful we have a strong nucleus to build around and add too. Look for the Clipper or the Knicks to deal with the Spurs by the deadline but don't hold your breathe for anything worth acquiring, specifically the Knicks.
What does it matter if Mahinmi is still only 22?
He sure fits the profile of a player who's about finished.
He had a freak pec injury where he missed an entire summer from tearing it on a dunk. He routinely was banged up with the Toros when ordinary fouls would drop him on his ass and mess up his back. Now he's had an ankle sprain that was only supposed to cost him most of training camp turn into a season ending debacle involving surgery and bizarre communication problems with the front office.
If this was any other player on any other team people would be talking about how he was just one of those guys that will never be heatlhy and will always have some freak Sam-Bowie-ish injury that will keep him off the court. People would be laughing at the other team's fans for believing he'd ever contribute anything, ever, except maybe more freakshow injuries the next time around, like Guitar Hero wrist ailments or tearing his achilles while struggling to put on a brand new pair of shoes.
he will be 23 next November!
the irony is, the more time he doesn't play for the Spurs, the more the fans think he is kind of another Oden story.
hey, it's Ian. he never ever proved something special on any level. he isn't the secrete super weapon that is developed in the Spurs laboratories and will shift the balance of power once he's ready for operation.
Ian had some D-league games, what he delivered wasn't different to what other players did, who were not good enough for Spurs or NBA at all.
now he's out for the season. that sucks for him, for the Spurs it doesn't make any difference. the best impact this story will make is, that some will add his absence to the 0.4 seconds, the Mavs series calls and Manu's ankle when explaining why the Spurs didn't win 7 in a row.
what pisses me off is that we hear this news from a french newspaper, and not the Spurs. If there were really serious problems with his ankle the Spurs should have been the ones to let us know, but off course the Spurs don't do that.
It's quite obvious that they want a shooting big, which seems completely stupid to me, when you already have 2 of them in Thomas and Bonner. The signing of Croshere has been a waste of time and some say they are expected to resign him to another 10-day contract. There must be someone out there that can come in and help down low at least a little bit, but our FO seems to be fixed on the opposite. this is stupid.
quick, sign Horry!
-Mars
Spurs don't answer to us or the media. they do what is best for the franchise in theory and even then sometimes they make a mistake or 3 but when did we become the one they answer to. lol
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