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Yep, his ball handling sucked.
Do you think it's time to go back to Hill?
Mason as a PG is good for his shooting of screens but the last 3 or 4 games teams adjusted and he's not having many open looks.
His ball handling tonight remind me Beno in 05 Finals.
Yep, his ball handling sucked.
It's hard to know what to do. Honestly...Vaughn looks better than either of them right now.
Spurs scored 13pts in the 2nd and 4th quarter. At the beginning of those Mason was the PG. Our offense stopped and we never regained the rhythm.
We scored 29 and 21 in the 1st and 3rd
Mase at back up PG is not a good option it works once in a while but he doesn't how to do that
I would complain about Pop's coaching of the backup point guard but I have no idea who the the backup point guard is at the moment
It sounds like alot of ppl have the idea that Pop is being harsh on Hill. Even though Pop is known to be somewhat demanding when developing players I don't think he is doing that with Hill. I think its the exact opposite. I think he is taking it slow on Hills development is why he is not getting alot of minutes. I think he realizes that Hill is very young and there is no reason to push him as he has plenty of basketball years ahead of him. I mean its been awhile since he's had any young players. Alot of the players are literally prehistoric in comparison to Hill, and I just think Pop sees things differently this time around. There was no one to fall back on when Parker came in to be our starting PG. Either Parker learns quick or the team is tanked. We know how it turned out though. But in this case Pop has Parker so there is no need for Pop to try and transform Hill into a superstar overnight. I think Pop has chilled out a bit honestly. He said himself he was playing Hill at the SG position alot just to give him some familiarity. Hoping to put Hill more at ease and let him play how he is use to playing. With this hopefully he will get his natural stroke back that he had in college. I'm sure he wants Hills game to be just like Parkers. But he needs to get his stroke going before he can look to set anyone else up. As it is right now him thinking he has to set up his teamates first is also making him very passive offensively at the same time. I don't think Pop wants that.
Are you in need to have a backup poing guard?I would complain about Pop's coaching of the backup point guard but I have no idea who the the backup point guard is at the moment
maybe it's better that more then one player takes the responsibilietes og running a point?
Dear Pop,
For the love of all that is holy, please stop playing Mason as the backup point guard. You have single-handedly morphed Mason from a fan favorite into a worse version of Beno Udrih. I realize that you cannot coach backup point guards but please don't ruin what has been a very good season for Mason. For the Spurs to win a championship, you will need Mason to produce. Destroying his confidence like you have every other backup point in the last dozen years is not the way to ensure that he will be able to survive the pressure of the playoffs. I know some will tell you that it's all one giant coincidence that point guards start sucking when they come to the Spurs and that you are blameless, but believe you me, some of us haven't turned a blind eye to your coaching weaknesses.
Re-instate George Hill as the backup. If you don't like that idea, then I guess you can dust off Jacque Vaughn. But, whatever you do, don't destroy Mason any further. Since your lineup tinkering, I've grown to despise Mason ever touching the ball. That is not a good thing. Pretty soon, Mason is going to curl up into the fetal position and suc b to your backup-point-guard-confidence-destroying ways.
Change.
Thank you.
Sincerely,
An Anonymous Spurs Fan
Pe ion?
Where do I sign?
Anonymous Spurs fan.
Didn't it started all good for mason when he was running a point?
He was having the ball more and he felt it good.
And Hill is playing better off the SG position.
But recently it looks bad. But what isn't? Spurs offense is really I mean really bad right now.
And there is still a possibility that when Manu will be back he will take backup responsibilieties, moving mason to the SG. Then the experience of running the point by Mason will give a better result. In a meaning that opponents will have to figure out mason once more and Mason on the floor will be more confident with the ball.
It almost always starts off well. Even massive failures like Van Exel, Ward and Stoudamire started off well. Heck, Beno's best basketball he ever played for the Spurs was at the beginning of his rookie season.
I agree that Pop destroys the confidence of bench players in some cases...then again, some of them finally figure it out after 4 or 5 years and learn to cope.
In this case though, I am not worried in the slightest...there's something about the way George Hill carries himself that let's me know nothing really fazes him. He's genuinely confident and Pop won't destroy him. No worries with hill...very few players just walk onto an NBA court and are good at playing PG.
I don't know if it's an arrogance or what...but he's very similar to Tony Parker in his at ude. I actually think he's more confident than Parker....Parker was just fortunate to be in the position of Pop being forced to play him his rookie year.
Do not worry about George Hill. He's going to be a good player for the Spurs.
They all did start well?
I think there was too much hype on some of them.
And I see your point ... ehh
The problem is that Hill isn't the backup point guard. Pop, for whatever lame reasons, decided to take that le away from Hill.
Haven't read it all, neverthelees, here my 0.02$
Pop is not able to coach young players, after all, his mentor was Larry Brown (see Milicic).
Only exception to this rule is Tony Parker (Tim Duncan is class of his own) and even with TP, there was some fluke - Jason Kidd didn't sign with Spurs. Where would Tony be, if Spurs could have landed Kidd rests for speculations.
Fluke was also, that TP responded well to Pop's chewing - there is not a lot of players with such character.
Even for Pop stands: nobody is perfect.
Van Exel had a couple of flashes, but hardly started well if IIRC. The guy, like I mentioned in another thread, was a scoring point-guard with a jacked-up elbow, who also happened to be a defensive-liability. Not much of a recipe for success.
Ward was among the league leaders in 3-point shooting before he was bought-out and signed by the Spurs, only to come here and completely go into the tank. I'm pretty sure that didn't start too well either, but it would definitely lend credence to your theory of Pop neutering point-guards.
As for Stoudamire, I remember him having a solid shooting outing in his debut against Indiana, and playing decent in a game or two after, but nothing much more than that. He was just another aging "point-guard" they took a flier on after another mid-season buy-out, and like Ward before him, it just didn't pan-out.
I definitely think you're on to something with Pop's inability to bring the best out of players offensively, I'd just think that you'd be wrong to limit it only to point-guards.
I'm guessing that Pop is trying to make Mason play PG because of Manu. When Manu comes back, Mason loses major minutes at SG unless he splits time with Tony & Manu.
Finley/Bowen/Ime take up all the minutes at SF.
Pop had to choose between developing Mason and Hill, he chose Mason for the floor spacing.
I suspect when Manu comes back, Hill's not going to see much PT.
With the Playoffs coming, I don't see Pop changing his rotation for a roookie. Hill is going to have to wait until next year.
Disagree. Pop has gotten good play out of a number of young players. He won a championship in 2003 with basically two rookies at shooting guard (SJax and Manu) plus Bowen and Claxton only had a few years of NBA experience. He found Malik Rose and turned him into a very rich basketball player. When given a quality young player who isn't a backup point guard, Pop has usually done a good job.
Almost every fan of every team in the NBA says that their coach isn't fair to young players. I actually think Pop is one of the best coaches in the league at coaching young players. Look at this year for another example. Mason is in his first full year of playing in the NBA and Pop had him playing well ... until he put him at backup point guard.
We need to keep bumping this until someone in the FO sees it.
Someone link this on Fab's twitter.
In his first 15 games with the Spurs, NVE shot 46.3% from the field and was averaging 6.7 points in 16 minutes per game. The Spurs were 12-3 and all the coaches could talk about was how NVE was a better defender and a better teammate than they could have imagined. NVE was at cult hero status amongst Spurs fans.
Ward started off really well. First eight games, he shot 45.5% from the field. On his first road trip with the team, he hit 9-of-13 three-pointers. By the end of the road trip, Pop was having him play in fourth quarters over Tony Parker. The most memorable of which was that Pistons game where Ward almost single-handedly brought the Spurs back to win the game.
After that game, there was even some articles questioning whether there was a quarterback controversy in San Antonio.
Stoudamire was playing pretty darn well until Pop gave him the speech about shooting more and passing less ... and then yanked him in and out for shooting too much. At that point Stoudamire went from being an asset to being perhaps the worst player in the NBA.
Everyone remembers how Pop's back up point guards ultimately flame out but their good starts are forgotten.
Pop has a good track record of coaching young players and bench players at every position, except backup point guards.
Pop didn't take the PG le away from Hill. Hill gave it away. That is unless you define PG as someone who brings the ball up he court and immediately passes it away to another player as fast as possible, usually to Manu or Mason, and then retreats to the nearest corner out of harm or responsibilities way.
Even when Hill was passive offensively, he was giving the Spurs their best backup point guard minutes they've had in a long while. The fact that he could defend, rebound, handle the ball against pressure and get to the free throw line at a high clip made him valuable.
Another thing I've noticed about Hill is his ability to dribble to ball without really doing anything with it. He'll roam around the perimeter, cut through high post, even occasionally gets into the lane, just to dump the ball of for somebody to create a shot, instead of putting them in a scoring position.
And when he is showing enough aggression to drive into the paint, he definitely hasn't learned the art of passing back out. And his finishing skills ain't nothing to write home about, either.
Hill definitely isn't making a great case for himself, but I think timvp's point is that if Hill is going to hit the wall, don't drag RMJ down with him. We need ONE of those new players to be an asset come playoff time.
I'll agree with defend, rebound, handle the ball against the press. Early on he got to the free throw line but that fell off. Problem is that he can't do much as a PG in the half court. Without Manu only Parker is breaking down the defense and creating shots. Not even Duncan, who most teams have played man up without doubling now, is being too effective creating looks for others. So Pop went to Mason and it hasn't worked but Hill isn't a solution either. Only hope is an effective Manu and even better an effective Manu and Duncan. You can't afford Hill as your PG without someone else on the floor creating.
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