Reply With Quote
?His acrobatic reverse layup gave the Spurs a four-point lead with 88-84 to go.
Parker reverts to his young self in victory
Jeff McDonald
NEW YORK — Spurs point guard Tony Parker will be the first to admit his season so far has been uneven.
With a pair of ankle injuries to overcome, with a bevy of new players to acclimate, with coach Gregg Popovich hounding him to be aggressive in looking for his own shot, Parker has often felt more like a rookie than a three-time All-Star.
When the going got tough in Sunday's 95-88 victory over the Knicks, however, Parker reverted to his All-Star self.
His acrobatic reverse layup gave the Spurs a four-point lead with 88-84 to go. His energetic three-point play, finishing left-handed over Jared Jeffries, put them up nine with 1:06 to go.
“Tonight, it was different, because they were switching a lot,” Parker said.
“I had a lot of opportunities to attack the bigs and be aggressive. I'm just trying to be aggressive and do what Pop wants.”
Parker finished with 22 points, his most since a Dec. 7 loss at Utah. It marked just the sixth time this season he'd scored at least 20, a feat that was commonplace for him last season en route to averaging a team-leading 22 points per game.
The Boss and The Beast: Spurs rookie DeJuan Blair didn't have to go far to recall his history at Madison Square Garden. On the wall outside the Spurs' locker room, alongside pictures of Bruce Springsteen and Frank Sinatra, hangs a photo of Blair as a freshman at Pittsburgh, jumping center in a game against Duke.
“I forgot that was there,” Blair said, grinning. “It's cool.”
As a collegian, Blair played at the Garden eight times, many of them Big East tournament games. In that, he played at the so-called “World's Most Famous Arena” more times in two seasons at Pitt than some of his more veteran Spurs' teammates have in their careers.
Sunday did not mark Blair's best game there. He finished with eight points and 10 rebounds but went 4 of 11 from the field and committed three turnovers.
Matty takes Manhattan: Injured Spurs forward Matt Bonner, a notorious sandwich hound, made good on his promise to visit New York's famed Carnegie Deli for pregame lunch.
He gave the food an A-plus. His only regret was that he didn't bring a photo of himself to hang on the restaurant's renowned wall of fame — especially after seeing a picture of washed-up wrestler Diamond Dallas Page sprinkled among the glitterati.
“Surely, I'm more relevant than Diamond Dallas Page at this point,” he said.
?His acrobatic reverse layup gave the Spurs a four-point lead with 88-84 to go.
lol DDP
Manu Ginobili's shot was given a 2 at first, then after a foul, they thought it was a 3 so they gave it to him, but they realised it was wrong and changed it back again. So technically, it was 88-84.
Don't worry hf84, I follow you.
Over/under on the McDonald update.
I loved the way Tony and Manu closed out the game tonight. I hope it's a sign of things turning around. LOL about the Carnegie Deli story with Bonner; I loved the one in Las Vegas, and I imagine the real one in NYC has to be 10x better.
that's what i was talking about. how can you give the Spurs a four point lead with "88-84" to go? he should have mentioned a time.with 88-84 to go.
IMHO Pop has asked him at the beginning of the season to distribute more and get everyone involved at least during the first half and then make his scoring effort in the second but he realized that TP doesn't work consistently like that. To have the best of TP he has to be aggressive since the very beginning, TP needs rythme early in the game, this rythme enables him to get more comfortable, his D and passing are simply better when he is aggressive early.
By being aggressive I mean going to the rim not especially searching his own shot but going to the rim for a lay up or a pass for the open guy. This is his comfort zone, when he is comfortable at doing that his JS is 10 times better, his passing improves etc... This is the fundation of his game when this part of his game is ok he can build upon and add other things. This is true during a game or during a season.
For me the best way to manage him is let him doing that during few weeks and then ask him to adjust stuff little by little and he will do what he is doing year after year he will improve his game.
Yeah, we beat the Knicks and a win is a win. We also need to face the fact that it was some terrible basketball by both teams. Parker played well offensively, but still made the team a little stagnate by his continuous dribbling when he is in the game. I truly believe the solution is to have him come off the bench with Bogans and to start Manu and Hill. The offense, however, is not really that big of an issue as the defense. In this game we finally crowded the shooters a little better although nobody is doing a Bowen in your face defense. The Knicks were not smart enough to attack the basket and kept firing away from long distance. If we run up against a team that attacks the basket when we crowd the shooters will Pop finally allow us to have some size to protect the rim or will he continue to blame the players on the floor who physically cannot do what he wants?
yeah, Tony's overdribbling and ball hogging. I much rather he'd finish more of his possessions with an AST rather than a shot.
Too many times Tony's the only player who touches the ball. I'd get pretty tired of hiking up and down the floor just to watch one guy handle the ball.
That was far from terrible basketball. SA held NY to 44% shooting while shooting 50% for themselves. They had 13 turnovers total. Nott too shabby considering what they have been doing lately. They also arrived in NY at 4 AM and had an early game (b2b). I think SA did quite well considering...
You are looking at stats while I watched the game. Bottom line is we had trouble putting away a team that had horible execution as they should have gone inside but kept chucking contested shots. Don't let the defense stat fool you. It was more NY than SA.
"SA held NY to 44%"
BS
Knicks average 44.6% at MSG against everybody.
Cool.As a collegian, Blair played at the Garden eight times, many of them Big East tournament games. In that, he played at the so-called “World's Most Famous Arena” more times in two seasons at Pitt than some of his more veteran Spurs' teammates have in their careers.
Lol.
Amen. Pop is only exacerbating the situation by hounding Parker to be more aggressive in looking for his own offense. Parker gets plenty of offensive opportunities. That's not the problem. The problem has been Parker's ball-hogging, overdribbling and inability to execute a decent fast break by his one-on-two forays into the lane.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
