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I love this part, I wonder why you think the Lakers can improve but the Spurs can't
I love this part, I wonder why you think the Lakers can improve but the Spurs can't
Hi ffadicted. I'm not trying to put Manu down.
I'm saying Manu has to do even more for the Spurs. He needs to be like 2007 Manu for the Spurs to be successful. Making plays and the intagibles is great but he also has to make the other team fear him.
This is like my favorite player Lamar Odom. Lamar plays good most of the time but I consider him a non-factor unless he brings more to the table.
Because the Lakers were playing great earlier. They're in a slump now. It makes sense that they'll get out of their slump.I love this part, I wonder why you think the Lakers can improve but the Spurs can't
But I have not seen a great game from the Spurs this year against a good team.
When was the last time you watched a Spurs game and thought, "damn, the Spurs played great tonight"?
I've watched every game this year and can honestly say the Spurs are getting better, they are not there yet, but are on the way. You should worry more about your Lakers and Kobe's insistence on playing hurt. He'll be lucky to be 75% come playoffs. Let's see what happens.
They played great against weak opponents, Bynum can't play with Gasol this season. The Lakers have some questions to answer before you crown them anything.
"They played great against weak opponents," That's exactly what I'm talking about. Why are you even disagreeing with me?
When was the last time the Spurs played great against a good opponent? How is this any different from the beginning of the season?
As for the Lakers, they suck right now. But sure, Bynum can play with Gasol. He just doesn't play like an All Star when Gasol is around. Considering that the Lakers won last year without Bynum, it doesn't really matter.
No they really don't.
The defending champs don't have to answer any questions considering their core is basically the same minus Artest. All they need is their health.
They have the #1 record in the league, best pt. differential, best FG defense, best 3pt defense, and are the best rebounding team.
Phil Jackson knows how to pace his championship teams to a repeat championship. You obviously have no clue what it's like because your franchise has never come close to doing it.
Ill compare the Spurs from last season to this season in terms of Offense and Defense. Points scored and allowed per 100 possessions (adjusting for pace)
2008-2009
Offensive Efficiency - 108.5 (13th)
Defensive Efficiency - 104.3 (5th)
2009-2010
Offensive Efficiency - 111.4 (4th)
Defensive Efficiency - 104.3 (8th)
I can tell you that the defense for the first 15-20 games was ranked around 15th in the league this season. Its only recently they have started to go from a middle of the pack defensive team to a 8th in the league... and at this point the Spurs are only conceding 3 points per 100 posessions less than the Celtics who are the best defensive team in the league (albeit a few games without Garnett).
Offensively the team has alot more firepower than last season - and its showing. Even though RJ has underachieved for his standards, through his own fault and the team (him being too passive and the team not getting him enough shots) he has been very efficient... a tick under 50% shooting. He still takes too many jumpers and doesnt attack enough given his explosiveness but he is starting to take less and less jumpers and attack more. In his last 15 games he shooting something like 55% from the field. His athleticism has gotten the Spurs alot of easy baskets and hes a big reason why the Spurs have made such a big jump in terms of their offense, despite Parker not being anywhere near his level of last season (Plantar Fascitis).
So the defense is at the same level as last season which was already 5th best in the league, and still steadily improving - but the offense is levels above what it was last season.. which was the Spurs biggest problem throughout the season.
Your numbers are good I'm sure, I won't even debate them.
I don't want to sound like a hater but the 2008/09 was a disappointing season for the Spurs. I don't think an improvement over 08/09 is an achievement.
I would look the numbers up myself but I don't know where you got them. Do you know how the Spurs would compare to their championship run in 2007?
We were ahead the entire game, it was never close except when the Lakers made a rally in the third. Lakers meanwhile need to worry about health and oh, this Lakers team isn't as good as the Lakers team of last year.
That's the problem right there. The Spurs should never have let the Lakers make a rally. I think it was Farmar that missed a shot that could have tied the game late in the 4th quarter. If you read the Spurs game thread, there was plenty of worry at that point in the game.
It should never have come to that.
As for the Lakers, yup they have plenty of problems right now, they lost like 4 road games in a row and even lost to the Clippas.
That's one thing that the Spurs need to work on: taking care of the lead. Then again, they weren't playing against a non-contending team. They were against no less than the defending champs. Everybody knows that whether Kobe is in the game or not, the Lakers will make a rally no matter what. At the end of the day, the Spurs had enough poise and grit to douse whatever the Lakers were throwing at them.
Honestly, the Spurs have improved immensely over the past few months, but they still have a lot of work ahead of them.
ok i think this argument is completely misguided. Both parties are trying to predict unknowns. Which is how the spurs are going to play against better teams. Until now they sucked (actually they ahve been close and faltered down the strech due to poor execution, you can look up how many < 10 point games we have lost this year to good teams)
But spurfans have been watching small improvements in every game, that have not been evident to others. And we feel the spurs are bridging the difference between wins pouring in (like lakers who have been together and typically gut out these close games) and close losses.
Of course it is still conjecture, but i think its safe to say spurfan feels good aboutthis team, which has not been the case since the preseason.
Sure as Spurs fans we wanted to see them hold a good lead the entire game, but that's just basketball. Every team goes through it's highs and lows in a game. I think the difference lately is that the Spurs are not turning over the ball as much. Maybe its a combination of working through it and Pop doing more play calling. I really don't see why Kobe will sit himself out for a few games to get rid of his back spasms, I've had those before, it hurts like .
At no point of the 4th quarter the Lakers were a possesion away of tying the game.
the closest you got was 6 points
http://scores.espn.go.com/nba/playby...12024&period=4
6 points it was then. This was late in the 4th quarter.
I would consider that close for a game that was finally settled by 20 points.
I'm not trying to take anything from the Spurs win but the Lakers have been struggling for a few weeks as you guys have pointed out.
The Lakers have been sucking for a few weeks now, they shouldn't have been in that game late in the 4th.
Last edited by Allanon; 01-14-2010 at 11:27 PM.
Click up the Schumann article on NBA.com about over/under-achieving teams...essentially he says the Spurs have outplayed the Lakers this season and in the event that things continue down their current path (though admittedly, he doesn't necessarily endorse the notion that it will) the Spurs will take a run at the number one seed.
I'm not surprised. I thought the Lakers were overrated last season and even more overrated going into this season. Fisher is clearly on his last legs, similar to Horry in '08, where this has been evident for years, yet he always redeemed himself at some point in the playoffs, but it really looks like this year it's finally over for him. That weakness at the point combined the lack of depth and the amount of wear and tear/injuries piling up signals that this team is far more vulnerable than the overwhelming majority ever imagined they'd be.
Does Bryant have the gas to get to the finish line and consistently thrive when it matters most?
Can Bynum play well in tandem with Gasol and can Gasol stay healthy?
As a Spurs fan I've been encouraged by virtually everything that's gone on regarding the Lakers this season.
Here's one fan that actually knows the truth. The Spurs should have a better record than the Lakers but they've been under-achieving.
I've been telling you all this same thing since summer and nobody believed me.
The Lakers aren't a great team. But playing with Kobe, they have been over-achieving.
Fisher wouldn't start on ANY championship team other than the Lakers. Gasoft, Odumb, "delusional" Ariza, Ron Ron...these guys were all losers before playing with Kobe.
But because they won a championship with Kobe, everybody is over-rating them and actually thinking the Lakers are "stacked"
True, they're not a great "team", but they have one thing that make them the team they are: the poor man's version of the twin towers. Think about it, not many teams have a big man the caliber of Gasol, but no team has a second and third big man the quality of Bynum and Odom. Bryant is obviously their best player and an all-time great, but it's that second and third big that make the Lakers unique.
I actually somewhat want to see them pick it up. I don't want their vulnerabilities to become so glaring that it get's to the point where someone hands them a quality player or two at the deadline or they sign a guy like Stackhouse to help the bench. I want them to be lulled into thinking that they'll get healthy and that when they do, they're invincible. Because like I said, as a Spurs fan I'm encouraged by the ongoing developments of both teams.
The Spurs, as set in their ways as any team in the league, changed the majority of their roster. Plus, two of their three best players were coming off injury plagued seasons and did not play in the summer and they've never had to incorporate a scorer the caliber of Jefferson. Simply put: they needed time. Have they underachieved? On paper, yes, but if you really think about it, it's mostly understandable.
I removed the middle paragraph but this is the dead-on complete truth here about both the Lakers and the Spurs.
The Bynum, Gasol, Odom frontcourt + Kobe is what really separates the Lakers; but overall, they are not a "stacked" team.
The Spurs are not near where they should be considering their talent level; but it is understandable.
The Lakers are getting banged up big time, players are getting hurt and the starters are playing a lot of minutes, I don't get what Jackson is trying to do, is the regualr season really that important to him? All his players will be gassed out by the time the playoffs come if he keeps playing them at this pace.
I don't know about "separates", but it is the Lakers obvious advantage. I don't want to put too much weight into one game, but McDyess and Jefferson seem like they could do a solid job on Odom. Bynum, good as he is, Duncan wins that match-up hands down, particularly when you factor in that Bynum isn't the Bynum we've seen recently when Gasol is playing, so really it comes down to Gasol. I want to see how McDyess and Ratliff fare against him. I know Duncan will play against him some, but that's not a concern. Really, it comes down to McDyess and Ratliff (Pop will foolishly play Bonner against him some and Gasol will eat him alive); can they guard Gasol adequately and at times Bynum? If they can, then the Spurs can definitely beat the Lakers in a playoff series.
I disagree entirely on this point. I think that if you look at the roster on paper, you could say that. But the reality is that we have half a new roster and one of our old guys haven't touched a basketball in almost a year. So it's been a progressive work. The offense has actually been the best in years. Even better than championship years. And the defense has been coming along pretty well. One thing Pop understood after '07 is that the way the rules have changed, you simply cannot play the suffocating defense we used to play in '05 or '03. You also need volume scoring. So I don't think you're going to see a Spur team that hold opponents to below 80 points anymore. I think ideally we want to keep the opponent points around 90. The thing is that this team averages 100+ points a game.
We still have defensive lapses here and there, and we're still a work in progress, but it's mostly the defensive side. Know when to help, when to rotate, what we're giving up, etc etc etc. Slowly it has been coming along. The key part for us is for everyone to stay healthy. Tony has that plantar fasciitis, that he should be able to play through. Manu has been surprisingly healthy so far, and he's starting to get his lift back. Duncan has been great.
I've seen my good share of the Lakers to see that Kobe is more interested in playing than the rest of the guys. I do know that they're all going to be awake when the playoffs come around, and obviously your teams has kept most of the pieces, so the cohesion is there. They'll be a tough nut to crack when the time comes.
I've watched every Spurs game this year and this is how I see that they've improved drastically throughout the season.
Beginning of the year the Spurs couldn't beat anyone. They couldn't beat good teams they couldn't beat bad teams.
Step 1
Beat the teams you're supposed to beat.
They began doing this about 10 games in and have done so consistently since then.
Step 2
BEAT the teams you're supposed to beat badly
They had a problem with sustaining large leads and would constantly give up 20 point leads and make games close. They solved this vs. sub-.500 teams about 20 games into the year.
Step 3
Beat the good teams
Back-to-back wins vs good teams and winning 8 of 10 to be one of the hottest teams in the NBA.
Step 4
Hold onto leads against the good teams
After blowing a big lead against the Mavs and losing the Spurs were faced with similar problems against both the Lakers and the Thunder. However, the difference is that they were able to fend them off to record the victory.
It's this progression (and this is a very broad concept that encompasses more subtle smaller progressions that would take too much time to go into) that has been steadily going upward all season.
I expect their next jump in play will be when they start to get big leads vs good teams and keep those leads big. It's all about chemistry and killer instinct. We have so many new guys that need to learn about that killer instinct from the guys that have been there.
It's slowly but steadily getting better and better. Slow and steady wins the race.
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