Agree on the grades.
Good write up.
Will TD even avg 10 pts a game? I know stats alone does not tell the whole story. but it is an indicator of how much he has left. I guess the best to hope for. is in a 7 game series he can still do a 15 and 10. and play good defense. (limiting a gasol to 20 pts)
We are ed if The Great One keeps those performances up
Splitter led the team in assists ?
Last years regular season was fools gold, we started out so well it was crazy. Which led to no moves being made at the trade deadline in spite of our glaring weaknesses. I kinda hope we keep sucking so that a move/moves are pulled by the trade deadline cause we aren't winning with this team as currently constructed. Keep playing Bonner and RJ and ill pray you arent on the team come playoff time.
i expected the loss. tired legs.
I agree with most grades, but would have given Bonner an "F" for performing like he was in the playoffs and Blair an "A-" since he looked like he was really trying hard out there..
Pop screwed up when he took Tiago out in the second quarter while he had it going. The Rockets promptly went on a huge run. That poor decision was the game. Duncan shouldn't play back to backs from here on out.
Too many minutes for Bonner was just the icing on the cake.
F-
This. Then Tony and Duncan proceeded to force shots up which were mostly misses.
KL needs to stop shooting the 3. He's not a good outside shooter. He needs to shorten his range.
As ty as the team looked, I saw positive things out there, namely Blair and Splitter, the two huge question marks we had for this season. The rest of the team won't always be that ty, and if those two are solid, we are better off with a lower playoff spot than the overrated offense first we had last year.
Yeah, I thought ok, now Timmy comes back and plays with Splitter ... then I looked again and saw that Bonner was still on the floor ... I really screamed out loud. Did Pop really think it was Bonners defense that led to closing the gap. Bonner should never ever see more minutes than Tiago if its not a blowout in favor of the Spurs ...
The main issue with Bonner is that he is playing soft. He used to be a relatively tough player who plays relatively hard but he is all soft now. Playing that way when you have Bonner's physical limitation is a disaster.
Pop needs to have an eye to eye meeting with him and call him out by using the soft card. If Pop tells him "either you play hard or you don't play", we will see a much less worse version of Bonner.
The better option is that we simply see much less of Bonner. His supposed hard work never amounted to much anyway.
Pop should have played Tiago and Tim together. It would have made Tim's night much easier. He was struggling getting anything going against Hill. Might have been able to get something going against Scola. That's why the team really needs a fifth big.
Last edited by therealtruth; 12-30-2011 at 03:05 AM.
Scola Thread!!! Whooo Whooo!!!
I agree 100%.
Bonner sucks. We all know this.
Watching Duncan though gets more painful each season. I know it was a back to back. But he looks so immobile out there right now. He really needs to have his minutes limited as much as possible for the playoffs, and that just isn't possible with only three bigs + Bonner on the roster. If a trade can't be made, the FO needs to go d-league shopping.
I think the problem with Duncan is that he needs help. He's being asked to do too much defensively when he starts with Blair. If he plays with Splitter it makes it easier for him and he can do more on the offensive end. It also allows the Spurs to set a defensive tone and then get scoring of the bench. Right now they're trying to set an offensive tone and then bring better defense of the bench. It's a dangerous strategy because if the other team gets going offensively it might not be possible to cool them down later.
The shedule as it is, with back to backs as a rule and not an exception, oblige teams (expecially teams with aging veterans) to self-impose the rule of resting players for entire games and not just for minutes, like in a normal season (when back to back are the excepions).
The sooner the F.O. realize that our players need some "total" rest and Duncan has to play just two every three games (and no way he has to play in back to backs or back to back to backs) the better.
For doing this we need to co,mlòete our roster with other two bigs.
As of now a new big man is available at a small price : Skinner.
Nothing to write home about, but he's a veteran with some skills and at least for eating some minutes he could be decent...
Game thoughts.
Note: This game doesn't deserve two separate posts grading the players.
I won't go into too much detail because I only watched the game once. I got the Houston feed, and listening to Clyde Drexler give color commentary makes my brain dry up. I think I got so much stupider I actually started to drool during the broadcast, and I'm afraid to watch it again without an adult undergarment handy. I admit that I spent a large portion of the game skipping forward in disgust.
It's disappointing that the starters didn't show up, but even more that the kids didn't give much energy. If this is all the fight the Spurs are going to show on back to backs, maybe having to fight their way back up the standings late in the season will teach them the error of their ways. Compared to how it's gonna get, this was a relatively easy game tonight.
Tim Duncan just didn't show up. He went through the motions for a bit, but looked like he didn't want to be there. He got roasted early and just checked out. I'm embarrassed for writing such glowing praise for him last night.
Manu is capable of being the best player on the floor, but with good Manu you sometimes have to accept bad Manu, and it might as well be on a night that nobody else is doing crap and the other team is hitting a lot of jumpers. Once they left Kevin Martin alone to get his confidence back, it was all over.
James Anderson looked a lot like Michael Finley, leaving his man wide open, not challenging on defense. He's far too young and didn't have nearly enough three point attempts to do stuff like that.
Blair was more than just the only warm body among the starters tonight, he was also pretty good. Managed to fill up the stat sheet for his trouble.
If we had a crystal ball, Splitter would have started this game alongside Blair. No telling how that would have turned out. The Spurs were down 8, Splitter comes in, the Rockets don't score for the rest of the quarter, the Spurs tie it up, Duncan comes back in, and boom, they're down by 20
Kawhi Leonard looks like a keeper. I think a lot of us let the disinterested look that's always on his face decieve us.
The Rocket Rowdies are the lamest cheering section ever. I don't even know why they bother.
Cory Joseph is not going to Austin, folks. The Spurs need bodies, particularly when so many guys seem like they're not going to show up when they don't get a day of beauty sleep. Of note: Joseph now has matched Matt Bonner's stats in only 14 minutes of play.
Daniel Green hustled. He looks like a real NBA player. Should come in handy if real NBA players choose to accompany him to the arena.
Clyde Drexler said that Richard Jefferson looks "at least 30 pounds overweight". I loled.
If you see Pop or Buford or anyone who you suspect was responsible for trading Luis Scola to Houston, please kick them in the ing nuts as hard as you can. Your night in jail will be well spent, and I'll be there with you in spirit.
That really did it for me ... god, what crap commentary that was ...
http://blog.mysanantonio.com/spursna...ason%E2%80%99/“I’m not sure how many times I want to be down 18 in this shortened season and work Timmy, Manu and Tony (Parker) to work us out of that hole,” Popovich said. “Not this early in the season.
“Later on, depending on our situation, it might make more sense. But at this point, it was a great opportunity to treat it like training camp and get a lot of the younger kids out there and treat it like practice.”
Actually, those are the guys that worked the Spurs into that hole. Putting them back in just compunds the problem.
I think Splitter's got to start and maybe Kawhi if they want to develop championship level defense. In general you want to start your best defensive unit. You can always bring offense of the bench. The problem with starting offense first is if they don't have it going the bench has a big hole it has to make up for. Splitter was a big part of stopping the bleeding defensively. If he had started they might have actually been able to play with the lead.
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