This.
He is giving the Spurs solid production and work. And what I see and not feel is that he is going to work down low. He may not be a top 10 greatest player for what seems like the most spoiled fans of all time but he is putting a hurting and doing work on opposing teams. They will remember him.
Oh, didn't know 35 pounds was an actual figure, but if you look at his stats by month he was playing great up until the day he was yanked, so I don't think his physical conditioning had anything to do with it. Surely it had nothing to do with losing to the Lakers in his last start, right? Ginobili, Duncan and Jefferson combined for 9 points that game, and somehow it was Blair's fat ass that caused them to lose the game? He averaged 9 points and 9 rebounds per game during his last three starts.
Well if you watched the games you saw that Blair was always out of position on defense, lost on offense and a good number of his stats came from cleanup.
Stats don't tell everything, otherwise KLove would be the best player in the league and Bonner's +8 against Houston would mean he's a plus.
Translation: You have conclusions that in no way can be backed up by stats.
The Spurs had the best record in the league, the best point differential in the league and Blair was putting up solid numbers as the starting center yet he sucked so bad in ways that only you observed that Pop had to put Dice in to take his place, and it wasn't at all overreaction to losing to the Lakers. The fact that the team barely played .500 ball the rest of the season is is also irrelevant to your previous conclusion, I take it?
No. Translation: Tim Duncan injured his ankle, was out for some time, we went on a 6 game skid.
Of course, Blair's stats won't show that.
The "chicken or egg" bickering about which came first (i.e. fat or sat) is really a moot point. Blair is more effective, especially defensively, when he's in shape. So far he seems motivated to stay that way, and I'm hopeful there's been personal growth to put that responsibility solely on his shoulders.
Bliar will avg more points than TD this regular season , fact or fiction? I say fact. So far he has shown the ability to score down low . unfortunately TD no longer can score over his man, but relies purely on jumpers
You tying Duncan hurting his ankle after Blair lost his starting job to "Blair was always out of position on defense, lost on offense and a good number of his stats came from cleanup" should be very entertaining.
I can agree with that.
Blair definately looks different this season.. he even looks like he has a go to move now where he uses his ass to move his defender out of the way in one-on-ones situations. Crow is tasting good tbh.
Having said that.. ill reserve full judgement on him starting until the Spurs have faced some of the better teams in the league. Still cant afford to let opposition bigmen get going early with easy baskets.. or the rest of the starting lineup with layups drills to the basket. Especially now that Tim struggles to guard anybody one on one anymore.
I definitely think Pop overreacted to the Lakers game. It was a confidence crusher. He had been saying all along the Lakers were better then the Lakers came along and crushed them from the tip.
The Spurs had beaten the stuffing out of the Lakers in the first game, and then Dice had the tip in on the second. Laker nation was in a frenzy, and everyone knew they were mad and treating that third game like their super bowl. In fact, it was probably the best effort that Lakers team gave the entire season, including the playoffs. The Spurs knew it was just another regular season game against a non-division opponent who they'd beaten twice, so they didn't really show up. As you said, Pop had given them an excuse for not showing up by treating the Lakers like something special. He put them in a losing frame of mind, and then fatally disrupted the team afterward.
Phil Jackson didn't win a le, but he clearly mind ed Popovich into ruining the Spurs last year. Pop was afraid to try for the best record against the Lakers which led to Manu's injury in the Phoenix game.
Blair contract year?
I don't need to tie two unrelated issues.
Perhaps the "translation" part is what muddied that.
You said:
"The Spurs had the best record in the league, the best point differential in the league and Blair was putting up solid numbers as the starting center yet he sucked so bad in ways that only you observed that Pop had to put Dice in to take his place, and it wasn't at all overreaction to losing to the Lakers. The fact that the team barely played .500 ball the rest of the season is is also irrelevant to your previous conclusion, I take it?"
so I said:
"Tim Duncan injured his ankle, was out for some time, we went on a 6 game skid.
Of course, Blair's stats won't show that."
I already told you how I knew Blair was out of position on both ends.
Also, I am not the only one who observed it. Pop observed it. There were several threads from that period where posters here also observed it. I suggest you go back and check them out. Your name is in a few of them, and I don't recall you having the same objections.
http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...ighlight=Blair
You might start there.
Last edited by DMC; 01-01-2012 at 12:18 PM. Reason: Added link to the past
So I guess you stand by your conclusion that the Spurs' terrible play at the end of the season had everything to do with Timmy hurting his ankle and nothing at all to do with replacing the starting center and cutting his minutes. The Spurs were on a 70 game pace much of the season with a starting center who you say is always out of position on both ends and only gets garbage stats. If Antonio McDyess was such a huge upgrade at that position, I wonder why they couldn't win
BTW, the Spurs appear to have gone 8-9 when Duncan came back from that injury.
As for your other topic, I was for Blair starting almost from the get-go, and was likely the first person to suggest it his rookie year. Once Splitter came in, I was hopeful that he would start alongside Duncan because of the huge impact those two would have on defense together. Once Blair got the gig last year, I hoped he wouldn't get a quick hook because he seemed to be too amped up when starting and I figured those mistakes wouldn't happen once he calmed down. Pop had gotten into a habit during that time of pulling players off the floor for one mistake to "punish" them and I hoped he wouldn't do it to Blair. To his credit, he almost managed to control himself.
Blair was not removed from the starting lineup for anything he did. He was removed because the Spurs got crushed by the Lakers in a game where nobody showed up. It's the same failed logic that had Splitter sitting on the bench the entire season through no fault of his own.
Unless Pop flat out says it, I doubt we'll ever know why the lineup was switched last season. I assumed that it was always Pop's plan to have Dice take over the starting spot and he was merely trying to "save" Dice for the playoffs. I think Pop makes longterm plans and usually sticks with them, even if new developments should persuade him otherwise. For example, I think his plan is to stick with TJ Ford all season long, even if Ford stinks it up.
The mark of a defeated argument is the appearance of the strawman.
The play at the end of the season (?) was about the same as the play in the middle of the season, minus Tim's situation (he wasn't the same when he returned) and a few other factors, not the least of those being the play of the opponents.
It doesn't have to rest solely on Tim's ankle or Blair's starting role, however I would say that it had more to do with Tim's ankle than Blair's starting role.
You just brushed aside Tim's absence as if it had nothing to do with the drop off in win percentage as if the Spurs dropped off the edge of a cliff because Blair was benched.BTW, the Spurs appear to have gone 8-9 when Duncan came back from that injury.
So you admit Blair was making rookie mistakes (amped, as you put it) and you were afraid Pop would pull him for that. Why didn't you lean on his stats and ignore the actual floor play that could not be supported with stats? Were you aware that Pop watches the games?As for your other topic, I was for Blair starting almost from the get-go, and was likely the first person to suggest it his rookie year. Once Splitter came in, I was hopeful that he would start alongside Duncan because of the huge impact those two would have on defense together. Once Blair got the gig last year, I hoped he wouldn't get a quick hook because he seemed to be too amped up when starting and I figured those mistakes wouldn't happen once he calmed down. Pop had gotten into a habit during that time of pulling players off the floor for one mistake to "punish" them and I hoped he wouldn't do it to Blair. To his credit, he almost managed to control himself.
Translation: I cannot provide any stats to support my opinion. (see how that works?)Blair was not removed from the starting lineup for anything he did. He was removed because the Spurs got crushed by the Lakers in a game where nobody showed up. It's the same failed logic that had Splitter sitting on the bench the entire season through no fault of his own.
But I will agree with you on this: Blair was removed for things he did not do, like contain other team's bigs, or avoid getting in early foul trouble, or limit turnovers, or make good decisions, or control himself in the paint.
Blair's play last year had regressed, but that was explained away by saying he was now playing against other teams' starters and that he was over his head (no pun intended).
The threads from that time period chronicle the development. You shouldn't ignore them.
Also, you're really confusing cause and correlation. Other teams were getting up to speed as their stars were recovering.
Phil was the expert at mind games. He had so many coaches, including Pop, beat mentally. Even he was surprised when Pop pulled his starters out of the last Lakers game.
Pop was a fool, and that pissed me off every time he kept bringing up that the Lakers are the best team in the NBA and we're nothing compared to them. Well Pop, those Lakers got ing destroyed in the playoffs. I thought they were beatable all throughout the regular season, yet Pop kept drilling it into his team that they are like some unbeatable giant.
He never said stuff to that degree in Championship seasons, I understand he was trying to keep the team grounded, but that wasn't the way to do it.
I'm pretty sure Phil Jackson never tells his team someone else is better until they are eliminated or has he? I don't recall him doing so, and he hardly ever gives another team credit for any win during the regular season.
I also hated the move to sit the starters against LA in the second last game of the season. I wanted to go at them full strength. Pop never sat players in those kind of games during championship seasons (unless it was the last game of the season and we had our seeding locked up), in fact games like those ended up being big wins that built a higher level of confidence for the team heading into the playoffs.
I would have liked him to encourage the team to believe in themselves. That's the kind of motivating stuff you want from your coach not that some other team is better than you. He did that with George Hill against the Mavs in '10 and it paid off.
You should probably look those words up before you use them. I pointed out the record after Dice replaced Blair, you credited it all to Tim's injury and dismissed my point entirely. The clear implication is that you aren't willing to even entertain the idea that Blair's removal from the starting lineup was a contributing factor. Coupled with your previous statement that Blair was always out of position, I made a guess based on the information. In no way did I misrepresent anything you'd stated previously.
Actually you just said that it had more to do with Duncan's ankle, the play of the opponents, and "a few other factors" than with removing the starting center (less than one paragraph later you strengthen the "strawman" above). I'm unsure how you can be surprised that I came to the conclusion that you really don't believe that Blair's replacement was important to the nosedive of the team when you are willing to create "other factors" out of thin air and give them weight.
By the way, those six games the Spurs lost without Duncan were probably the toughest stretch of opponents they had all season, and they had to go through it without two of the starters that got them off to such a strong start.
Not at all. If you look, I completely removed the six games that you referenced from the numbers, and the Spurs didn't go .500 the rest of the way. Since you pointed to those specific games I just bypassed them and still made my case.
First of all, being excited to be in the starting lineup hardly qualifies as a "mistake", particularly the way you've been falsely painting Blair. Second, the thread you linked was the first month of the season when he was named starter. And of course I was afraid Pop would pull Blair early in the season for a stupid mistake or a perceived error. Pop does things like that, and has for years. Evidence that my paranoia was justified: HE PULLED BLAIR FROM THE STARTING LINEUP OF A TEAM ON A 70 WIN PACE A YEAR LATER.
I gave you Blair's numbers, his minutes, the team's record before and after he was replaced by Dice, Bonner's numbers as his backup and made a case to give Blair more minutes. You seem to continually ignore them.
There are no basketball statistics to support what Pop does with his lineups, there's only history, and there's a lot of it. Your complete lack of anything approaching a single statistic to support Blair's failure as a starting center on the best team in basketball just supports my opinion further.
Well, you did give a list of things he didn't do. Blair averaged less than three fouls per game last year and had fewer turnovers than Tim Duncan. I mean you were pretty much exposed several posts back, but I wanted to show you how one can actually look at stats to back up a viewpoint. You should try it, but you'll probably have to get all new viewpoints.
Um, his play regressed?
People that don't like Blair can say that he's a bad player, that he's too short, that he's lost on defense, that his stats are regressing. All it takes is an idiot with a keyboard. You've been doing it for a while now. The only thing it's evidence of is that you're an idiot with an agenda.
Non sequitir. Not sure what you're trying to explain away.
1. Word games (brushed aside vs bypassed)("excited to play", as if that's something Pop would pull someone for if they aren't missing rotations and making mistakes)
2. Making strawmen of my points, as if I used a bifurcated response (I didn't)
3. Pretending you know the meaning of the word
4. Ignoring facts (Tim's injury)
5. Double standards (you can make points without stats but I cannot)
You don't have to accept that Blair missed damn near every rotation, but he did. You don't have to accept that he was benched because he sucked, but he did. You can continue to believe the Spurs were the best team in the league because of their record, but they weren't.
Either way, I'm done with you. I've made my points.
You've certainly made your points, and proven that you don't know what the you're talking about. Opinions with nothing to back them up. Sad that you didn't even bother to read my response. It's almost as though you had your mind made up a long time ago and nothing was going to change your mind.
Your surrender is accepted.
O_V is taking over for whottt this season in totally ing owning people
Childish remarks don't phase me.
This is from you. It was in March of last year. If you realized that then, why don't you remember it now?
This should put all of it to rest. You agreed then, and this discussion is about then. Who cares what you admit to now.
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