thanks for the read........if there were more articles like this the first year bonner and blair were the go to bigs off the bench, maybe more pressure would have been added to make the right adjustments.
and let me add. right now i got a fever, and the only prescription is more SPLITTER!
And Blair in 2011 and 2012 can't shoot either.
I think the issue with Splitter is that he can't spread the floor AND he doesn't have great hands in the paint.
So he can"t help Parker when he drive, cant' make layup and can't find the 3 points shooters. With Blair, Parker can make a bounce pass in the paint and Blair take care of the rest.
So maybe pop doesn't want a Duncan-Splitter pair to not kill Parker's drives.
Tiago has his flaws but not being able to catch isn't really one of them. He plays the pick and roll really well with Parker. The "can't play two centers" theory is a lot more plausible to me even if I think it's hogwash.
He can play pick and roll for sure. Especially when he roll and catch the ball 10 feet away of the rim
But he is not really good at fighting to catch a ball under the rim and finish it. Blair is
Gonna have to disagree. He can't always catch in traffic (who can?) or when the ball is thrown by his knees while he's running but he's actually got very good hands and he finishes at a significantly better rate than Blair.
The"two centers"/"Duncan and Tiago play in the same spots" excuse is probably the real reason behind all of this and most likely that'll change come next season after Pop realizes that they can play together but just need a little more practice.
Hollinger chimed in on the Splitter-Duncan pair in a recent ESPN chat yesterday -
Mark (texas)
Isn't it inevitable that Pop will enventually need to use Duncan and Splitter against the lakers if they meet in the playoffs?
John Hollinger
I have been baffled all year at how little burn Spitter is getting because he's played extremely well in his chances, and while the Spurs have rebounded well on the season they were brutalized by the Lakers the other night. Will be very interested to see if they counter Gasol-Bynum with Splitter- Duncan, because Blair and Bonner just don't have the size.
Splitter has no problems catching Manu's passes in the paint, and I would say that Manu's passes have a lot more "sauce" on them than Parker's. We've seen Splitter successfully pick and roll with Manu, Parker, Neal and even SJax. Besides, it's not like Splitter has "hands of stone" like Nazr and yet Pop played Nazr in the Finals. Yes, Tiago's hands aren't as good as Duncan's, but which big man's are?
IMO, it's not any of these things. It's that Pop is in love with his current offensive theory and its "spreading the floor". He's got something against young, mobile 7fters (see Ian who is a perfectly serviceable big man on a cheap contract and Tiago). He has given up on defense winning championships and is gung-ho on "scoring." To play Splitter more would be an admission that everything the Spurs have done since 07 is based on the wrong theory and he's just too stubborn and arrogant to do that. Why else would he not even attempt to try TD/Tiago when every sane, logical person can see that it might be the solution to all the problems the Spurs have with big front-lines?
Last edited by rmt; 04-14-2012 at 03:27 PM.
In 2005 the offense was : Give the ball to Duncan, wait for double team and you had your open 3pts shooters
In 2012, the double team to have open 3pts shooters comes when Parker drive into the paint
It's not the same thing.
And I don't understand why the reason would be only spreading the floor when Blair is the starter with Duncan
Tiago catches the ball high and keeps it high and finishes with a high percentage dunk or layup. Blair catches the pass and throws up a circus shot. I'd rather have Tiago.
You really need to take this argument and stick it in your ass. We know you have a ing hard-on for Matt Bonner, but you're just making yourself look stupid. Everyone abused Bonner in the Memphis series, just like they did before the Memphis series and did after the Memphis series. There are things called gigantic-sample-sizes.
Spreading the floor explains Bonner. Nothing logical explains Blair when Splitter does everything better than Blair - hence the bizarre guess that he has something against young, mobile 7fters like Ian and Splitter. For Splitter to play 15 and 13 minutes against LAL and MEM is inexcusable. It's like Tiago is an afterthought.
The truth is, Pop is making a mistake putting all his eggs in the Bonner basket and it'll probably come back to haunt us at some point or another. It's probably for the best that we know now so that we have some time to prepare emotionally ahead of the playoffs.
Can you imagine our rotation if we had Splitter and Ian? We'd have a pretty good frontcourt.
What I meant was catching low ball under the rim and finish.
When he receive the ball high, no problem. When it's a bounce pass right under the rim, Blair is way better IMO
That LA game was not only missing Kobe but as Bynum told the commentator, "Man, I shot like " going 7/20 for 35% instead of this year's average of 56.4%.
Caught some of the DEN/LAL game last night, and Bynum's got some serious post game to go along with that size and athleticism - KAJ taught him well - he has a really nice hook shot from both sides. I was proud of DEN's players who kept attacking the paint and going at Bynum - unlike the scared/intimidated Spurs. Unfortunately some horrendous officiating (of course) turned it in LAL's favor.
I think his hard-on for using +/- as the single stat to support his (albeit facetious) claim that we should "love DeJuan Blair" is far more troubling and embarrassing (for him), tbh.
His main argument with Bonner thus far has been that he feels Bonner receives a disproportionate amount of hate for the Memphis series compared to his actual level of performance. While I think this is an utterly useless and fruitless argument for him to defend, it's not an offensive one because the bar for what cons utes "appropriate" level of forum hate given a certain level of performance is totally arbitrary.
Consistently using +/- as the single go-to stat in these types of scenarios....I'm really just at a loss for words.
He probably could have dropped a 30-20 game on us if he had hit his shots.
Splitter's probably going to end up somewhere else in Texas as Scola and Ian did. I won't blame him one bit considering Pop's piss-poor management of him.
If Hollinger is using the same reasoning as his rankings...
*crinkle* trash
As I was saying . . .I had this premonition.
Guess what the starting lineup is gonna be for the Spurs against the Lakers Tuesday night?
Leonard, Parker, Green, Duncan and . . .
Splitter. (The only one I'm not sure about is Duncan.)
Why? Because it's just how Pop operates. When you least expect it, he loves to do it.
To confound, to infuriate and, most of all, to show whose in charge and who cannot be understood or predicted.
As Patton said when the other Allied generals scoffed at his hunch that the German army might try an implausible "Hail Mary" offensive through the heart of the Ardennes forest (in the movie version):
"Never has an army attempted such an offensive through such impossible terrain in the dead of winter. No sane commander would even consider it. And that's why I think it's exactly what they'll do."
(Of course, unlike Patton, my premonitions rarely come true.)
good one
Pop CIA like usual - good move win or lose to change up the lineups vs. LAL
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