Why this year may be different: Defense

[rascal]

Too bad Tiago is a piss poor rebounder. He can't seem to grab any rebounds. He's weak on the boards too often for my liking. He needs to rebound much better on the defensive end and go up stronger on the offensive end. Those are my main two problems with him, and he needs to improve in both of those areas by the end of the season. At times he was playing like a pansy against the Knicks.

More physicality and more toughness is required by him.

He is a soft big who is not aggressive on the boards. That is what he is. He doesn't have the quickness nor jumping ability and doesn't bang under the glass and fight for rebounds so don't expect much in that area from Splitter.

[mystargtr34]

Spurs are up to 4th in defensive rating at 98.5 points allowed per 100 possessions. Pretty impressive number compared to the last 5 or so seasons.

[hater]

I would like to believe the defense is better this year. But unfortunately this year the quality of the bottom 25 teams in the league has dropped so much that defensive improvements could be due to just that. Its a horrendous league if you think about it, a handful of very good teams(maybe less than that) and the rest is a bunch of dog put together by a team of monkeys. I mean even the Mavs and Lakers are not there anymore. Celtics? nope. Even the Hawks are tier this year.

ty league thanks to Stern.

[Seventyniner]

Spurs are up to 4th in defensive rating at 98.5 points allowed per 100 possessions. Pretty impressive number compared to the last 5 or so seasons.

And according to basketball-reference.com's DRtg, the Spurs are sitting in 3rd going into tonight's games.

[therealtruth]

Spurs are up to 4th in defensive rating at 98.5 points allowed per 100 possessions. Pretty impressive number compared to the last 5 or so seasons.

I wonder if starting two seven footers has something to do with it.

[Mel_13]

I wonder if starting two seven footers has something to do with it.

It hasn't hurt, but the Spurs were already in the top 5 in defensive rating before Tiago was made a starter.

[freetiago]

Well i remember someone posting stats saying the tim-tiago pair had a Drtg of something around 80 pts per 100 possesions and a Ortg of something around 105 per 100
The defensive improvements have almost all come from probably the banishment of the turd towers and increase in tiago
also the increased rim protection from duncan
almost all the perimeter players actually seemed to regress on D
green is inconsistent
ginobili is terrible 1v1 and gambles too much
leonard is above average but still cant get around screens, become a lot better at playing passing lanes but his steals seemed to have died down when considering he was #2 in the league and could have given chris paul compe ion for #1 in the league

SA still needs to fix up the high pick and roll coverage and at least attempt to put some resistance on the mid range pop from the big
theres been a lot of games where the other team is scoring around 1/3-1/4 of their points of those shots on high percentages

[Bruno]

The starting unit of Parker/Green/Leonard/Duncan/Splitter is still a monster defensively allowing only 80 points per 48 minutes.

[Paranoid Pop]

The starting unit of Parker/Green/Leonard/Duncan/Splitter is still a monster defensively allowing only 80 points per 48 minutes.

That's encouraging regarding the decision of going away from a stretch PF, and Baynes should make the bench D better, Splitter is kinda weak at C this year.

That said if we're gonna play someone with no range next to Tim, I think we can do better than Tiago.

For some reason 82 games tells that the same lineup with Ginobili instead of Green is pretty bad, then again it tells that it rebounds very badly when there's no reason to, Manu being a better rebounder than Green this season at least so it might have everything to do with the small sample size and fatigue and or/for our bigs since it's more of a closing lineup...

[Slippy]

That's encouraging regarding the decision of going away from a stretch PF, and Baynes should make the bench D better, Splitter is kinda weak at C this year.

That said if we're gonna play someone with no range next to Tim, I think we can do better than Tiago.

well í gotta bad feeling POP will bench Tiago and start Boris on a more permanent basis.

He did it in the second half of the minny game and had already hinted "the spurs have been playing in a crowd" in regards to the amount of TO's the've been giving up of late.

Short sighted on POP if he makes the move.

[Bruno]

That's encouraging regarding the decision of going away from a stretch PF, and Baynes should make the bench D better, Splitter is kinda weak at C this year.

That said if we're gonna play someone with no range next to Tim, I think we can do better than Tiago.

A big question before this season was if Tim and Tiago could be paired and the results have been very positive.
When Tim and Tiago are paired, Spurs are scoring 104.3 points per 48 minutes while allowing 90.3 per 48 minutes. The sample size (315 minutes) start to be big enough to exclude being it a statistical fluke.

Regarding the bench, I doubt Baynes will play a lot of minutes. Splitter will still be the backup C which is fine for me. The bench biggest defensive issue is by far at the PG spot: http://www.spurstalk.com/forums/show...=1#post6299617 .

[therealtruth]

well í gotta bad feeling POP will bench Tiago and start Boris on a more permanent basis.

He did it in the second half of the minny game and had already hinted "the spurs have been playing in a crowd" in regards to the amount of TO's the've been giving up of late.

Short sighted on POP if he makes the move.

Tiago can hit that mid range jumper Pop just needs to allow him to do it. He doesn't need to look for the shot but he needs to hit it occasionally to keep the defense honest.

[DesignatedT]

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Since Kawhi Leonard returned to starting lineup Dec. 23, the Spurs have had the NBA's best D. They held Dallas to 36.7 FG% in first half.