Playoff Minutes and Limited Rotations

[Cry Havoc]

I love Green don't get me wrong. On offensive to me, he seems really one sided. If his three's aren't falling he passes the ball. He doesn't have any other moves. He doesn't drive the ball and when he does it gets swiped and the team is running the other way. I would love if he could drive and finish at the rim. Keep the defender guessing.

And we all know how badly a 3 point specialist impacted our chance of winning with Bowen. Green is already more flexible on offense than Bowen ever was.

[capek]

I love Green don't get me wrong. On offensive to me, he seems really one sided. If his three's aren't falling he passes the ball. He doesn't have any other moves. He doesn't drive the ball and when he does it gets swiped and the team is running the other way. I would love if he could drive and finish at the rim. Keep the defender guessing.

That's overly bleak. So far this year Green has shown an ability to but the ball on the floor and pull up for the mid range shot when he's run off the three point line, and he's shown that he can dish off the PnR to the big (Tiago). So he has developed his offensive game this year, even though he's still quite iffy at the rim and on the break. There's also been a few games recently where his shot was totally off, but he still played really good defense. A scrub will tend to lose focus on all aspects of a game when one is not going well for him, so Danny has at least shown some signs of learning how to contribute even when his shot isn't falling.

For all intents and purposes he's a second year player, it's just that it's taken him about 4 years to get to that point. So when you moderate your expectations to take that into account, I think it's more justified to say that Green has shown some real promise, and could potentially be a solid piece if he can put all he's learned together for when the playoffs roll around.

[Sean Cagney]

And we all know how badly a 3 point specialist impacted our chance of winning with Bowen. Green is already more flexible on offense than Bowen ever was.

Yes he is I agree, too bad he is not half the defender who could lock down 1-3 spots and sometimes 4's lol! I would take a Bowen back at any rate. Green is better on O though.

[cd021]

I don't understand how Green is a playoff choker, but Splitter isn't. Did we all forget what actually happened in the WCF?

He missed freethrows when hacked, ...your point being?

[Chinook]

He missed freethrows when hacked, ...your point being?

That's just as much (if not more) of a choke job than missing low-percentage threes. We went over that up thread.

[Fabbs]

I agree. I hope I'm not coming off as someone who cannibalizes one player to make another look good. I'm just getting tired of hearing people blame one player for a team losing to a team which was supposed to win anyway. I live in Philadelphia, and that's what people here do all the time. It's sickening. I'm trying to be objective with dolling out blame, but sometimes that can come off as scapegoating another player. For that, I apologize.

I didn't take your post that way but appreciate your follow up. I did want to keep Splitts ft bricks in perspective and i hope he and Duncan continue to work on them. Splitter is finally getting extended minutes alongside Duncs and we saw the results last night vs Golden.

The cannibalizing (good one ) of one player is indeed ill. Blair comes in with no ACLs, leads or is top 5 in rebounds per minute for two seasons, wins 70% of his starts, give Timmy Duncs some WAY overdue paint support after Lord Poppy had the audacity to march out Mike Finley, Jeff and or Matty Bonner at the power forward spot. Now Blairs knees are probably shot and how does ST Spurfan thank him? Cannibal stew. It's bull .

[AFBlue]

If I read the OP right, the argument here is to shorten the rotation during the season so the playoff rotation is set going in. If so, I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum...

Spurs should maximize their depth during the regular season to limit minutes of the valuable contributors and prevent the possibility of unecessary injury. I would also argue that depending on the early playoff matchups, the Spurs should stick with a deeper rotation.

The reason I think it'll work this year (as opposed to last year) is that the Spurs return a group of valuable contributors that have a full season together. And though Pop is limiting their minutes, it's not as if that grouping of players has never shared the floor for extended minutes.

I do think that the Spurs need to settle on the backup PG and utilize the fourth big role more prominently (if they had a good option that is), but I don't see the answer as shortening the rotation and gettting rid of those roles altogether.

[therealtruth]

I didn't take your post that way but appreciate your follow up. I did want to keep Splitts ft bricks in perspective and i hope he and Duncan continue to work on them. Splitter is finally getting extended minutes alongside Duncs and we saw the results last night vs Golden.

The cannibalizing (good one ) of one player is indeed ill. Blair comes in with no ACLs, leads or is top 5 in rebounds per minute for two seasons, wins 70% of his starts, give Timmy Duncs some WAY overdue paint support after Lord Poppy had the audacity to march out Mike Finley, Jeff and or Matty Bonner at the power forward spot. Now Blairs knees are probably shot and how does ST Spurfan thank him? Cannibal stew. It's bull .

You're forgetting how bad of a defender Blair was. That's the reason he was originally yanked from the starting lineup. Pop didn't think his defense would be good enough for the playoffs.

[TD 21]

With Duncan's resurgence and Tony's MVP-esque performance, would it be possible to squeeze more minutes out of our stars

Of course it would be possible. The question is, is it necessary? I agree that the odd game, he needs to let them play the type of minutes he does when their backs are up against the wall in the playoffs. But generally speaking, it's not necessary. They're the best regular season team in the league the past two and a half seasons.

and limit the rotation to our most consistent Role Players, thereby augmenting the benefits of our internal improvements and thereby creating a better playoff team?

He's done this though. He's got Splitter starting and playing minutes more commensurate with his production and instead of relying on the fools gold spacing that Bonner provides and the fools gold relatively productive minutes Blair provides, he's had both out of the rotation for a while now.

any thoughts on what those extended minutes would look like if we went with a playoff rotation consisting primarily of: TP/KL/MG/TD/TS/SJ/GN/BD(?)

Yes. I'm putting Green back in though, for the simple fact that he will be in it (and deserves to be).

Obviously no one can say for certain, because it depends on a variety of factors, but in terms of an estimate, presuming it's not an elimination game and is at least relatively close throughout . . .

PF - Splitter (18 mpg), Diaw (24 mpg), Jackson (6 mpg)
SF - Leonard (30 mpg), Jackson (18 mpg)
C - Duncan (36 mpg), Splitter (12 mpg)
SG - Green (18 mpg), Ginobili (30 mpg)
PG - Parker (38 mpg), Neal (10 mpg)

[Brunodf]

Obviously no one can say for certain, because it depends on a variety of factors, but in terms of an estimate, presuming it's not an elimination game and is at least relatively close throughout . . .

PF - Splitter (18 mpg), Diaw (24 mpg), Jackson (6 mpg)
SF - Leonard (30 mpg), Jackson (18 mpg)
C - Duncan (36 mpg), Splitter (12 mpg)
SG - Green (18 mpg), Ginobili (20 mpg), Kawhi(10 mpg)
PG - Parker (38 mpg), Ginobili (10 mpg)

Fixed