I mean what the ? What's the deal with this guy? Yeah yeah I know his injury from earlier didn't help his progress at all, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm not taking about right now, I'm talking about his NBA career overall.
Isn't this his 4th year? Why isn't this guy holding his own even without Timmy playing lights out? He has his strengths and does some good things here and there, but damn, I was optimistic that after a few years he would at least somewhat bring back the Twin Towers effect on this team.
Guess not, tbh...
He was the only Spur with a positive +/- as he ended +4 in 24 minutes.
He also is our defensive anchor down low, IMO. The game got out of hand when Pop went senile and went full-on small ball in the 2nd quarter (benching Tiago), allowing the Thunder to score 40 points in that quarter alone.
Yes, Tiago is soft and mostly can't finish, but he is a huge defensive asset that many overlook.
If you expected him to come in and replicate the twin towers era, you were expecting too much. Splitter isn't David Robinson. David Robinson is one of the top 25 players in the history of the NBA.
However, splitter's defensive skillset has turned the spurs into a defensive powerhouse again — long after the defense-first mentality of the championship years had been abandoned and the spurs written off as contender. That alone makes him a key cog on the team
first two posts killed your thread
Nobody is expecting him to be the admiral, but is it much to ask him to finish more aggressively in the post or work with chip on his jumper? Meanwhile you have serge ibaka working on those shots as well as 3s. Nobody is asking him to be d rob but his improvements have made the thunder a much more difficult matchup
Watching Splitter today makes me appreciate Adams much more.
Good take, per par.
Note that I didn't say replicate it. I meant that he would bring back some of the benefits of that era. Let's be honest, Splitter is probably the most prominent big next to Duncan in the post-Robinson era, but considering all of the hype he brought with him from Spain, it's safe to say we're all at least a little disappointed. I like the guy, but he so damn soft. And I'm still having trouble getting over his dismal finals showing.
Not really.
How?
Most of the time he's a liability out there. A few good plays doesn't negate the fact he's really not getting any better. Like OP said, this is he's 4th year at the top level and he still has major issues out on the court.
personally I've seen enough Splitter.
What is sad is that even defensively he's slightly above average it's just that most "bigs" are ty at defense that Splitter looks good in comparison. The problem is that most "bigs" in this league have some kind of offense that makes up for their lack of defense and that's where they excel where Tiago doesn't. I'd love to have a big who actually could average 15 a game and make 7 rebounds and would contest shots. Sure his stats look good and his advanced stats look great on paper but overall he's an offensive liability who doesn't have any post game at all and is way to soft to ever learn one.
Nice post. I agree.
His defense is good. But he brings close to nothing on the offensive side of the ball, and he always seems to get bullied in the paint even though he has a considerable size advantage over quite a few of the bigs he's matched up against.
But the point is not our offence. Two games ago Splitter was high on the pick and roll defending Stephen ing Curry succesfully. The man is versatile and just great on defence. Why the does he need to score more than 8 points on offense? We have a very fluid offense with Parker, Leonard, Belinelli, Manu, Mills, Green, Duncan..
When he entered our starting line up it was the differece between getting abused by Memphis and getting to the WCF and Finals and almost winning
.. Our offense is far from our problem.. if we didn't have Splitter, we'd not even be close to top5 defence on NBA
Last edited by testies; 12-22-2013 at 02:13 AM.
I mean, what can you do? Every team has bad matchups.
The Spurs' kryptonite is the Thunder, with their athleticism and serge ibaka's outside shooting
The Thunder's kryptonite the Miami Heat, who can counter the thunder's athleticism and youth with Lebron's dominance over KD and westbrook's tendency toward chuckery
The Heat's kryptonite is the Indiana Pacers, who can bruise inside like no other team and have some great young wing defenders
I guess what I'm trying to say is: at a certain point, you have to make a decision about who you build your team to go up against. The spurs seem built to challenge a team like Miami, as seen in the hard-fought finals. I'd rather the spurs be built to challenge Miami than to challenge OKC.
Further, I don't really think it's possible to turn the Spurs into a team that can be consistently effective against the Thunder. Splitter could work on finishing more aggressively in the post all he wants, but that's just one piece of the puzzle. At its core, the problem is that the spurs are not athletic, and the thunder are built to exploit that. Only when TD, Manu, and the old folks retire could SA be rebuilt to match up better with the thunder. That said, I still think the spurs have a 50-50 shot to beat the thunder in a series, if it comes down to that.
If instaed of having Splitter we had a big who had less defence but could score 10 points a game, we'd be absolutely a much worse team than now
Like I said he does a few nice things and has some strengths (like his defense).
Unfortunately, his scoring (or lack of) is his major liability to this team. The problem is that if Timmy isn't having a good scoring night you can almost guarantee that our bigs will not be providing any significant post scoring, which is a serious concern IMO. Every now and then Tiago will come up big with his scoring but overall it's inconsistent. And Timmy's not getting any younger. It sure would be nice if we could have a big that would take more of the scoring pressure off of Timmy. Sorry, I don't have the deepest takes in the world, but that's just how I see things with Tiago right now.
That's what Diaw is for, if you didn't notice
That's nice. The problem is we drafted Tiago with some pretty high expectations and he was supposed to take on the job as a legitimate 2nd big. He hasn't quite been that.
The most we can really hope for from splitter is defense, rebounding, and a limited offense game.
Tiago never had an offensive game. He needs to be set up by the pass in order to be the least bit effective on offense. When he tries to create his own shot, he just looks like a damn fool. Put him out there with Green, and the Spurs are playing 3 v 5 on offense.
Exactly.
True that, he only regressed since his 2nd season
Yeah, his name is Tim Duncan. But seriously, there are only about 13 big men in the NBA that average 15/7. It's ridiculous to expect the Spurs to have two of them on the same team. Wolves have two and yet their interior defense is a mess since neither Love or Pekovic are good defenders.
Splitter's soft on offense. We all know this. But he's useful against most teams in the league when the PnR is clicking and his defense is almost always consistent. He's overpaid at 9 million but so are most of the bigs in the NBA.
He punished Channing Frye a few times in the post when they went to him the other day. Makes me more optimistic for the playoffs if other teams go small like Miami with Mike Miller at the 4 last year.
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