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If you can't see that LMA+Duncan is better than Splitter+Duncan I don't know what to say.
Just to address some remarks that a couple of you are reiterating.
Bench perimeter defense/Kawhi not being a good fit w/ Manu:
I think it would be best if Kawhi played a good chunk of his minutes w/ the bench mob once he's acclimated playing w/ the starters. The bench sorely needs a perimeter defender & Kawhi can get plenty of touches thus can pick his spots instead of forcing shots for the sake of not being lost in the shuffle w/ the starters. Let him start out the game setting the tone defensively while LMA warms up offensively then give Kawhi a breather & put him back in when Danny goes to the bench. Kyle can benefit as the secondary playmaker w/ the starters which wouldn't be a bad idea considering Tony's struggles & Danny/LMA not being a playmakers. The bench already has plenty of playmakers so it would be overkill to throw Kyle w/ those guys.
Boban:
The guy is awkward to begin with & just recently returned to basketball related activities. He has proven to be a legit rim protector in his limited minutes although his timing is off when he tries to grab rebounds & catch passes. He doesn't seem to have his legs under him when he tries to power up for a layup so he isn't at full strength yet. Just remember how totally out of wack Spitter looked when he returned from injury & he had been playing the league for a minute.
If you can't see that LMA+Duncan is better than Splitter+Duncan I don't know what to say.
Good point about Boban. Basically has been on rest duty. While my expectations where not super high, I was a little disappointed last night.
You could say you didn't read what I had written. Talking about Tiago versus Boris for the bench center spot.
Williams was an F
I was never talking about tiago the bench player. I was talking about tiago the starter.
No mid range jumpers from TD this year. With LMA, Leonard, Parker & West, we don't need anymore
From Pop's comments on Simms, there is a lot about the good passers, that just cannot be taught. What Diaw does naturally can't be taught per se bc it's very instinctual. He sees things almost b4 they happen so he makes up his mind quickly. I hadn't thought about it until now, but the bench style last night was different. I already knew that Manu and Tiago PnR is gone. I think the style will be different and Mills and Kyle will get more of a burden. I thought Kyle passed up on Saturday couple of shots from range. I am not sure if they will push him to take those shots. I think he can be good already from the corner, but shots from the very top are nit the best shot from him anyway. I didn't think Manu himself was able to get many open 3s for guys anyways. Almost everything came out of ball and player movement. Apparently the bench has been very good in practices, so I think they will bounce back.
Well, LMA playing so much with the bench is going to change the dynamic. Normally, the second unit had a lot of time to work without any starter on the court. Seems like those days are gone, and that's going to affect chemistry. Then again, Diaw's IQ has been missed so far, and the biggest remaining question on the is who the second-unit front court will work together.
As far as the first half of your post, I agree. LMA and Kawhi aren't Diaw in terms of vision or BBIQ, and they won't likely become him. But there's something to be said about being decisive with the ball. Diaw has such an interesting physical profile to go along with his wide array of post moves that he knows he can get a shot off against any player. So him being able to score isn't really in doubt. So instead, it seems like he just has to decide what's the most efficient way for the TEAM to score when he has the ball. There is definitely something innate about Boris. But there's also a team-first philosophy that LMA hasn't had to have and Kawhi is being instructed to go away from. Like Parker and driving, there's a balance between posting up to score and posting up to force movement, and being quick to attack the defense helps in either scenario.
Bosh is not better than Aldridge at this point of their careers. I thought you already conceded with Bosh Rapotors being better but not this Bosh.
Kawhi took 3 midrange and 1 post ups. hardly melo light.
Unless you want the ball to go somwhere else, the ball is going to stick with Kawhi. If you're too pissed at him taking 15 shtos in 23, realize 3 of his shots were fastbreaks and the rest was ball movement...No one is running a Kobe/Shaq kinda offense here. He's taking the shots he's getting and he should.
Kawhi is a master Midrange shooter, I have no idea why you continue to spread kawhi is an efficient midrange shooter as an argument.
the last three months of the season were really ugly weren't they?
The spurs absolutely dominanted with Kawhi...
I don't even understand where the critisim that the spurs is running a Kawhi centric offense comes from..Majority of his shots comes from Motion and transition
I was su ious about the bolded part, it's not what I remembered, and sure enough, Manu did a solid job on Gerald Green, who was 0-2 in the 1st half while Manu guarded him, all well contested. Green actually scored when Anderson was on him. Then on the 3rd quarter, Green was 1-2 while Manu guarded him, his first attempt well contested, and also included a steal and basket by Gino in the waning seconds of the 3rd quarter. The only other stint of Manu on the court was in the 2nd quarter guarding Wade, who was 1-1 against him.
Here's the breakdown:
19:35 - good contest, Green misses
22:24 - good contest, Green misses
1:14:10 - good contest, Green misses
1:15:35 - Manu denies the 3, but nowhere near to contest the jumper, Green scores
1:17:00 - Green gets a wide open 3 in transition after a Boban fumble, misses
1:17:33 - Steal on Green and score
So Green was 1-4 and scored only 2 of his 17 points while Manu was guarding him. I dunno, I think that's pretty good.
Re-watching the game, and especially that 2nd unit, Patty, and Boban were really, really bad on D. Also Kyle had a fairly terrible start on that end.
Well, I'm certainly glad I was wrong about that. I just thought I saw Green running ahead of Manu a lot. I haven't rewatched the game, and the stream was really gritty. Thanks for the clarification.
When did we start talking about Kobe Bryant?
I think the Duncan, Aldridge, Leonard, Green and Parker lineup is a great group to close out games. All 5 players can score, and the combination of Duncan and Aldridge will punish small ball lineups.
Once Aldridge settles in some Spurs fans might be surprised at his offensive skills. The guy can flat out score. He's in the class with Lebron, Westbrook, and Harden where they can get hot and just take over a game. When his fadeaway jumper over the shoulder is hitting he is unstoppable, kind of like Dirk, but stronger and not easily stopped by getting physical. He won't always be on fire, but Aldridge is a better pure scorer than anyone the Spurs gave had since Duncan was in his prime.
Him or Melo. Posting up smalls is like the worst offensive in the league today. Kawhi was a efficient at it in 2013 and 2014 because he was selective. By no means should the Spurs make that their bread and butter, especially if Leonard is going to consistently draw the other team's best defender.
Also, Kawhi was double teamed, you can see Winslow and Anderson on him. When Anderson left Tim to double Kawhi, he made the pass. I can see a lot more of those plays for Tim with LMA and Kawhi getting double-teams.
Last edited by YGWHI; 10-14-2015 at 11:17 AM.
Kawhi was creating opportunities for others instead of take a bad shot in these two preseason games. Granted, a small sample size, but you can see it when he was double teamed. Except an ugly play against McLemore-Cousins, he made the right pass and that resulted in easy shots for others.
They won't, there is no need to do it with LMA on the team and Spurs' ball-movement. But in a diversified offense, it's good to have a perimeter player who can play that role in the game.
At this point, Tony and Manu are losing the ability to comand the defensive attention, and it seems like Pop wants Kawhi to stay aggressive, drawn fouls...We saw that when Manu gave him the ball to close the 2nd quarter and he drew a foul on Haslem and made the two free-throws.
I rewarchd the game too b. there are always things you miss when you are not looking at a specific guy. In general they made too many mistakes. Kyle had two fouls on guys shooting a 3 that he just has to cleanup. Otherwise he was pretty solid and made a few nice defensive plays. The blowby by Johnson I am not surprised about bc it was a cut after a switch and the guy is crazy quick. He had the same play against Mills subsequently. I think the bigs had to pressure the ball a bit and get a hand on passing lanes on the big making that pass. But it wasn't just Kyle, Boban notoriously struggled, mills was off in shots he took and Johnson just owned him. Manu played well but he was not without his own faults, he had one offensive foul that was him getting angry and forcing stuff, thus a TO, then another where he just plowed the screener. Even West wasn't very good. He had his own offensive foul in a post up, attempted a pass that was picked up, and was slow to get back on defense and was not in help position to contain Green since you don't really expect Anderson to defend him without help.
it was not one guy, the bench had too many guys making mistakes and Manu had his own. When put together, there were a few minutes of game time when somebody screwed up followed by someone else in the following possession and sometimes it included the vets, it want just the rookies or Kyle out there. I am sure each of the vets will clean the stuff up. Kyles mistakes are easy to correct, and Boban just needs to develop a shot close to the basket that is a little crafty and uses the glass, that one is more likely to take time.
Last edited by SAGirl; 10-14-2015 at 02:33 PM.
No need to get so defensive about this. If you reread my comment, it referred to Pop force feeding Kawhi to start last season and centering the offense around that. It wasn't very good. In the second part of the season they went away from having that as the prominent set in their offense. Like I said it didnt create enough good looks. Right now Kawhi has been making a lot of other plays and not necessarily for himself, and he's also benefitted from teammates making plays fr him, which lets be honest, it's a team sport and its better and more efficient to get other involves. He's had some simple PnP with LMA, has gotten into the paint with the intention to pass to Danny and has on ocassion taken his fadeaway jumpshots when there is either nothing else, or he feel he has an advantage. Danny has also been making a few nice passes and getting shots for other guys. Overall, I like what they are doing now better. LMA has gotten his own post ups, but he's also benefitted from passes and set ups from other guys that have resulted in easy baskets fr him too.
People keep forgetting kawhi had pink eye and the ing team didn't know how to give him space.
He's a grown man. Get out of here. Nothing but excuses
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