spurs are 2-0 without parker so far.
spurs are 2-0 without parker so far.
Mills did well in place of Parker today
mills is 2 for 2 on the season.
Porker in: Spurs lose to the by 15 at home
Porker out: Spurs beat the by 14 on the road
The debate is over - the Spurs are a million times better without that cancerous fat blob weighing them down.
unfortunately people are either stupid or have too much pride to admit they are wrong. Parker could be 39 years old averaging -3 points per game and a few of his fans up here would still want the offense ran through him.
where's sasdynasty to pull up his "bu- bu Parker lead the Spurs in points and assists" excuse?
Parker led the team tonight in Assist while seating from the home couch...name me a player in the spurs can do that?
And 4-1 with Mills on the bench.
2 games ago Parker had 4 more assists than Mills.
Last night Mills had 3 more assists than Parker.
The only difference being Parker didn't play last night.
What's sad is that Parker's AVERAGE assists would have led the team.
I appreciate what Parker has done so far in SA, but he is done. Considering that his contract is pretty much impossible to move at this point, Pop needs to bench Tony and play him 15/20 minutes off the bench. The "passive" role is clearly not working.
The emergence of Kawhi as the epicenter offensively also makes Tony 's skills extremely superfluous. I think Kawhi could have done what he's doing now last season, but Pop wasn't ready to move on from Tony and give the ball to Kiwi.
What happens when Tony 's back??? At least Danny and Tony will probably be back around the same time and we shall see.
A player who is "done" shouldn't really be a 15/20 minute guy, tbh. But, he will be our albatross until...
Perhaps PATFO will package a first with him to make something happen. NOT!
He is unplayable-level of "done", unfortunately..this isn't a shtick anymore, but he is holding back Kawhi for real seeing how the latter opens up the offense with his ball-handling+ D attention when you put shooters around him..
The Kawhi/Patty combo looked particularly sweet last night. As SAGirl noted above, With Kawhi's game becoming sooo complete, Tony is an anchor on the starting unit. The question is: what impact would his insertion into the second unit have on it? I know that the paradigm of Spurs fans is for the second unit to provide an up-tempo spark, but maybe it is time to alter paradigms if Pop refuses to divorce Tony...
Lol, done. Dude's the starting PG on the best team in the league.
LET US Again REMEMBER how the op, one gambit1991, did heretofore create this electronic journal in the times of January 2016, and lo he did bump this thread every week with some little nugget of argument, and as a stop clock proves right at least twice a day, young gambit1991 did speak truth through gotry.
I now pronounce this thread, closed. Now we witness the new paradigm of gotry "are the spurs better without Kawhi" to be bumped every two weeks until kawhi is tosb or injured for a long stretch.
I wonder if the team would consider stretching Tony next summer. I can see them not trading him out of respect, but they can't keep him on the roster if he doesn't get better. So the compromise seems to be to either trade him to a team he wants to play for (probably not that hard) who wants him (probably not easy at all) and failing that to release him and hope he signs a decent deal somewhere else that will allow them to claim set-off relief in 2018-2019. That would leave the Spurs with about $13 Million in cap space. That doesn't seem like a lot, but it also gives you Mills' cap hold, so you could probably bring back the whole bench minus Manu and Bertans, Murray and Forbes in addition to the non-Parker starters. The issues are that 1) They are missing a second PG and have almost no means of getting one and 2) If you factor in Mills and Simmons getting deals far in excess of their holds, rookie players getting that extra 20 percent and the room exception, the team is threatening the tax hard core.
This would be the roster:
PG: Mills, Murray, Forbes
SG: Green, Simmons, ...
SF: Leonard, Anderson, ...
PF: Aldridge, Lee, Bertans
C: Gasol, Dedmon, ...
Would probably be ideal to draft a guard in June and bring over Milutinov to balance out the roster.
Or they could keep Parker, and stay over the cap. That would mean that they'd have to hope Dedmon would take the MLE, but that's not a horrible be with it being projected at $8.7 Million. That would be $37M/4 at its max, which is insane. Then you could give Patty whatever he wants to be the starter and tell Lee it's min, LLE or GTFO. Also could keep Manu for whatever deal, but that's not ideal either.
PG: Mills, Parker, Murray
SG: Green, Simmons, Forbes
SF: Leonard, Anderson, ...
PF: Aldridge, Bertans, ...
C: Gasol, Dedmon, Milutinov
With the pick, the LLE (like $7M/2) and min deals to fill the other two spots.
I tend to think once Tony is back, Pop will again try to make it work with him in the SL to the dismay of most. Danny also returning will mask his flaws on defense and provide shooting, so Pop is going to want to see how they do, but Tony would have to get back to being healthy and playing well. Bottom line, Pop will want to extract some value from Tony... which means he's got to play some minutes somewhere.
This statement was revealing:
Relevant quote:
Patty has evolved into the Spurs energizer and 6th man to be more impactful than Manu at this point, who ideally should stay at the sweet spot of 20 minutes to maximize him. Patty is in his prime and ready to play more if you need him.Everybody wants somebody good coming off the bench, and he's our guy," Popovich said. "His ability to score and his energy are real important to us."
There is this quote about how well Mills fits with the SL:
Hopefully Pop figures things out. It may indeed be that Tony is better in the bench, specially if his minutes have to be restricted so he can remain healthy and avoid the nagging injuries at this point."The confidence is definitely there because the preparation has been solid," Mills said. "It is confidence from understanding what we want to do as a team on both ends of the floor, understanding what Pop and the coaching staff want from me."
And it doesn't hurt, as Ginobili pointed out, that Mills' game compliments Aldridge and fellow big man Pau Gasol.
"It's good for me being able to feed off them, to run around and move off the ball, which is one of my strengths," Mills said. "Running off of LaMarcus and Pau really puts the defenders in two minds of how to guard us. I'm really enjoying playing with both of those bigs."
Seems like a real Hobson's choice to me. Would you rather grace the SL with Patty and curse the second unit with Tony or vice-versa? (Or is there any CONCEIVABLE way that Tony's moving to the second unit wouldn't be a curse?) I am sure Pop's decision will cause an avalanche of criticism here on ST, though. My own predisposition is to grouse about whatever he chooses to do, tbh.![]()
Moving Parker to the bench will wreck the great chemistry of the second unit.
Pop's options now are to hide Parker in the first unit, or move him to the injured list when going up against strong opposing backcourts. And we'll see a lot more of this
and this
before Pop goes down with heart failure.
There is just no way they trade him to appease us... Remember Harlem and his wisdom on this.
Acceptance is the path to enlightenment. lol
I think at least some experimenting in the bench is in order when he gets back. The bench was typically Manu's realm, but he's got to be a part of the blend right now and he's played with Tony his whole NBA career. I think the two of them will make it work. We will just have to hope Pop is more open to shake things up. Pop seems to vacillate in what he wants. He seems more willing to mix guys up than last season when he was so strict with the SL in particular, keeping them together and refusing to adjust that lineup no matter how much they struggled at times. I think the team having so many young players who need experience and seasoning, on top of the injuries have allowed for experimentation this early. It's possible that had Tony and Danny not been injured we never would have seen what we have seen... though guys have been saying Tony needed to be benched since last season...
Snaq, I hear what you are saying. But the truth is that he is killing the chemistry of the first unit, and it is strictly conjecture for us to "know" that Tony would ruin the second unit, since it is something we have not seen. It is looking more like pick-your-poison time to me.
That's what I believe.
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