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Me and knowledgeable posters like midnightpulp and others have been calling his struggles without HOTS for ages. Going from a floor general like TP, to a 4 down game manager like Pity Mills is a huge drop off.
Stats back this....
It really isn't fair if you think about it. Envision the Cavs without Lebron going against the Warriors and they'd get swept too. Kyrie and Love would struggle too against their defense. No way they'd consistently break down the defense and they are more stacked then the Spurs lol.
People always go back to his Portland days. They got smashed and dismantled in the second round by the Spurs. Aldridge had never been outside the second round until he played with the Spurs. He's good in his role as second or third option. He needs a PG that can get to the rim for the pick and pop and he needs a few shots throughout the game. I think this last game was great for him tbh and will only help. He did show some aggression.
I'm not trying to settle but it's not worth it to blow it up when you are this close from a financial standpoint and talent standpoint. He's not a number one guy tbh. Put him in the class as Love really. Look at Love's stats in the finals and he's a max guy too. Aldridge and Love have their uses but they are not number one guys. I don't know where these expectations come from. Aldridge showed in the Houston series what he can do to about 95% of the league as the number one but the Warriors are a doubled edged sword. Heck Aldridge might of had a big series against the Cavs if we got there. They are mediocre at best on D.
All I'm saying is we expect too much from him. He's not a superstar and has never been. Lucky for us we have one and he's just injured. Pippen couldn't do it without Jordan tbh. Good regular season but playoffs exposed.
Me and knowledgeable posters like midnightpulp and others have been calling his struggles without HOTS for ages. Going from a floor general like TP, to a 4 down game manager like Pity Mills is a huge drop off.
Stats back this....
Dude keeps getting injured teammates. Dude has been dealt a bad hand 2 years in a row. Hope he learns some post moves though.
Give up like Aldridge does on the court?
Good post.
The most frustrating thing for me is him being unable to make good reads and passes out of double teams and due to that TO or settle for bad shots. That just means he's a finisher and not someone Spurs should be running an offense through.
Word I think we are in like a Clippers situation with him. We got to see what we can do with a healthy team. Last year was unfortunate with those calls in OKC and this year's Parker and Kawhi injury, both of whom really impact his game...
He in no way pulled a Harden on us. Without Parker and Leonard it's just a bad matchup for him. Draymond is a better defender than Splitter is and look what Splitter did to him.
That's true about Kawhi and Tony...
I can not stress how frustrating that was. I kept telling my friend that, real talk. He makes the basic pass which allows them to set back up which really doesnt do anything for us. Maybe if he reposted with better position but usually they just swing the ball to the weakside. I'd like to see more Pick and rolls with him
What about the little guards that keep him out of the paint and make him shoot 18ft fadeaways? What about the guards that out rebound him?
He's the highest paid player on the team signed as a max free agent. 17 & 8 from him is not good enough from him. We expect more. More importantly, Pop expects more.
I guess that's the popular narrative but its really not fair tbh. An ostrich is an ostrich. It can't fly but it can run fast. You play with what you got. Kawhi can fly man. He's a superstar. But that's just not who he is and the match up is tough for him. Durant, Draymond, Thompson, Barnes are all really good defenders.
Consider this he's a shooter and a rhythm shooter or volume shooter at that. If your in his position and your not getting good looks it's gonna be hard to score. He's going up against draymond who is probably gonna be Defensive player of the year. That's a tough matchup.
Look at what Love produced in last years finals against this same dubs team. He's a max player. Superstars are like multi dimensional man. They can score no matter what. That's not Aldridge. He needs favorable matchups.
I hear your argument and im not gonna disagree with you on the aspect of work and effort but he is much improved from Portland and we all know that. Go back to the rhythm player thing. If he's knocking, he's just more engaged offensively and defensively. Alot of bigs are like that.
But go back to game 1 and he was fine. He was in his role and he was excelling. Fast forward to today without his man and he's out of position. If your a shooting guard with no handles and the team asks you to bring the ball up and play point your gonna struggle if they pressure you. It's not easy playing out of position or role man. Anyone who plays ball knows that. That's why the older you get you know where your spots are. His spots are different now in the sense of time and space tbh.. think about it.
Being doubled team and having a hard time scoring is one thing...missing put backs, taking ill advised fade away jump shots, getting out rebounded by smaller men, fumbling rebounds, being careless with the ball, getting beat off the dribble by dumb Mcgee, etc...come on
everything you just said is result of pressure bro. No kawh and parker = more pressure. the only thing i really can't defend is getting outrebounded but even then he is not a great rebounder.
It all comes down to just knowing what you got. He's not Tim. He never will be and there will never be another like Tim but we got to move on. Here's my psycho analysis. Tim set the bar pretty high. He was the greatest power forward to ever play and had little weakness. Every big nowadays has some glaring flaw. Bigs just aren't what they use to be.
No one is talking about him being the nextTim Duncan. All people are asking for is for him to play his worth. He's an all-star....show up and play like one because you're teammates are looking at him to lead the way.
My prediction is either him or Pau won't be on the team by next season training camp..
LMA will be shopped first (mainly in a package involving Phoenix assets) but he won't be moved for peanuts, and then they will turn their sights to Pau and eventually salary-dump him on the Wolves or Nets..
"Knowledgeable"
You're the same asshole who compared Kawhi to Shaun Marion for years.
Pau or LMA won't be traded except for a supreme value. Neither are in Pop's doghouse.
And thats what I have been saying by comparing him to Love, saying that's not who he is, and saying its not fair. Love won a le last year not playing long stretches in the fourth. He is a max player too. He averaged like 8 points and 6 rebounds in the series with Lebron against these same dubs. He played about 11 minutes game 7. My point is that he has his uses. Flawed players get paid man. Just the way it is. He is not on a bad contract considering some others in this league. Sure you want more but realistically it's not bad. Dwight is making what 22 million a year and he's like unplayable in this game nowadays. Aldridge has a good skill set for this modern NBA. Not perfect but still.
This offense isn't designed for LMA as the first option. He's spent 2 years getting acclimated to his role and was playing it well. Injuries everything up, tbh.
He's not going anywhere. Pau, on the other hand....
this team we have right now is a top 3 team in the NBA. We need a decent guard and a decent 4 that can defend and shoot this offseason. They dont need to be super stars but we need a guard that can get to the rim and hit 3's and a stretch 4 that we could use for small or big ball. We have these peices in development with Bertans and Simmons but noone really knows how high that ceiling could go or not.
excuses being made for LA...he's mentally weak, a front runner and can't be counted on when adversity hits...Jonathan Simmons has scored more than LA these last 2 games with the offense being called for LA, a disappointment is what he is. Love was never brought to the cavs to be the 2nd guy he was brought in as the #3 so your comparison is off, the only comparison is that they're both jump shooting bigs with no post game. The spurs need to move on from him if they can dude just lacks heart. Guys like patty and danny can be excused for having to do much more then they are capable of and playing outside their roles, LA can't even establish position in the paint against guards and not just the warriors guards either, i was screaming at this dude in the houston series for doing the same against a lesser defensive team, he finally started playing like a big in game six of that series and the first half of game 1 only to revert back to playing soft once his expectations was raised with kawhi going out. Bottom line is if LA don't want to be physical out there and plays scared in big moments then he deserves every bit of criticism coming his way and it's not only spurs fans calling him out either...dude is not playing to his talent level out there and his confidence appears to be gone
Disagree w/ OP.
I can deal with him not being a number 1 option. That's fine.
What I can't deal with is how his skillset is inefficient and outdated. Not only that, but he has no counter moves at all. None. He used to have counters in Portland, but he was a lazy ass the past two summers and it finally caught up to him. Now he has a fraction of the confidence he once had 2-4 years ago. That's another reason I dislike him. He showed no heart and didn't have the mindset of a champion by the work he didn't put in two offseasons. We saw him regress before our eyes, he didn't sustain or develop from the player he was in Portland at 30 years young.
And you get fans who claim Spurs just need to get him going and go to him more. To get him going, he needs volume. He's not a player you want to force volume towards. If you do, you will lose the battle.
I cringe when fans on twitter or on here say the Spurs need to go through him more and get him going. He needs touches on the block okay... that's a 43% two point option. While being inefficient at 43%, he can't create looks for others, can't pass, cant dribble. Why force feed THIS?!
If he's not a go-to player, if he's not a player you can go to with volume, if he doesn't make others better when he has the ball, if he doesn't work hard in the summers. And if he gets paid the most on the team, I don't want him on the team. It's as simple as that.
Yes he got 17 and 7 this year, yay. The only games he got going was when others set him up for point blank looks or wide open 12 footers, or if he got garbage put backs from the rare contested rebounds he'd pull down. He was the worst big on the team when it came to contested rebound %. So yes, he got 17 and 7, but a lot of those rebounds were uncontested and a lot of those points weren't manufactured by himself. Empty calorie player, who has had zero work ethic in the offseason.
I hope the Spurs are ready to move on, don't want to see him in a Spurs jersey again. They'll be better off without him and giving his touches to Kawhi, Simmons and Murray.
Last edited by MaNu4Tres; 05-21-2017 at 05:28 PM.
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