Watched last night's game as well as the 1st preseason game. I think the coaching staff have an idea on whom some of the starters are going into the season opener. The preseason games have looked like trying to adjust the bench rotations with the roster makeup. I wish I could and had the time to rewatch some of these games to sort out what is happening on decision making and sets being used. I don't think the coaching staff know who they are going to cut yet between KBD, Aminu, Sandwich. Tonight felt like a Popovich experimenting with the roster lineups and rotations to see how the players respond in game. I personally since last season lost confidence with Lonnie Walker and think he is a guy the spurs should just move on from. I just don't like what I see from him defensively and it hasn't improved much at all year to year. I think he needs a change of scenery to have a chance to blossom further as a player. I think a majority of the roster just needs consistency with minutes in game each game to get back into form (i.e. White, Vassel, Keldon). Vassel looks like he is trying to do too much and needs to ease back a little. Keldon needs to learn to spend more time posting up his opponents. Teams are going to adjust to his bully down the lane play style fairly quickly if that is his only go to move, although he has looked good finishing in the lane for the most part.
Can't really define anything else from last night due to it being the 2nd game of preseason and different set of players getting minutes.
Agreed to all your points, especially the KJ one. He's not nimble enough to be trying to orchestrate an offense or take ppl off the dribble. That's the thing about having so many kids... so many moving pieces in flux as everyone tries to find their niche, roles, and themselves quite frankly.
He really is, tbh. I'm not quite ready to watch Pop be on his bull with Primo and his role like he's done to Lonnie, Luka, et al, at this point I'm praying Pops calls it quits before Primo graduates from his inevitable Austin stint. Sad stuff.
Surely you don't mean players are supposed to get hungrier and hungrier, better and better, every time they're insta-benched for any mistake in favor of fringe rotational scrubs who get glorified due to one-dimensional games, right...?!
Nah, must be something else entirely. Pop definitely wouldn't be all about that shtick, and go out of his way so much as to bring back the certified scrub who inaugurated the shtick in the first place. No way.
Amazing how a coach benching a player during a preseason game somehow becomes the coach is fed up with that said player because he being given enough chances to succeed.
For those going down that path. Wake up , that wasnt pops intention.
This is exactly what I am talking about. The only story I see about Luka not playing the summer league is that the spurs didn't want him to play because he was rehabbing a broken hand. Makes sense right...I probably don't want a player rehabbing a broken hand...playing basketball earlier than I want to. So I am not sure why what you mean about him "not going to summer league".
I am well aware of his "pre draft flags". I am well aware that he ghosted the euro team he was on to come play in the nba, and by ghosting I mean he just legit never went back to the team nor did he tell anyone on the team he wouldn't be back and the team was like wtf and his teammates were mad. Again, Luka went from not being on anyones radar to somebody who was being mentioned as a late 1st round pick. I'm not going to blame a 19 year old kid making the decision to do what he feels he has to do to put himself in position to make millions of dollars. If the worst thing you can tell me about a 19 year old kid is that he is y I am going to tell you "which 19 year old kid isn't?" I mean Dejounte felt slighted by the nba cause he fell all the way to 29 when he didn't have any basketball skill other than being tall for his position and having a 6 "10" wingspan. Or how quickly we forget the reports that Keldon wouldn't even work out for teams that weren't in the lottery because you know, he just knew he would be drafted much higher than 29 so his "camp" told non lottery teams do not even waste your time asking us to work out for you.
Again, what is an actual story about Luka being en led?
Exactly. I don't get why people single out Lonnie, single out Luka, single out Vassell's lack of development and Keldon's lack of development, and so on, and never put it all together. Pop is simply not good at developing players from the ground up, and has gotten even worse at it in his later years.
I haven't been around and carefully watching the Spurs to say for sure, but looking back, it doesn't look like it's ever been his strength. Even back in the Big 3 era - Timmy came out of the gates with an extremely polished game, and Manu was careless and wacky but also was extremely developed and experienced for a rookie. Tony was the only true "rook" and Pop built him up nicely, but always with that stick-carrot, harsh approach, that he also used on Danny as the whipping boy. I've never gotten the impression that he's more flexible in his developmental coaching than doing that, and now that there's young players who aren't receptive of that style of coaching, and no vets to right the ship, it really shows.
It's quite literally based on some rumor a poster threw around here about Luka being mean to staffers in SA in his first year or so, then it snowballed when armchair GMs started "analyzing" Luka's on court demeanor and taking conclusions from it. Literally no other evidence beyond that and some "red flags" that are usually written by people who've never met these players in the first place.
It's such lazy criticism, too, and entirely dismissable when you see the work that Luka's put into his own body over the offseasons. Guy is swole now after coming into the league the size of a stick, but sure, he's not practicing or training at all, sitting on his mansion Ben Simmons-style, surrounded by hookers and counting checks........
at some point we're gonna need to sit you down, hold an intervention, pull the Mean Girls meme and tell you to stop trying to make Lonnie happen
Honestly, on his first action I remember him dribbling behind his back before attacking the rim, faking a shot so the defender would jump and then just easily pulling a jump shot. For a 6,10 guy that was pretty good.
Last edited by Rocalcio; 10-08-2021 at 02:45 AM.
I hope to see him more during the preseason.
I don't see something natural/fluid in his ballhandling.
He’s a big, and his ball handling is way better than Poeltl’s. You will never see Jakob dribbling from one basket to the other one, Luka can do that.
And yet, if that were all somehow true, he's riding the pine, while showing he's clearly skilled enough to play... There's definitely more then meets the eye and the smoke makes more sense, then the denial so to speak...It's quite literally based on some rumor a poster threw around here about Luka being mean to staffers in SA in his first year or so, then it snowballed when armchair GMs started "analyzing" Luka's on court demeanor and taking conclusions from it. Literally no other evidence beyond that and some "red flags" that are usually written by people who've never met these players in the first place.
It's such lazy criticism, too, and entirely dismissable when you see the work that Luka's put into his own body over the offseasons. Guy is swole now after coming into the league the size of a stick, but sure, he's not practicing or training at all, sitting on his mansion Ben Simmons-style, surrounded by hookers and counting checks........
Bruh, wdyem... He has had plays called for him; he has been given the keys to be more aggressive; he has been given the looks; he has been given the minutes even and roles... I just don't understand this coddling. He speaks the speak but doesn't walk the walk... If he gonna live up to the billing and his last name quite frankly then he needs to be silent and give something tangible before he gets prophetic...
As for the basketball re ed terminology, I don't think that about him at all. I just see an immature young man that thinks too much and needs to grow up and play the game. That's it.
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