22 shots and 7 FTs

[YGWHI]

Not a bad stat line for a guy who played timid much of the night and who was indecisive on his drives.

It's weird that Kawhi looked more assertive against Warriors on the road than in home. He's even shooting a lot better on the road 66.7 FG% ...I mean, it's great to have a player who can play at Oracle but I can't explain his poor home shooting in the RS series.

Anyway, I'm not sure if Pop is able to find a way to keep Kawhi/LMA, both, going in the same game. This style of offense is so different in many ways from Prime Tim "4-down" and Old Tim "beautiful game"

[rasuo214]

I was mostly posting this in reference to the 2-way player thread, and some people claiming Kawhi is at Curry or Lebron level offensively. I hope he can reach that level but right now it just isn't the case. That difference of 17 points between the two #1 scoring options is major when the other team wins by only 6.

The big 3 was lethal because they were basically unbeatable if the 3 of them had good nights. And you could always count on 2 out of 3 bringing their A game. Right now LMA and Kawhi are good, but we only seem to have a chance if both of them are playing at their best, at the same time. I'm not sure it will happen regularly enough to win a 7-game playoff series.

That isn't Kawhi or LMA's fault that the team lacks even a decent 3rd option on offense. For as bad of a night Kawhi had offensively it was still 2x better than what Danny and Parker provided.

Parker and Danny were a combined 3-14 totaling 6 points. .43 points per shot attempt.

Kawhi, who was very inefficient by his standards, got 20 on 22 shots. .91 points per shot attempt.


To put that in perspective if Danny and Parker were able to just match Kawhi's bad offensive performance then that would have been enough to win the game.

.91 * 14 shot attempts = 12+ points, which would have covered the 6 points the Spurs lost by.

That's not to pick on Danny and Parker because they weren't the only ones to do poorly on offense. Also not excusing Kawhi's bad shooting night. The Spurs will need Kawhi and LMA to step up because there isn't a 3rd option to bail them out and allow for a bad night.

[DenialTwist]

Did you happen to listen to any NBA podcasts after the game? or read any of the articles? Unfortunately, every NBA analyst has said pretty much the same thing: The spurs backcourt cannot score against the Warriors. Parker guarded Curry for most of the game and Curry punished him for it. Parker and Green were outscored 51-6 (7/29). 6 points from two-fifths of the starting lineup. Yeah, blame it on the only consistent player the entire season. Curry couldn't carry Parker and Green if he was on this spurs team. The Spurs pg position and pg depth is the biggest weakness. CBS Sports just talked about this very point, if any one of the spurs backcourt was to score in double digits this game could've gone the other way. It doesn't get much better with Mills and Manu coming off the bench against this Warriors offense both in offense and defense. The weakness is not in the frontcourt, it's the backcourt.

[will_spurs]

Danny Green sucks offensively, that's a fact.

But that's missing the point, which is the following: on a night when everything went according to the plan imagined by the masterminds here at SpursTalk, which is to say Kawhi got the ball, took 22 shots while everybody took second place, and in particular Parker took only 7 shots (less than a 1/3rd of the amount of shots taken by Kawhi), the resulat was clear: our offense was totally inefficient.

Actually Kawhi was 7 for 22 (.318 shooting) and Parker was 2-7 (.286 shooting), which means our #1 option on offense was basically as bad as the "washed-up" guy who's been labelled as the worst starting PG in the league and a waste of a roster spot.

The rest of the roster, with the notable exception of LMA, was equally crappy: West .286 Manu .286 Mills .250 and Green .143

There's not much more to say: our #1 option on offense had basically the same offensive production as guys like West, Parker, Manu, Mills or Green... when he should producing significantly more.

It won't make a difference if Parker and Manu sits, if Mills starts , if K-Mart starts instead of Green... we can't win against GSW with Kawhi shooting .318

[loveforthegame]

I don't get your argument. Leonard was the #1 option one out of the 4 games. That's an exception and not the trend.

That's like me saying for all those at spurstalk who wants LMA to be the #1 option screwed the pooch in game 3 where he shot 5-16. That 31% isn't going to cut it. At least Parker shot 40% but is anyone going to argue Parker would be the better option? Leonard was 8-12 for 66% shooting. Should we have gone through him more that night?

Or how about game 1 where he shot 2-9 and guys like Green shot 1-4, Manu 1-6, Mills 1-5, Parker 2-6. No one is going to sit here and say LMA is as bad as those guys.

Our 2 stars shot really good in 2 games and really bad in 2 games. Unfortunately when one was on the other was not.

By your argument we're 0-1 with Leonard as #1 option and 1-3 when LMA is. Do you really believe the results are that cut and dried? Maybe either one should be the #1 option. Hmm. I wonder who we could turn to instead? Lean heavily on Diaw and hope for the best? Hope Duncan finds the fountain of youth again? Hope Parker regains his speed? Hope for Green to find his shot again? What are we going to do?

LMA was 29-68 for 43% on 17 shots per game.

Leonard was 24-54 for 44% on 13.5 shots per game.

The fact is we need both Leonard and LMA to shoot well with a healthy dose from the role players.

[Diego20]

Which is exactly what you guys have been asking for. In the last 3 years, we're 6-0 in the playoffs when Parker leads the team in scoring. 1-2 when he doesn't. Welcome to the new era.

got always talking about "when parker leads the team, bla bla bla"

[Obstructed_View]

got always talking about "when parker leads the team, bla bla bla"

Yeah, those pesky stats. gots.