What To Watch For In Game 5: Spurs @ Nuggets

[Play Boban]

If we’re playing Forges 36 minutes, I weep for our team.

[DPG21920]

That's fine as long as there is enough ballhandling on the court. Mills doesn't dribble well enough to be out there by himself without a legit guard next to him. That's partly why Walker might be the easier plug-and-play option since he adds ball-handling and a live body to match Denver's athletes.

DeRozan playing one or two extra minutes to get up to 40 and bumping Forbes up to ~36 is probably the easiest solution, though.

True - I was kind of assuming that Pop was not going to have both White/DeRozan off the court at the same time. They start, White comes out, Derozan plays extended minutes and White comes back in.

[objective]

The White minutes thing is ridiculous.

He played 35:30 AT DENVER in March? about 4-5 games after his second stretch of missed games.

So he was on such a minutes restriction after coming back that within days he played more minutes in a meaningless regular season game than he has all playoffs.

makes sense.

[MoSpur02]

Good stuff.

I think it comes down to hitting about 12-15 threes. If the Spurs can hit 12-15 threes then they win.

[Rummpd]

How many travel calls will not be called on Denver?

[BG_Spurs_Fan]

At halftime it's safe to say they've stayed the course, staggered some minutes to avoid the terrible bench line-up, rebounded well enough, taken care of the ball and all that, but if they can't shoot 3s and have no spacing there's no way to score enough.

[TD 21]

Eh, this is what we all said about Nephew. We wondered why Pop never played him 40+ minutes. Eventually, we found out why: Nephew can't play big minutes due to degenerative condition.

So, yeah, difficult to blame Pop retrospect for that. You have any other examples of young, emerging players that Pop didn't allow to play big minutes that went on to play big minutes elsewhere that are comparable to Nephew then and White now?

White missed time during two different points of the season for two separate injuries, both of the overuse variety. He returned each time with a minute restriction. He has claimed to be exhausted during playoff games. And on top of that, don't you want him fresh when it's time to close out the game? Fatiguing him would be a great way to guarantee a DeRozan Iso Show down the stretch.

You don't know that it won't. Unless you believe a championship is a realistic outcome to this season, is it worth it to put his health in jeopardy?

Science.

Who else on this team has played too few minutes? Aldridge and DeRozan played too many minutes in the regular season, if anything. Homers may point to Lonnie Walker IV but considering he wasn't doing anything special in the G-League, that'd be a hard sell.

They knew years ago he had a degenerative condition? If not, I don't want to hear that and I don't even really care if he did (since there's nothing that could have been done about it anyway). They thought they were a contender from '15-'17 and he was the best and by far youngest core player, yet he was being babied.

Yeah, basically every prominent or semi prominent one not named Duncan.

So can anyone ever play major minutes on this team or is there always going to be an excuse? I don't mean mpg either.

The burden of proof is on you. I'm merely suggesting that there's no definitive proof that he can't and that your god and the infamous medical staff clearly collaborated and arbitrarily settled on a certain range that you conveniently agreed with. Either way, I don't see how his health would be in jeopardy. It's not like he's back way ahead of schedule from a torn Achilles, ACL, MCL, etc.

I meant in general over the years.

[Keepin' it real]

Man, if only the Spurs hadn't blown two 19 point leads in game 2, they'd be on their way to being the first team in NBA history to blow a 3-0 series lead!

[Truth4sale$]

Really surprised the Spurs have made NO Adjustments since blowing game 2 and are down 20 midway thru the third. I always feel Pondexter and Cunningham play their heart out when given a chance, sure they might not be the most talented but Spurs are getting beat on 50/50 balls. That is all hustle...that's on the players not Popovich

[hater]

Watch a great Denver win tbqh

That's all

Question is how long will it hurt?

Called it

[RC_Drunkford]

Really surprised the Spurs have made NO Adjustments since blowing game 2 and are down 20 midway thru the third. I always feel Pondexter and Cunningham play their heart out when given a chance, sure they might not be the most talented but Spurs are getting beat on 50/50 balls. That is all hustle...that's on the players not Popovich

so if you can't motivate your players to play hard in a playoff game it's not the coaches fault?

[TDomination]

so if you can't motivate your players to play hard in a playoff game it's not the coaches fault?

You shouldnt have to motivate them.

its the playoffs!