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All right, smart guys, please apply for Head coaching job so we can win another Championship.
Seriously, if you think you can do better than Pop, prove it.
I think Pop was also adjusting and taking advantage of the new rules, and your team benefited from it. Didn't you just set a franchise record in wins this year? Don't you think it could be attributed to your new offensive look?
All right, smart guys, please apply for Head coaching job so we can win another Championship.
Seriously, if you think you can do better than Pop, prove it.
It definitely benefited Parkeron offense. It should have benefited Manu but he was banged up most of the year. In terms of defense, regardless of stats this was the worst the Spurs have looked in years.
Well yeah.
Pop said the proble in the offseason will be if we want a Center or rather an athletic PF. That's the question that had to be answered.
Yup. The game has changed and we could see it last season, but the key to success in last years WCF was a transition. Phoenix was not that good at it so the spurs were succesfull in pushing the ball up tye court.
And that is the most important thing in todays NBA - the transition, penetraiting and athletic mobility. So that's why a game with 2 PF in S5 could leas you to a victory to a success. Like D"Antoni did it like Avery did it against us.
And is the Spurs basketball dead. Yes it is. That one with solid interior D. That's why Pop must to figure the new system out. To me the defense is winnin a championship but like FromDownTown said it's a different quality.
If you asking me. I would like to see an athletic Center in Spurs uniform, a defensive one. Like Steven Hunter but better.
Tough choices this summer real tough. We must refresh get more athletic inside and outside so we could match not the opponents but the NBA "smallball running" era.
Frickin '70
Get back to me after Miami wins the NBA le- playing their big guys and stomping the little ones.
I think it needs to be updated, but I think the premises are valid.
I don't think the problem is with inside-out basketball itself. I also don't think the rules making it harder to defend are the problem in and of themselves -- we have guys that are built to score under those rules, and even if the league average becomes 110 points per game, there's no reason we can't continue to hold teams well below the average -- whatever the rules are, the Spurs are still much better defenders than all but a handful of teams.
I think there are two real problems:
1. We've been playing 4 on 5 on offense. It didn't cost teams a thing to double Tim off whoever was playing center. That's been killing us to varying degrees ever since David retired.
2. You can play two help defenders on the baseline against conventional teams, but against a team with 4 shooters like Dallas this creates obvious problems. Either you leave a guy wide open, or you move one of your defenders out to the perimeter.
I don't want there to be any confusion: we will be a damn good team even if we don't solve either of these problems. We have the best post player in basketball, we have the best perimeter defender, and we have two deadly penetrating guards who are ripping teams apart under the new rules. But I don't think anyone thinks that being a damn good team is good enough. These are the Spurs -- either they're hoisting a trophy, or the season went to waste.
Pop's attempt to resolve these problems against Dallas led to benching our centers to try and solve these problems. Finley added a perimeter threat, which left Tim single-covered. He (and Bruce, et al.) could cover Dirk on the perimeter, though this left more room to penetrate. The problems with this were that we were still allowing more penetration than should have, and we were playing 4 guards, and couldn't rebound for crap. I think Pop's strategy was better than the alternative, but obviously this is a source of debate.
In any case, if we want to do better next year, we need to try to find a better solution than we had available to us this year.
A power forward (or center) that can score with range solves problem #1. For that matter, playing a true SF at the 4 would also solve it.
Playing a true SF at the 4 solves problem #2, but it still exposes the problems we saw against Dallas: penetration is easier for the other team, and our rebounding is weaker. A 3 that can rebound effectively would mitigate the rebounding problem.
Playing a mobile, athletic 4 that can rebound solves problem #2 and keeps our rebounding from dropping off, but it still doesn't solve the penetration problem, and it only solves #1 if that PF can shoot jumpers.
Finally, we could just commit to playing two post defenders on the baseline against teams with 4 shooters, leave open their worst shooter, and sell out to stop penetration. But this is a pretty dangerous strategy, and guys like Josh Howard or Dirk can kill us with jumpers if we do that. Leaving open legit shooters really isn't Spurs basketball, any more than small ball is.
The bottom line: I think we still have the system and most of the players for more championships. We have some options open to us about how we want to fix the holes in our current lineup, and we just need to figure out what personnel are available to us to do it.
Right, because Rasho and Nazr = Shaq and MourningGet back to me after Miami wins the NBA le- playing their big guys and stomping the little ones.
Oh, and Nice Post, strangeweather.
The Spurs scored at will against Dallas. Dallas scored at will against San Antonio.
The game hasn't changed, Pop just forgot about what has made himself successful.
In the end, the first team that plays defense and makes stops will win the Championship. It isn't going to be Dallas.
That's a nice theory, except when they call the defense your playing "fouls", and you just end up sending the Mavs to the free throw line.
The NBA is not allowing traditional Spurs defense, it seems to me, so the Spurs need to change.
My God, that's profound.
Since Phoenix is not capable of playing defense...and can steal but not stop...hopefully the Pistons come out of the east. But, even Miami can probably do it.
I wouldn't say Spurs Basketball is totally dead. Someone mentioned "hybrid defense" earlier and that may be the way to go. It's funny but I think of the Spurs roots in the ABA days which were pretty much run and gun, shoot 'em out play. Sure that never won any les but what goes around maybe comes around.
Still, until a small ball team wins a le the discussion is note quite substantiated. At this point the Spurs need small ball adjustments to get out of the West, true. But will it win a le?
you're right timvp about the league evolving and advantaging the guard penetration but I still think the spurs can win it with Spurs basketball they just need another defensive center ... they havent had one with robinson out ( these past 2 years) and that's why they lost the series to the mavs its not bcuz of the match-ups ( mavs were a match-up problem though) but bcuz their interior and team-defense sucked bcuz u can stop those match-up problems if everyone rotates and play team-defense but then Nazr couldn't do that ... that's why we need to get a defensive center at all cost ... imagine having the twin towers again ... only this time we will have the international guard combo ( manu+tony) to go with it ( for the scoring since the league is encouraging the guard penetration)
Spurs basketball is not dead, we just need some personnel tweaks to be able to adjust to a couple of small ball teams.
Yes
Holy crap! All day today, since about 10 AM, I was thinking about this very subject, pretty much constantly until about 5PM. Eerie.
Well, I think Spursbasketball is indeed DEAD, Schiavo style. We did come "this close" to beating the probable 2006 NBA Champions, BUT, as any NBA fan with eyes can see, it wouldn't have been "thisclose" if Mavs weren't allowed to free throw their way to two victories in a row. Why spurs basketball is dead:
1) Spurs have been jewed out of playoff games before and it will keep happening as long as they are a slow-it-down-team.
2) Whoever said we just need to change our defensive strategy is following the right track. I think if we found young, long athletic types, we will be okay. Drop the Center bull , let Duncan suck it up and play Center, and we will be bad ass again.
However...
3) We all know the nature of the Spurs front office, and the type of players they tend to get in the offseason when we "retool" "refuel" etc. Do you really think we'll get the type of guys we need in one year? Especially when we have like 4 players on our team that noone would pay two ing cents for?
To make this matter worse...
4) No first round pick.
I truely think this is the Spurs' darkest hour. It's stupid to be stubborn and continue our same old strategy when we couldn't even use our centers in the playoffs.
The only way things could get worse is if Dirk walks over to Duncan's fishing pond and kicks him in the balls, then Cuban takes a picture, and they post it on the front page of the Dallas Morning News.
It's like I told Mookie after the Rose Bowl "Dude, a spurs championship, THEN a horn's championship? It's all downhill from here."
The Spurs darkest hour is now? Holy Spurs fans are spoiled. Get back to me after Tim and Manu retire and the team is struggling to win 50.
I meant symbolically
Like we're so close to the top of the mountain we can taste it yet get kicked in the teeth and stumble downwards.
Isn't that possibly worse than just staying at the bottom?
Spurs basketball is far from dead. One of the key reasons the Spurs have 3 les is because they constantly evolve to meet the challenge. Every Spurs team that has won a le has been different. Every single one!
I'm pretty sure the twin towers look is dead, but honestly its been dead for sometime now. The past 2 seaons have seen Robert Horry as a game finisher as opposed to a legit 7 footer. The team tried to bring in Rasho and Nazr as a continuation of the twin towers after David, but the fact remains that neither has produce nearly enough to keep them on the floor when it counts.
Last year you saw Tim surrouned by 4 guards a lot of the time. It worked pretty damn well. We killed Pheonix with that lineup. This year we weren't able to beat Dallas that way. It can be argued that at some point you need to make teams adjust to you instead of adjusting to them, and I think this was an error. I think small ball was used far too much in this series and the centers weren't given enough of a chance. I understand Pops fears on how this would hurt the team, but I think there were also a ton of possible positives that were never explored. Pop thought our best angle on Dallas was going small. We might be able to beat Dallas in that type of game, but we weren't able to do so this year. I also think we would have competed with a bigger lineup, but I'm not sure we would have beat them either way. In the end the type of lineup may not have mattered as much as we think.
But the bottom line is that Spurs basketball starts with defense and rebounding. When your rebounding is weak, your defense needs to be that much stronger because of the extra chances the opposing team gets. I think the defense would have appered much stronger had they been able to do a better job on the defensive glass. If we're able to pick up someone who can do a better job on the boards then our defense will seem a ton better on its own. There isn't a large adjustment needed in that regard.
There is no way we're going to see a team that relies on offense first. There is simply no way we will have the personel to play a faster tempo and outscore teams. It would also be a complete waste of Tim Duncan's abilities on the defensive end of the court. The type of lineups we play next year depend entirely on off season acquisitions but the thing that will remina constant will be Pop's persistence to teach a defensive first mindset. The schemes may change somewhat and the offensive sets may change, but the fundemental belief that this teams best chances lie in a defense first philosophy will not.
No ing way. Are you nuts? Seriously, Spurs fans don't realize how lucky they have it. Many of them are currently complaining how the current crop of Mavs fans just popped up with the emergence of Cuban, but I wonder how many Spurs fans hopped on the Bandwagon when David first came to town?
There will come a time in the future when this team simply cannot retool in the summer. There will come an actual rebuilding era. And then we'll see who the fans are.
Well I've been a fan of teams that had no chance of making the playoffs (admittedly not as hardcore a fan as I am a spurs fan) and I have to say losing like this hurts worse and will hurt for longer than if we were a losing team that did not make the playoffs at all. At least for me it is.
I think defense is really what gives team's longevity when it comes to success because defense can keep you in a game even when your shots are not falling.
The Spurs have an advantage/ skill in that area and, in my opinion, would be making a mistake to scrap those principles entirely.
I agree that rebounding would make our defense look a lot better than it did this year. We got beaten llike drums on rebounding by WAY too many regular season teams, much less playoff types.
Here's the biggest need that the Spurs have though, and it isn't going to be found in a player addition. WE NEED MENTAL AND EMOTIONAL TOUGHNESS!!! And it needs to come from the group we have now. We have a real problem with this because we like our players to be sort of quiet and laid back, and we all know that it is Tim's team, and he is kinda quiet and laid back, and unlikely to respond to anyone who isn't the same way, and Pop thinks it's not his job to get the guys going emotionally, so WE ARE TOO OFTEN FLAT!!
You know, if I'd been taking bets on who on this board was likely to drop Camus into the discussion, I don't think I would have bothered to set odds for you.
Just goes to show you never know.
But he actually reached the top, if only for a moment.
Yes.
I'm not surprised that a lot of fans can't see it, but all those bull Stern quotes mean that if you don't change to being more exciting we're going to keep you out of the finals. Look at those blatant calls on the defensive end of games 3 and 4. Those were typically non-calls or calls going the Spurs way after playing good old fashion Spurs basketball, but the NBA doesn't want Spurs basketball. Stern doesn't want suffocating defense.
So yeah, if the Spurs know what is good for them, they won't bring in a hulking center. Centers need to be athletic and quick and able to go out to 15'.
I'm kinda surprised Stern was so open about admitting they wanted new basketball. He always tries to put some positive spin on everything, but the way he constantly s with the game to give the fans what he thinks they want or should want is wrong.
The game of basketball is sacred and using it as your personal lab kit to experiment with it until you see the most profit makes me mad. He probably has some more plans that he'll slowly integrate as the years gone by.
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