Why are the Spurs still intimidated by the Lakers?

[therealtruth]

I think the effort was there from Tiago, and overall I don't think he played poorly. Lately he's been playing like he's up to the challenge of earning every possible minute out of the 5-bigman rotation. In reality, he actually earned those minutes a long time ago, so I can only imagine he's frustrated with his current role.

It's pretty bad coaching by Pop. How do you not reward a player like Tiago for playing well? He should know the reward factor is important in getting guys to improve and play better.

It's ironic we were joking before in the year that Pop would reward Tiago for beasting by playing him even less minutes. To everyone's horror it looks like it came true. It seems his minutes have steadily declined.

[SplitterHook]

it's not a season ending loss by any means or does it mean I don't believe we can still when it all. But anyone who is talking themselves into believing this was a "bad night" is being delusional. The lane was denied and Tony and the rest of the team seemed to give up even trying to drive. I think Bynum and Gasol had more rebounds at half time than the whole spurs team combined. Their size bothered us and Pop didn't have an answer. If we meet up in the playoffs let's hope Kobe takes enough shots to disrupt their bigs flow.

bynum and gasol?

bynum had 19 rebounds at half time to spurs' 18.

bynum finished with 30 rebounds to spurs 33.

[Obstructed_View]

To make matters worse he tried adjusting to them in the playoffs.

Yeah. If he was going to try that lineup change it seems like he'd have done it during the regular season game to see how it worked. Diop and Damp were the starters for the best team in the league and Damp suddenly got like a minute of garbage time in game 1.