Game Thoughts: Preseason Game 4 - Spurs @ Hawks - 10/10/18

[SAGirl]

[SpurSpike]

Come on you pussies season hasnt even started yet. Stop with all the depression you all are worse than demar! At least watch the 1st month of real basketball before you all cliff jump from preseason games...

[r0drig0lac]

....

[coachmac87]

DeRozan was a terrible move. The scary thing is it gets even worse in the playoffs.

Spurs should've gone for draft picks instead.

Honestly shocked you even mentioned playoffs tbh...

[Gordy58]

Hoping Carroll gets bought out

[John B]

Spurs don’t have premier defender right now with Murray’s absence. Hopefully chemistry will help develop team defense

[Chinook]

Spurs don’t have premier defender right now with Murray’s absence. Hopefully chemistry will help develop team defense

Murray wasn't a perimeter defender, tbh. He was essentially a guard version of Draymond Green. Team chemistry might help replace Murray's impact, but if the team needs an ace defender on check outside scorers, they needed one before. If they didn't need one before, they don't now. A guy like Huestis was only going to be able to replace so much of what Murray did. Just different roles.

[Em-City]

Murray wasn't a perimeter defender, tbh. He was essentially a guard version of Draymond Green. Team chemistry might help replace Murray's impact, but if the team needs an ace defender on check outside scorers, they needed one before. If they didn't need one before, they don't now. A guy like Huestis was only going to be able to replace so much of what Murray did. Just different roles.

can you elaborate on how you're coming to this conclusion? Murray was a plus on both individual and team defense, surely his loss makes the problem of on-ball and perimeter defense even bigger.... especially since murray was one of the few players who would have allowed spurs to switch on the PnR and not get completely destroyed.

[Chinook]

can you elaborate on how you're coming to this conclusion? Murray was a plus on both individual and team defense, surely his loss makes the problem of on-ball and perimeter defense even bigger.... especially since murray was one of the few players who would have allowed spurs to switch on the PnR and not get completely destroyed.

Murray's analytics put him as a below-average defender individually. His team numbers were great. Impact stats, on/offs and the player pairings -- those gave him high regards. But NBA.com's stats for how he did against guys actually shooting against him -- those were poor. He hung around the middle or the road in the league there. That's not normal for an ace defender, in case you're wondering Green and Leonard both enjoyed years of great results in terms of stopping the man in front of them as well as helping the whole team. I understand that people want to be skeptical of some stats (the numbers said Forbes was great/lucky when guys went at him), but defensive stats are always about taking a suite of numbers and trying to make sense of them. Eye-tests and those analytics suggest Murray's one-on-one D was not anything to write home about.

Neither was Anderson's though. As some folks are keen to remind me, there's a lot more to D than one-on-one play. That's no more true than in in the case of Murray. His loss hurts. His loss combined with picking Anderson over Bertans (another guy whose one-on-one analytics were great, btb) hurts even more. But he wasn't going to check anyone unless that part of his game had developed over the summer. The lack of a legit stopper was going to hurt the team no matter what. They just won't have their ace either. Think of Murray being a safety or MLB in the NFL rather than a cornerback. You wouldn't look for free-agent corners to replace Eric Berry.

[SAGirl]

Think Murray is more impactful than given credit for, but he had his moments where he was ineffective last season. Lonzo is the one that I remember the most but no one expected him to shoot the 3...

[sasaint]

NO KIDDING! What I was thinking - but without the visual!