Manu was a glue guy and the ultimate x-factor, and you're right, the Spurs miss that. I think the Spurs would have been below .500 last year without his influence late in games. If DeRozan, Aldridge and Gay are off there's no one else on this team to win games. DeRozan is the only closer this team has. Mills really isn't that guy, as well as he's played, and as much as Pop would like him to be. Granted, the Spurs would have been blown out even worse a few times this year without Mills' contributions.
Just the latest in Pop's string of bizarre decisions, tbh. White had logged very little regular season time against front-line NBA players. Pop should have brought him off the bench for a few games to re-integrate him into the game against mostly second units to regain rhythm and confidence before trying him in the SL.
I hope Pop eases him into his role, though. Throwing young guys to the wolves can really damage their confidence. I want Lonnie to be able to build confidence - not have to restore it after he's had to get over himself. I think that is a lot of what has happened to DWhite.
There is an old saying in sports, he got old over night. I think that's what happened with Aldridge. He simply can't produce the energy needed to be consistent night after night. Carrying the team last year has drained him. He probably shouldn't be playing any more than 32 minutes a game anymore.
As for White, he should have played the second half of last season with the Spurs and he would be much more prepared for this season. He's basically a rookie and after missing pretty much the first quarter of the season, can't expect him to go straight into the starting line up and run the team. He's matching up against starters that have already fell into form. I think he well get better as the season progresses but for now he should be coming off of the bench
Forget about defense in today's NBA. The Spurs need another scorer. For the Spurs to be a good team Aldridge, DD and Gay have to be dominate scores every game and that's not realistic. If one of those three have a off night or can't play the Spurs will struggle to win. Spurs need a 4th player that can score consistently.
That's what I took from the reports as well
even if it really had dpoy level, a guard or combo guard does not have the ability to anchor or change the level of a defense on its own
The idea that Murray wouldn't have made considerable impact on the defense is without merit. Look at his numbers last year. It was at an elite DPOY level and any argument otherwise is pure bias. Nevertheless, this team is flawed because our 2 best players don't have the toughness needed to lead a team night-in night-out given the roster makeup. I think the team struggling is badly needed since losing Kawhi, this roster doesn't make a lot sense. Hopefully, we can get another dynamic player in the upcoming draft. It just takes one player to change a team's fortunes. I'm already very high on Murray's ascension and if Walker develops into something special, we could have 2 building blocks.
Gary Payton sez o.
This team is obviously still not all on the same page. That's a recipe for ripe pickings for a Thibs-style pressure defense. Big Three era teams knew where every one was, and could pick apart the trapping defense with some off ball picks and back cuts. Center the ball to someone at the FT line, and someone gets a layup. There are ways to use their aggression against them. This team just isn't cohesive enough yet to do so.
it was a time when physicality was allowed and his team had good defenders, but I'll try to summarize: in 2018 gary payton would not turn SA defense into elite with that support roster (even his drtg was never less than 103 in an era of pace down, it's simply not possible for a point guard to do this work on its own)
you are correct, but with the rest of the current roster this "improvement" would not change the overall team defense level
It'd depend on the opposition. Murray would help a lot against Kemba Walker, but not against Anthony Davis.
Thanks timvp.
Keep telling it like it is.
You are Robert Mueller in our darkest hour.
I am very high on Murray's ascension too. I just watched some highlights from him bc I miss him on the team and wanted to remind myself how good he is and he's an incredible talent, an electric player, who will reinvigorate this team. As I said, my comments weren't really so much about him as about the rest of this roster. I still think the team needs legit sized wings. IN many of his highlights you notice teammates combine with him to make defensive plays that just aren't possible with a bunch of midgets. He'd still be impactful regardless, but not as much covering for cone after cone after cone.
As you know, that ship had unfortunately sailed. Trading Nephew wasn't San Antonio's idea.
I mean, they did. If you're building a defense around Murray, you need a swingman playmaker to handle the offensive point guard duties. There are only a handful of those guys in the league and the Spurs got one.
None of the other trade offers that I heard would have complemented the plan. (Side note: I still can't believes scrubs like Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, Jaylen Brown, Markelle Fultz, etc. were taken off the table when Nephew was available... It sucked for the Spurs that a bidding war never commenced but it's also humorous how much other teams overvalued their young talent.)
A lot of people thought Pop could take 12 Steve Novaks and find a way to make the team above average defensively. I don't remember a lot of people pointing out the weirdness of the plan in the offseason, tbh.
Even during the USDA certified, Grade A championship years, the Spurs never went all, all-in. They always had at least a couple youngsters hopping in the popcorn machine.
It was a small-ish sample size but Murray did carry the defense last year at a Gobert-esque level. With him on the court, the Spurs allowed 98 points per 100 possessions. With him off the court, that number exploded to 105.1 points per 100 possessions.
And while we can reminisce about Green and Anderson, the stats say neither one really helped Murray last year. In fact, the defense got worse when Murray was paired with either of those two players.
Again, the plan was to go for a home run. The Spurs thought their one chance to win a championship was for Murray to become an even more devastating defender, so they tried to plug the holes playing Murray more minutes would cause. I'm not here to argue that was necessarily the best possible plan but it's pretty obvious what the thinking was at the time.
1) Flipping Kawhi for an empty scorer like a Kyle Kuzma or whoever while keeping the rest of the team in place would have put the ceiling of the team at about a seventh seed with zero championship potential. That's why I think the Spurs swung for the fences. They could have gone safer routes but none of those safer routes give more upside than simply extending the playoff streak.
2) The Spurs planned as if Murray wasn't a legit offensive player ... or at least they had to cover for his shortcomings. Players like Green and Anderson fit next to Murray defensively, obviously, but would have been a difficult fit offensively. For example, in a vacuum you pick Anderson over Bertans -- but with Murray in mind, you have to pick Bertans over Anderson.
3) I never heard Beal being available for Kawhi. But even if he was, that would have been an awkward fit since you'd then have to believe Murray is a legit playmaker. If you trade for Beal, then you basically have to pivot away from Murray. Even in the scenario that the Spurs bring back the same team plus Beal, that's still a relatively low ceiling team considering Murray would be stuck playing 20-22 minutes again.
4) The Wizards act like Beal is their franchise player and Wall is the one they'd like to trade if they could. To think they could have gotten Beal from the Wizards while also offloading Gasol on them is ... wishful thinking, IMO.
Agreed. I think Pop saw White and Walker and thought they could replace Green and Anderson. White is smaller than Green but he plays bigger than he is so he has across the board defensive potential. And then on the offensive end, he fits today's need for penetrators with good court vision. Pop also dropped hints from Day 1 that Walker wasn't going to be the typical redshirt-in-Austin rookie.
I don't know of a team outside of the Bay Area that isn't left vulnerable after one of their top three most important players is lost for the season. In San Antonio's situation, they bet big on Murray taking a big step forward and constructed their roster with that in mind. The roster obviously looks "weird" now but that's because the player the team was most built around is now lost for the season.
I don't mind people criticizing the roster construction (personally, for example, I was in favor at keeping Green at nearly all costs and keeping Parker around). But I do think it's disingenuous for people (not saying you, particularly) to criticize the current state of the roster while ignoring that losing Murray totally changed the equation.
Cunningham wouldn't be anywhere near the starting lineup with Murray around. He was signed as deep reserve big who got thrust into the starting lineup because he was the only thing left around that looked like a possible defensive player after Murray went down.
I don't know how Murray and DeRozan would have fit but I image Murray would have ceded most of the playmaking duties to DeRozan. But, again, your point on how the offense looked like it would struggle is exactly why the Spurs opted for offensive role players rather than defensive role players.
You'd have to be stupid to think that Murray, even taking 2 or 3 steps higher in his game, would have ever pushed this roster into contention. This team would be a low seed at best.
A team with Forbes, Gasol, Gay, Poeltl, Bertans, White, Mills, Belinelli, etc was never going to be any more than average.
Franchise was in bad hands if the plan was to build around a defensive PG in 2018 anyways.
The best players in the league not named Lebron are considered by vegas oddsmakers to be worth 7-12 wins to a team over the course of a season. Regular allstars maybe 3 to 7. A player like Murray closer to the bottom end of that range, so his injury is no excuse for not taking the clippers trade for what is polrobably a 40 to 41 win team at best if Murray was healthy, and 36 or 37 wins without him.
timvp... you sound reasonable but I am not eating up that piece of pie you are serving.
The Spurs wanted Anderson back. They just had a figure in mind that was lower than what he wanted. I don't feel like looking it up bc frankly I am with a cold and low on energy and it's already time-consuming as is to type this response. If there is interest I can elaborate at other time but I hope that since this is already in the past, and only marginally relevant to the current team and situation, there is really not that much interest and you will indulge me. I read reports at the time the Spurs wanted him back. I saw Bertans agent leaking to the press that Bertans was looking at playing in Europe and wasn't discarding that possibility. I saw an interview from Bertans this season where he said he was happy about coming back but that he wasn't really sure he was going to be back last summer bc there were other things the Spurs had to take care of first, and he wasn't sure how it would work out.
The Spurs wanted Anderson back for sure but they had a budget, perhaps considering at the time Kiwi's max was still on the table, their desire to pay up for Murray when he was due, and all other contracts that they wanted to give, but they had a budget for Anderson. I read a report some time ago where Anderson or I think maybe his dad said they got the Grizzlies offer and weren't sure if the Spurs were going to match it. Half of his family thought they were, and the other didn't. They wouldn't have considered the possibility SA would match if they didn't want him back. In fact, I remember now also that Kyle had visited several teams but he went back to the Spurs and was ready to sign a smaller deal with them before the Grizzlies made their offer. Had the Grizzlies not signed him, he would have signed back for less money. Bertans might have been in Europe or perhaps in Sacramento instead of Bjelica. Point is, at no point did I get the sense the Spurs didn't want Anderson back. He just signed an offer sheet with the Grizzlies that was for more money or perhaps more significant, for more years than they wanted to commit to him, and that is fine. One has to be happy for him that he got paid. But this narrative doesn't prove to me that Bertans was their priority, no way.
What all this delay with Anderson caused was that Bertans was still waiting and eventually Sacramento swung and missed on all their targets and their offer to Zach Lavine got matched. Once that happened they started looking around and Bertans caught their eye. By then SA was ready to sign Bertans but their initial offer was no good anymore and they had to renegotiate with him.
I don't really like to talk all that much about this since it's already in the past. The only reason that is relevant now is that I cannot buy your Murray theory and the Spurs prioritizing this roster to complement him specifically. I do think Pop wanted better and more shooters. Had they signed Anderson like they wanted they needed shooters for Anderson too, so Bellinelli in hindsight makes alot of sense, if you wanted Kyle to be a bench player.
I thought Pop gave a lot, FRANKLY A LOT of opportunities to Forbes last season. AT one point he was the most played wing in the team. I think it was either December or January of last season, before Pop started scaling back minutes for him (have to remember Rudy Gay missed 26 games last year, so Rudy being hobbled and with a bad heel doesn't impress me as a reason to suck this year)... Anyways, I think Pop didn't think Forbes was so trustworthy, he is improved this year, but based on last season and the playoffs, one wouldn't have felt comfortable with him as your designated sniper. So Pop brought the vet in: Marco. He also made a lot more sense if you didn't have Bertans this year, as he complemented both Murray and Anderson. see... you can spin this narrative any number of ways.
Anyways... I do think a lot more was going to end up in Murray's plate, but I don't think it was really a result of all that deliberate planning. Things didn't go for them quite as planned, their Plan A didn't work, possibly neither did Plan B. They had to go to contingencies.
Again, have to repeat myself bc Jezzzzussss, this is not about the merits of Murray specifically.
It's impossible to know for sure either way. Remember, the Spurs are known to feign interest to their own free agents in order to help them land contracts elsewhere. , with Jonathon Simmons, not only did they feign interest, they unnecessarily allowed him to become an unrestricted free agent in order to help him land a deal. They did that for Simmons out of their kindness of the hearts -- there were no basketball reasons to do so.
Pop and company enjoy seeing role players get rewarded for their time spent on the Spurs. Some Spurs fans hate that trait and think the Spurs should be more cutthroat ... but that's not how the Spurs do business, right or wrong.
So, it's quite possible that the Spurs signaled that they wanted to keep Anderson for a reasonable price in order to help Anderson's market value. It worked out for Anderson as he was ultimately given an offer that the Spurs told him instantly they wouldn't match.
I wouldn't doubt that there was a number that the Spurs had in mind where they'd bring Anderson back. I don't think this was another Simmons situation where the truth was they never really wanted him back for any amount of money. With Anderson, the Spurs probably would have re-signed him if no one seriously came after him but they also had to know that was unlikely. If they were serious about keeping Anderson, they would have simply matched the contract offered by the Grizzlies. It wasn't too outrageous for a player valued as a prominent piece going forward.
Most likely scenario is Pop never valued Anderson more than a "utility infielder" even after a productive season. And with fit in mind, it didn't make sense to pay Anderson more than two times as much as guaranteed money as Bertans would command.
I put Anderson in the Cory Joseph and George Hill category as players the Spurs genuinely liked but didn't fit well enough long-term in order to invest in them.
I've given timvp a hard time over the years for his being an apologist, but I'm not going to shoot the messenger. If, as this reads, it's more so inside information, it's yet another indication of just how delusional and senile they are.
Any notion of contending was finished the second they decided (I don't care what he requested; there was no gun to their head to acquiesce before the season began) to trade their superstar. I've said it countless times, but it bears repeating: you're not winning a championship in this league with Aldridge and DeRozan as your best players.
I don't know all the offers that were available. But I don't think DeRozan made sense as a player to compliment Murray at all. If your whole plan relies on Murray essentially becoming an average offensive PG while becoming (or continuing to be) elite defensively, then you don't need someone else to be a PG. That goes double if Pop really believed in White. Just start Murray and White together in the back court. Like sure, that'd seem like a dumpster fire right now, but theoretically, the Spurs would have someone else from the Leonard trade who might compliment or offset Murray's injury.I mean, they did. If you're building a defense around Murray, you need a swingman playmaker to handle the offensive point guard duties. There are only a handful of those guys in the league and the Spurs got one.
None of the other trade offers that I heard would have complemented the plan. (Side note: I still can't believes scrubs like Brandon Ingram, Kyle Kuzma, Jaylen Brown, Markelle Fultz, etc. were taken off the table when Nephew was available
And yeah, Philly and Boston ed up. Teams tend to overestimate the length of their windows.
I feel like a lot of people were pessimistic about the D before the pre-season. I am one who believes good coaching can make any group of personnel mediocre defensively if the guys buy in. That's still a huge reason for the Spurs being piss-poor on that end so many nights. If they don't go out there with focus, guys just run train on them.A lot of people thought Pop could take 12 Steve Novaks and find a way to make the team above average defensively. I don't remember a lot of people pointing out the weirdness of the plan in the offseason, tbh.
They routinely moved their firsts for cash or for win-now pieces like Kurt Thomas. Yes, they had Mahinmi and Uridh, but the Lebron Heat also had Norris Cole. Eventually, you gotta take someone. That's not the same thing as retaining what was essentially a package that could have gotten a star (if the DA report is correct).Even during the USDA certified, Grade A championship years, the Spurs never went all, all-in. They always had at least a couple youngsters hopping in the popcorn machine.
Last year was weird. I don't want to be sucked into the whirlpool of really parsing through those numbers (that's another thread/fight). I do think it's easy to see at this point that Murray didn't make those guys good defenders. He didn't cover up for them or anything like that. They're really good. They were good before him. They're good after him. Any argument that Murray/Beli or Murray/DeRozan is a superior defensive pairing that Murray and those other two falls apart in my mind, whatever the numbers say.It was a small-ish sample size but Murray did carry the defense last year at a Gobert-esque level. With him on the court, the Spurs allowed 98 points per 100 possessions. With him off the court, that number exploded to 105.1 points per 100 possessions.
And while we can reminisce about Green and Anderson, the stats say neither one really helped Murray last year. In fact, the defense got worse when Murray was paired with either of those two players.
Again, the plan was to go for a home run. The Spurs thought their one chance to win a championship was for Murray to become an even more devastating defender, so they tried to plug the holes playing Murray more minutes would cause. I'm not here to argue that was necessarily the best possible plan but it's pretty obvious what the thinking was at the time.
1- No idea why you'd say that. Having an elite D and just getting some better scorers is much better than having mostly terrible defensive personnel and a back court that is a really bad offensive pairing. You're esssntially saying PATFO was hoping certain guys would be a lot better than they actually are, but for some reason you think that can only apply in one direction. Trading Leonard for a traditional PG might well have been enough to reignite Green while not alienating Aldridge. Seeing how Murray would probably have been ended up pair with Forbes regardless, having him play next to a guy like Walker wasn't going to hurt.1) Flipping Kawhi for an empty scorer like a Kyle Kuzma or whoever while keeping the rest of the team in place would have put the ceiling of the team at about a seventh seed with zero championship potential. That's why I think the Spurs swung for the fences. They could have gone safer routes but none of those safer routes give more upside than simply extending the playoff streak.
2) The Spurs planned as if Murray wasn't a legit offensive player ... or at least they had to cover for his shortcomings. Players like Green and Anderson fit next to Murray defensively, obviously, but would have been a difficult fit offensively. For example, in a vacuum you pick Anderson over Bertans -- but with Murray in mind, you have to pick Bertans over Anderson.
3) I never heard Beal being available for Kawhi. But even if he was, that would have been an awkward fit since you'd then have to believe Murray is a legit playmaker. If you trade for Beal, then you basically have to pivot away from Murray. Even in the scenario that the Spurs bring back the same team plus Beal, that's still a relatively low ceiling team considering Murray would be stuck playing 20-22 minutes again.
4) The Wizards act like Beal is their franchise player and Wall is the one they'd like to trade if they could. To think they could have gotten Beal from the Wizards while also offloading Gasol on them is ... wishful thinking, IMO.
2- This isn't swinging for the fences then. You have to assume that Murray's shooting (the thing he was working all summer long) has to hold up at least. And I totally think Pop was expecting Murray would be a consistent 12-15ppg guy and hoping for 16-20ppg. If he was going to do that by having the ball in his hands even a little, then a guy like DeRozan didn't make sense.
3&4- I don't get why Beal would have been a worse player than DeRozan/nobody. Bradley already knows how to play with a PG who doesn't shoot well. He can set up his teammates decently well, so between him and Murray, they should have been okay, provided they continued to be oriented around their defense. Simply put, adding 20-plus ppg scorer who can play with Aldridge and Murray and who isn't a sieve defensively seems to create a higher ceiling. As to whether the Wizards would have been amenable to Beal, I am not sure. I do think they prefer to give up Wall due to his contract and would rather move Porter if they'd get back a SF. But that's different than assuming they'd refuse a chance to move into the top of the Eastern bracket. The team was planning on trading away Gortat anyway, so the idea of taking on Pau for a year doesn't seem to hurt. Even if they needed Green though, it could have evened out by them sending Oubre.
The Spurs don't have a small-forward. How is that not someone worthy of criticism? Like sure, Murray may have mega-evolved to the point that he could make the Spurs a respectable defense. But the team still lacks someone to guard the plenum of elite wings in today's game. Murray wasn't that guy. I think even his biggest supporters can agree there. Maybe he develops into that guy, but it seems less rational to argue that rather than him just getting a corner three to work off a PG or enough of a PnR game to share play-making duties with Beal.I don't know of a team outside of the Bay Area that isn't left vulnerable after one of their top three most important players is lost for the season. In San Antonio's situation, they bet big on Murray taking a big step forward and constructed their roster with that in mind. The roster obviously looks "weird" now but that's because the player the team was most built around is now lost for the season.
I don't mind people criticizing the roster construction (personally, for example, I was in favor at keeping Green at nearly all costs and keeping Parker around). But I do think it's disingenuous for people (not saying you, particularly) to criticize the current state of the roster while ignoring that losing Murray totally changed the equation.
I think the biggest problem with the roster is coaching right now. They could defend much better if they bought in. They can get better shots if they stick to cleaner offensive principles. The Spurs could have been an above-average team by having a mediocre D and a strong offense. That's even after Murray went down. Them being this bad wasn't inevitable.
I think Cun would still be starting. The Lakers game would have still happened, so Pop would have tried to match up. Cun still would have done a decent job on him, and Pop would have still gone with him over Bertans. That's even more true when Gay had to miss games. Maybe Forbes squeezes into the SL anyway. Dante was brought in for depth, I agree, but I also think Pop wanted him to compete with Bertans for that rotation spot, and Davis just had too many dumpster-fire moments for me to think Pop wouldn't have gone with DC eventually.Cunningham wouldn't be anywhere near the starting lineup with Murray around. He was signed as deep reserve big who got thrust into the starting lineup because he was the only thing left around that looked like a possible defensive player after Murray went down.
I don't know how Murray and DeRozan would have fit but I image Murray would have ceded most of the playmaking duties to DeRozan. But, again, your point on how the offense looked like it would struggle is exactly why the Spurs opted for offensive role players rather than defensive role players.
Lifting the RFA status for JSimms wasn't unnecessary. It was necessary and his agent specifically requested it. The market that summer was tepid, teams didn't have money and no one wanted to commit to Simmons thinking the Spurs would match. I don't want to debate the merits of Simmons the player here, but the point is clear that he didn't get an offer sheet from anybody about two weeks into FA and his agent got desperate. Bc Simmons wasn't getting offers, they explored some trades with Phoenix and SA backed out at the last minute (one thinks perhaps someone with high pecking order --one of the Holts?-- didn't like the trade and they vetoed), on a trade involving Tyson Chandler. After that fiasco, JSimms requested that the RFA status be withdrawn. RC Buford said the Spurs still wanted to re-sign him but didn't know how that would work out. Simmons agent released a statement almost immediately after that that they were looking to sign elsewhere, not with the Spurs. Within a day or two he signed with Orlando. Turns out when JSimms got his offer from Orlando he called Pop to tell him he wasn't coming back. One thinks PATFO would have matched his deal from Orlando, but he was very clear that he felt restricted in Pop's system, he wanted more opportunities, minutes, the chance to play every game, not get benched, that whole chestnut he said. But it was clear that rescinding that RFA offer was necessary for JSimms to get his deal.
Anderson was handled differently simply bc he did get an offer sheet. He didn't need PATFO's kindness to get that offer on his own. Bertans was ready to play in Europe and perhaps that statement from his agent was made to obtain a commitment from the Spurs but they didn't budge back then. They went through their process and it probably resulted in Davis profiting bc he got more as a result of waiting for all of these other scenarios to play out.
Will disagree with you on the rest of your evaluation but have no desire to argue about it since all this is way in the past. I couldn't agree with you on your assessment of Simmons situation or even that of Anderson, and even less that of Bertans.
As for guarding SF's I wasn't happy we re-signed Marco instead of pursuing LMAM who was had for nothing. Although admittedly he may be physically done suddenly.
I don't think they'd be contenders with a healthy and more actualized Murray. But they'd be in position to consider making a big trade to get there. I'm never going to buy this idea that Murray would make the Spurs elite defensively by himself. The Spurs have always had at least two really good defenders, so making a move for Porter could have gotten them there.
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