I don't think you can win a championship by just relying on outside shooting. By the WCF and Finals teams are simply not going to leave our shooters open enough to shoot well. They will be forced to create something of the dribble or score in other ways.
You can't stop the roll man, trap the ball-handler AND recover to shooters at the same time. Each player has to make the opponent pay for leaving them open. That's why the lack of shooting in the WCF hurt the Spurs as much as it did. The Spurs WANT teams to commit taking away the outside shooting. That leaves tons of space for Parker and the bigs to do their thing. Ginobili's inside passing wouldn't work without the consistent number of outside shots he takes when he calls his own number.
I'll take that everyday and twice on Sunday!
To me, it's not at all obvious that the players we bring in would develop just as well under a different team's coaching staff. Given Pop's terrific track record with developing players and improving their skills, you might consider the possibility that the way Pop hands out PT is a key element of his overall approach?
Actually, it looked to me like the problem in the WCF was that OKC did a good job of covering both the ball handler and the roll man and still being quick enough to recover and contest the outside shots. It wasn't just that we started randomly missing shots in a vacuum, OKC was taking them away.
That's not exactly what happened either though. Only once during game 3,4,5, or 6 did we hit under 10 threes. I still believe that the MAIN reason we lost (other than the attrocious 4th quarter refereeing in game 6) was Pop panicking with the series tied at 2 apiece. He starts Ginobili...Parker in turn panics (he had played poorly in games 3 and 4 but game 5, he was rattled in the first half) and the team falls in a big first half hole and has to keep digging themselves out.
Spurs couldn't get stops in the 4th, the offense was fine.
The reason we lost WCF was a guy who plays for Houston now.
I think the Spurs just fell in love with looking for the open 3s. With TP hurt there is more ball movements and conscious effort to cut instead of sitting in the corner 3 like Jefferson used to do waiting for the ball from TP. Kawhi the other night was cutting and Manu finding him. We need to make Durant work harder on the defensive end. I like TP a lot but it's sweet to see Manu creating offense.
When the Spurs were getting their heads handed to them by Memphis in the playoffs, suddenly Splitter was thrown into the rotation. Every bit of evidence suggests that Pop was way slow to pull the trigger on a good player. It's not like Splitter has added so much to his game since he was in Europe. He was better next to Duncan three years ago than anyone else who's been next to Duncan since then, they just didn't get the minutes together.
Don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying that Splitter has magically morphed from talentless to talented. I mean more that Pop seems to place a lot more of a premium on preparation, self-discipline, and not making mental mistakes, and I think a lot of PT for developing players is gauged on things that we don't know to look for since we weren't privy to the practices, film sessions, and so on. This kind of development is even more important for the most talented players, because they're the ones the team needs to be able to count on the most.
Bonner is basically a crappy player. At his best you could call him "limited." But my interpretation is that Pop would rather put Bonner out there than give PT to a more talented player that he doesn't think has earned it, and thereby risk the development of that player's mental discipline.
I could have this thing all wrong of course. And I'm not trying to say that Pop never makes mistakes. But we've seen how he handles young (and new-to-the-NBA) players for a lot of years now, and it doesn't seem like the way he rations playing time is at all arbitrary to me, even if the reasons for it aren't always evident.
A season, yes, but coming into the 2nd summer, he already has a leg up. Technically it's 1 year, but that second year for CJ makes sense, while Nando is in that year of coming over. But yes, he's only a junior in college basically.
I feel like raw with age isn't as important since it's more their environment and what skill sets they were given to them. It's not like CJ raw vs. Nando raw means much anyway. I just meant to say, that Nando had a better pro level experienced coming onto the Spurs than CJ.
Splitter's skill set has become a lot better. That helps a lot. And then Duncan has become more of a jump shooter. Scola was more of a "didn't want to pay him that much" but Duncan was much more post up big back then, so without some updates to the playing, would have had issues. Splitter is a victim of a lot of things. Injuries, lockout, Duncan's evolving game, Spurs size issues. Diaw has helped also by just allowing them to change things up. So has Jackson as a small ball big.
Green gets crapped on way more than he should. Have has weaknesses, but he also brings stuff to the team that is very different from most. He's definitely a good thing for the team. As long as he can evolve (like most good vets) to do things without being able to score, he'll get time to play. He's looking more and more like that type of glue guy that every team needs. Him always being involved allows for him to "surprise teams" as you put it with the Bulls, IMO.
Nando this season is situational. Good for pure PG, but got to be careful who else is on the floor. As long as there are a lot of scorers, he'll be fine. Maybe one other passer like Parker or Manu, but Manu really needs to play off ball to make it work, at least this season.
I think the difference between Nando and Crawford, is already apparent. It's the bball IQ. The coaching staff will work with him a lot this summer, if he has a good work ethic. CJ did that last summer and was one of the main guys working out with Chad Forcier along with Kawhi and James Anderson.
I think the work on CJ's other skills make his already good handles better because defenses have to be aware he can burn you in many ways. Earlier, they knew he was in trouble if you were able to focus in on his handles.
Pop is using his garbage time to get him real-time practice. I think Pop is also thinking he might not have a fully healthy Neal if it keeps lingering though. They tried playing with him injured this season with mixed results. Although part of that is I think Neal not speaking up.
He was trying something new, but he also knew that the team hadn't had enough chemistry to make it work in big chunks. Splitter was injured twice, both in key periods (training camp) and the rodeo trip (right when he was starting to play good). You could argue that Pop was slow, but you can also see that Splitter missed key times that really hurt the team's ability to work him in and develop to make the system work. Also Duncan was still more of a post up player since he started hard on losing weight a the season after.
The problem is the numbers even showed that the offense went to poo next to Duncan. Thing have improved with both his improvements and Duncan's adapting a KG/LA style of big man shooter.
And Neal and Hill were guarding big forwards like Battier.
Good post man. I agree with all that. Solid take.
Splitter was banged up a few times. There's not any way to suggest, however, that he was worse at his position than DeJuan Blair or Matt Bonner. Splitter is as good as we thought he was when he arrived, and even at his most raw, he was a better basketball player than anyone else at his position, which is center. The debate can go on about what position Tim Duncan really is, but he's won championships and MVPs when he had a center next to him, not a power forward.
We also can't say that injury was the reason he wasn't integrated, because Splitter was NEVER subbed for Blair while the Spurs were scoring lots of points and winning regular-season games. If he was ever in the rotation, he came in for Duncan almost exclusively. He also got a lot of DNP-CDs when he was NOT injured. He'd play 20 minutes, not play for three games, and then play 30 minutes, not play for the next, then get 20 minutes. Anyone who knows Pop knows that's not how he treats players that are actually recovering from injury, particularly something like a groin. When it was looking pretty clear that the Spurs were going to match up with Memphis, the calls for Splitter to get time with Timmy were increased on this board, because most of us knew what was going to happen with Bonner and Blair in the rotation.
The numbers looked bad, it's true, but see my point about sub patterns above; there literally were not any two players who played fewer minutes together than Splitter and Duncan, and that was almost from day one. It was such a ridiculously small amount of data that there was no way to draw a real conclusion from it, and their first real minutes together came in the playoffs against a good team with two really good bigs. It was a recipe for disaster from the outset.
Splitter's ability on the pick and roll has not improved dramatically since he arrived with the team. You can find posts from me and others talking about how Duncan, Splitter, Parker and Manu were going to be the best pick and roll team you ever saw, and how disappointed we were with the realization that Pop wanted Splitter to play as Duncan's backup.
The only danger this unit faces going forward is Pop trying to go Nellieball on an inferior team in the playoffs and ing up the team cohesiveness.
Pop started Parker and traded Avery Johnson almost immediately. Manu got into the rotation as soon as his ankle healed. Pop made Kawhi Leonard a starter 11 games into his rookie season despite no training camp, and he basically played shooting guard. Pop made Finley a starter because he sucked coming off the bench, even though nobody earned the spot more than Manu.
Spurs still playing at a very high level even with some key players out is very nice to see. I know I could probably get flamed for this as it's the not popular opinion around here. However I just cant seem to get it out of my mind that this is just a sense of false security. I still just see a huge disadvantage for playoff type of basketball with them, but maybe they are good enough team to overcome that.
All fair points. There have also been plenty of guys who have been given slow starts over the years -- though I'm not sure that any of them have been first round picks other than CoJo. They tend to be guys like Jack (first tour) and Danny Green, or random pickups like Drew Gooden or Glenn Robinson.
I guess I just can't believe that it came down to Pop basically just forgetting he had a first round draft pick on the bench, so I'm casting around for other explanations.
Good examples. The way I remember them, Jack was competing with Spider Smith for time, and that was a great spot on Pop's part, as Smith had the upper hand in that compe ion and Pop traded him. Gooden was a good scorer, and an upgrade talent-wise on the front line, but he didn't contribute to wins, and he didn't really pass the ball back. Robinson was physically broken down, and I still believe Pop was just saving his body. Since he turned out to be a pivotal player on a championship team, I'm sticking with that belief.
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