The Spurs didn't mishandle his injury. That was just an excuse by uncle to get out of S.A.
what are you babbling about? This thread is full of examples of other players the spurs helped (malik rose, danny green, neal, forbes, simmons..) either by improving one of their basic skills, giving them an advantageous role other teams didnt think to give them before, instilling more confidence in them when others didnt. Not everyone can be turned into a great player. there are different measures of greatness too. The spurs consistently getting productive players from the 25-60 range of the draft / undrafted / overseas / waived players is a constant of PATFO. if anyone else thought kawhi would be as good as he turned out to be after 5 years of the spurs transfoming his game, they would have offered more than george hill or picked him before bismack freaking biyombo.
The Spurs didn't mishandle his injury. That was just an excuse by uncle to get out of S.A.
I wonder why. Reading this thread it seems like talent has nothing to do with...
why can't it have been the Spurs picking the guy with the right at ude, and that same guy putting in the extra work to become great? I'm sure the Spurs took into consideration his work ethic drafting him back then. If you watched his highlight videos back then it's so obvious how much of his shot has changed. Kawhi had a great post game and a rebounding prowess even before the Spurs drafted him, and they made him a triple threat by fixing his shot. He's not a system player but at the same time neither did he become the player he is today without the Spurs' staff. Leonard had the benefit of growing under established veterans who had championship experience. Not a lot of talented rookies grow under the same environment. It's all speculative whether he would have done as poorly as Singleton in Washington but given the Spurs' track record of developing players, the Spurs played no small role in his development.
So weird that a thread about "rotation players" became about Kawhi. Player fans be like that though.
I don't think anybody would deny that the Spurs USED TO BE the standard for NBA excellence across the board.. it's almost 2019, though, the Spurs haven't been innovative or ahead of the game in a loooong time![]()
somehow agree with this. To be fair to them they hired guys for analytics (Kirk Goldsberry, who recently just returned to writing) but are still somehow averse to playing small ball. They're rightfully taking the heat for signing plodders and small point guards to albatross contracts as well as investing on mid-range volume scorers. Given the limitations of the market, the city, and their annual late picks, they've done fairly well for a team with limited resources. One can only surmise what the Spurs can do with pockets as deep as the Lakers or the Knicks.
Teams are still considering poaching coaches off Popovich's slew of assistants, and with good reason.
Nobody has ever said he'd be nobody without Pop's system this year. At this point, he's a finished product (or pretty damn close to it). We are talking about when he came out of college. He was raw af and nobody, not even you or any of his most loyal ball gurglers, could've said with certainty then that he'd turn into the offensive player he is today.
He gets drafted by an organization that doesn't provide the guidance and has the player development the Spurs do and who know if he ever becomes more than a 3&D guy.
Really?![]()
you are not drafted at 15 after being considered in the top 5 if scouting hasn't detected some obvious weaknesses...that's what happened with Kiwi.
Even Indiana, that at the time was full of sf, would not have drafted him if the pick wasn't traded to us.
At the time then trade was considerd fair (Bertans and Lorbeck were both given to us with Kiwi for G. Hill).
Spurs scouted well, decided to give him a role from the beginning, fixed his weaknesses, developed him in the best way possible, gave him a winning colture and all the love he needed making him a finals mvp in little time.
He would have been the same player of today without Spurs? its a very very big maybe.
But for sure the actual outcome is that with us he become the top 3 player that he is now.
The only thing he should have been to Spurs is grateful, at least...instead he (better his group) faked an injury just to get traded at the first chance he had, probably just because he (again, maybe better his group) felt disrespected because Spurs tried, for the benefit of the team and for having a chance to compete for the le for some years, to make LMA buy in the franchise giving him a more prominent role (and LMA buyed in signing a longer deal).
So selfish and ungrateful is the minimum you can call him, but more appropriate is fraud and traitor...
just to add, its very hard to say whether kawhi will get the same level of development with other teams if he was drafted by others... yes every team have their own set of coaches/trainers for player development, however these resources are finite and its hard to argue that other clubs will be willing to put in equivalent resources/time/patience to develop Kawhi had he been drafted by other teams instead of the spurs. The level of dedication that Spurs has put into developing Kawhi's game allowed him to maximize his full potential, which is something which other clubs might not be willing to do so as he was never as scouted as a 'potential top player'...
Yeah and most of them sucked when they went to other teams so def truth to that. Hope the curse goes to KL as well.
Well said...spot on!
All this is bull ....mute nephew is a piece of garbage...
to be fair plenty of Spurs staffers work in other franchises accross the NBA. Monty Williams, Mike Budenholzer, Quinn Snyder, James Borrego, Chad Forcier and so on, just to name a few. Kinda hard to stay ahead of everybody else when your top staff members bring that coporate knowledge to 50% of the teams you're competing with
The interesting thing is that Phil Jackson, lauded and lionized by the media, never built such a coaching or organization tree.
well, Kawhi is one of the best 2-way players in nba history, it's normal.
Last edited by r0drig0lac; 10-29-2018 at 07:23 AM.
"Leonard's 0.889 points per possession overall ranks third worst of the 17 wings we evaluated, and his adjusted field goal percentage of 46.3% ranks dead last, a strong illustration of his scoring woes.
In the half-court, Leonard ranks seventh of all wings in the percentage of his possessions coming from isolations, at 15%. His .721 PPP on these possessions ranks 15th, indicating that he struggled to create shots effectively for himself last season. He was unable to get to the free throw line consistently (11.3%, 12th) for many of these same reasons, and did not finish around the basket at a high rate, where his 1.069 PPS ranked 13th.
His lack of tremendous situational efficiency stems from the fact that there are a number of holes in his game that he'll need to work on, especially out on the perimeter. Leonard's most notable weakness is his lack of jump shooting ability. Connecting on just 32% of his catch and shoot jumpers and 28% of his pull-ups last season, the sop re struggled with his consistency from range. - Source: http://www.draftexpress.com/profile/Kawhi-Leonard-5821/ ©DraftExpress
there are questions about Leonard's ability to develop a reliable jump shot. While there is some merit to that stereotype, if will be necessary for Leonard to continue honing that part of his game to the greatest extent possible. - Source: http://www.draftexpress.com/profile/Kawhi-Leonard-5821/ ©DraftExpress
kawhi shot 49/37% his first year. If all it took was a few months in the gym by himself (lockout season) then it’s safe to assume he would have done the same anywhere.
PATFO relegating him to corner 3s for his first three seasons
prioritizing everyone from LMA to Patty Mills over him and expecting him to stay
Truth nuke tbh
I totally forgot about Pop and especially Tim Duncan telling Kawhi he needs to draw more fouls to get to the line
He had 19 years prior to being drafted by the Spurs to change his shooting form and never did it, tbh.
didn't the coaching stuff gave kawhi detailed training plans for him to work on during the lockout period? you think he could fix his own shot in a matter of few months by himself after 19 years shooting the ball as though its a soccer ball?
Any NBA team's training staff would have been an immense upgrade over whoever he worked with prior to being drafted, so no it's not a surprise he hadn't corrected it til that point lol
I'm not completely discrediting the Spurs coaching staff, but even Pop(et al in the spurs org) lauded Kawhi for his otherworldly(probably autistic) work ethic over the years.
There was quote from Bonner a couple years back where he basically said he's never seen anyone get to that stage in their basketball life and develop a jumpshot like that. Obviously credit to the trainers, but Kawhi's rapid development was more unique to him than to the trainers.
Giannis would still be mopping floors if not for tyFO![]()
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