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Mirotic and Gasol fouled him on that play. Also, was pushed by Noah on the next play.. I agree, he needs more touches in the fourth.
He seems to have really good first halves and then tailing off in the second. Having said that, he seems to be completely frozen out by his teammates in the fourth quarters of games. He was fantastic down the stretch against Boston, but the Spurs seem to have forgotten that.
I know his layup attempt against Gasol was weak, but he deserved more touches in the fourth.
Mirotic and Gasol fouled him on that play. Also, was pushed by Noah on the next play.. I agree, he needs more touches in the fourth.
Feed a player who has it going? Ha
i think it's a combination of LMA being tentative to be in the right spot and not disrupt the ball movement, and the other 4 putting their head down and defaulting to the way they've closed games the last few years.
When will Pop wake up and start coach again on consistent basis or is he now declined fogey in the mould of Don nelson? these horribly drawn last plays the past year or so are not a good omen..
It was a pretty poorly coached game, and very unorganized, tbh..
that was the LMA of Portland ... he always hurt the Spurs most in the first half and disappeared later ... I hoped playing less minutes would erase that problem
When Pop subbed Tony in over Patty midway through the 4th, you knew it was going to be old Spurs game.
Poor coaching tbh..For some reaso the team didnt put enough effort to get the ball to Kawhi or some pops for Aldridge.
Patty wasn't shooting well though... but I do remember Manu taking the ball down the floor at the end there. Remember being interested in seeing why they did that, but I can't really remember what transpired that play. Then I remember Manu guarding Rose too.
The starting 5 seemed to be slowly wearing them down in the third before the West/Diaw combo failed again. Was a lot of Kawhi doing his thing with TD and LMA doing the dirty work down low when they got some breathing room. Mirotic pulling LMA out to the perimeter caused tons of mismatches too. Weird game.
Dude needs to get more touches in the 4th, same for The Klaw
LMA still looks uncomfortable out there. It's like learning new dance steps. Now I do this, now go do that, next thing ball is in the air and he's still focused on his next move. It will all come together, just takes time for him. I still like his hustle and aggressiveness tonight
Definitely should have had the ball In his hands more in the 4th, he seemed to be on the bench for a bit too long also. Not good from Pop, LMA had it going and they forgot about him
I would have liked to see more LMA isos in the last minutes. Or work a two-man game between him and Parker. He was probably our second biggest match-up advantage that we did not use in the waning moments of the 4th.
I know he's struggled mightily offensively, but he's not being utilized like a star. I'm not talking about overall usage so much as minutes and usage when he has it going.
He's singing the net, with an incandescent scoring performance in the 1st quarter, yet they come out of the under 3 timeout and for some reason they forget about him. On top of that, he inexplicably get's pulled with a minute to go in the quarter, then doesn't return until there's 5 minutes remaining in the half, even though the team fell apart in that stretch.
One of his best attributes is the fact that he can play major minutes effectively, yet he apparently can never play 36-40 minutes, but Leonard can do so every game. I realize they're deeper in bigs than wings, but still.
I just wish LMA and even Kawhi to a lessen extent would go toward the basket more. They like fading and going away from the basket.
I have to agree with you on this, if the bench was falling apart on both ends in the 2nd Q, why not stagger him a bit, let the bench play off him a little, or make plays for him, particularly when the bench was super off. Pop's coaching in this game like the Mavs game was a headscratcher. We only barely won the Mavs game (against a less talented team) and also ended up with Kawhi 40 minutes and terrible bench play.
Pop is going to have to make some adjustments that we are not seeing right now. The SL has improved, but the bench had shown signs to not be adequate since the beginning, those issues were just masked by Ginobili's super ultra hot and on a superstar level start to the season. When Manu came back down to play like his age, they just haven't been good enough and staggering the bigs was something Pop did early and has gone away from.
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