I think they have been better but we have been closing the gap lately with LMA getting better and better in our system .
Excellent article from Sports Illustrated on why the Spurs, despite playing the under the radar, have been just as good as the media darlings from Golden State.
http://www.si.com/nba/2015/12/16/san-antonio-spurs-kawhi-leonard-tim-duncan-lamarcus-aldridge
Last edited by Uriel; 12-16-2015 at 08:15 PM.
I think they have been better but we have been closing the gap lately with LMA getting better and better in our system .
cakewalk schedule ... still not convinced
If Danny teen stops sucking we can close the gap.
Schedule so easy, Green so bad, offense so out of sync. No accurate judgements can be made yet
Not convinced about the Warriors, the Spurs, or both?
Good read! Thanks for posting.
less convinced about Spurs tbh ... Warriors schedule has picked up a little ... I wanna see that great Spurs defense against the Clips, Pacers and then finally against the Cavs in mid january ... just realized this schedule is not really getting that much tougher
Warriors' schedule hasn't really been that much harder than the Spurs', but GS hasn't been able to use their best lineup the past few weeks with Barnes being injured.
Overall the two teams have been fairly even except GS has done a much better job of closing out games (can either chalk that up to luck or good execution...probably a bit of both). Execution down the stretch has cost the Spurs a few games already...definitely had the chance to win at least some of those games against Chicago, New Orleans, Washington, and Toronto.
Last edited by SpursFan86; 12-16-2015 at 04:44 PM.
i think we will get better idea about our actual dominance in the next week or so, especially on the Defensive end. Clippers/Pacers/@Houston are teams an offensive notch above most of who we faced in last stretch..
Biggest difference is that the Spurs are new and that shows in late game execution. Hasn't come up that often because we're blowing everyone out. GS having been together now for a few years def have that advantage over us.
Good read, thanks for the heads up.
The thing that sticks out to me was that the Warriors were down 2-1 to both the Grizzlies and an injured Cavs team. They were able to get by last year because they were the more talented team and had a game style that the Grizzlies and Cavs could not adapt to. I dont think the Warriors can play with fire the way they did this year, a healthy Cavs team or a non-snake bitten Spurs team would have finished the job last year. So while the Warriors are riding high right now, the Heat in 2013 were doing the same thing until the playoffs where they found themselves in vulnerable spots, and should have lost the finals.
Good points and I totally agree.
To those who say "easy schedule" - of course the schedule is easy. There are only three actual contenders in the entire NBA this year (Spurs, Warriors, Cavs), a few mediocre teams, and many bad ones. If you're a good team, you will naturally have an easy schedule. If you're a bad a team, you will naturally have a challenging schedule.
My point is, the "ease of schedule" is itself partially determined by how good your team is!
Dont like the article, they didnt talk about how great Simmons is.
I don't think people really understand what a joke our schedule has been.
8 of our 13 home games have come against teams on the 2nd night of a B2B
We've played the bottom 3 teams in each conference 6 times, plus the Nuggets and Blazers twice each.
And what victory do we have to hang our hats on? Mavs at home by 5?
In 26 games we've played top 5 teams three times, and lost all three times.
I don't think we should penalize the Spurs for not having played a lot of good teams, but the point differential number is a direct result of just crushing bad teams. The Warriors have statement wins against Toronto (2x), Indiana, Chicago, and the Clippers (2x). We beat the Mavs and then beat up on pretenders like Memphis and Atlanta, and that's it.
But see, how do you define a "statement win"? At the end of the season, most of those teams are just pretenders. There are only three actual contenders in the NBA this season. Hence my point: for a good team, you're naturally going to play a lot of bad teams.
This is true, but it's more true at the end of the season than at the start of it, when there are fewer games played and the schedule is subject to a lot of variable.
Case in point: The Spurs are currently ranked 27th in the NBA in Strength of Schedule. The Warriors, meanwhile, despite posessesing by the far the league's best record, are tied for 17th.
http://espn.go.com/nba/stats/rpi/_/sort/SOS
All 6 of those GSW wins I mentioned were against teams that will consider their season a disaster if they do not make at least the 2nd round. The Spurs have 0 wins against such teams, unless you consider ATL, who are barely above .500 and have regressed significantly, such a team. I don't.
http://hangtime.blogs.nba.com/2015/1..._fb_sf17109589
A pretty similar article. Although I dont agree with the les of the two, both provise good points on how the spurs look scary good. It's gonna be a good season folks. I just wish we get that gsw matchup in the playoffs, we know they aint gonna get upset in the early rounds.
Actually, they did.
Limiting this survey of San Antonio’s offense to just three factors feels somewhat criminal. Manu Ginobili has been fantastic early this season, Popovich’s bench is loaded with contributors (Patty Mills, Boris Diaw, etc.), and newcomer Jonathon Simmons has been a nice find. There are, admittedly, plenty more stories to tell here.
At the end of the day I think the Spurs have looked pretty good, and have shown signs of being a juggernaut by the end of the season. But I don't think you can dispute that if GSW and SAS had switched schedules, GSW would currently be miles ahead of us in all of these net rating metrics. We have 9 20+ point blowouts in 26 games, so either we're in the 99.999th percentile of great teams in history, or we've had a really easy schedule which we've fortunately taken advantage of. Regardless, this will be moot by February.
They only said he is nice find, I wanted a whole article about him![]()
Schedule talk goes both ways. You can say they've only beat losing teams, but you can also say those teams are losing because we beat them.
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