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Murray has progressed nicely. Keldon has too. White and Jak too.
Lonnie has progressed backward. Lonnie is most disappointing of the young ones. So much unrealized talent.
Rule of thumb is subtract 1 or 2 grades from whatever Popped is given.
Key stretch was obviously here:
(props to 8sy21vd for summing)
Murray has progressed nicely. Keldon has too. White and Jak too.
Lonnie has progressed backward. Lonnie is most disappointing of the young ones. So much unrealized talent.
Murray is really keeping his dribble much lower than I've seen him do before
Just watch again how Butler, Adebayo and even Dedmon abused our starting center. Offensive rebound on Adebayo and and1, silly foul on Butler jump shot which cost us the game, and a grade of B?
I don’t blame Poeltl too much because Dedmon got a ton of out backs and offensive rebounds because of the help Poeltl provides. Our PFs are Derozan and Keldon to help box out which they were easily abused by the crashing centers and forwards from the Heat. I was worried about front court though as a whole. Rudy and Keldon as PFs aren’t going to cut it against half the teams in the league.
Yeah, I agree with you Bill. Jakob would have gotten a C- or D from me. Every time there was a battle for a board it seemed like Dedmon was the scrappiest one in there. No sign of Poeltl. As for Lonnie, I thought he was just ok. He needs to decide what type of player he wants to be. He cant just sit back and be the guy that has a great game every now and then. He needs to work on consistently performing every time he steps on the floor.
As for DJ, I was a bonafide hater in his first few seasons. All the selfies and talk of greatness without producing on the floor made me ill. He was all talk and no walk. Fast forward to now and he's a real player. Looks like he matured and put in the necessary work to play at the NBA level and make a solid impact. I hope Lonnie follows in his footsteps. He still seems unsure of how good he can be and still looks lost at times. Definitely needs to improve his finishes at the rim.
DJ showed flashes of some elite moves and decisions last night. A 27 year old Dejounte Murray might be a really really great player, i’m excited for his future in this league.
It felt like the game fell apart when Mills came in. Thanks to 8sy21vd for confirming. Of course, that's the case most games these days it seems.Rule of thumb is subtract 1 or 2 grades from whatever Popped is given.
Key stretch was obviously here:
(props to 8sy21vd for summing)
His development has impressed me a lot. I thought his ceiling might be an out of position shooting guard who can play defense but can't shoot. But he's been great this season and watching his maturity and his confidence improve every game is awesome. Probably our best young player, even exceeding Keldon, fairly significantly, at this point.
Devin started and we're trying to win, Luka does nothing when he gets PT.
Devin did look good out there. He started slow, but picked-up eventually. Seeing Patty missed 3pt shots and not play defense, while Devin sits is really frustrating
murray has proven that triple doubles are not a fluke for him. i think he has the capability of becoming a legit PG and an occasional all-star reserve. he really has come a long way in a short time (and overcame a significant injury along the way). kudos to murray.
btw, i think posters were knee-jerking their reactions to rudy last night. were they watching the same game as i was? rudy had a nice outing. but just because he's out there with mills doesn't mean he's part of the problem. mills, on the other hand, is the reason we lost the game. and i think pop stuck with him too long. nice outing by walker though. he's almost there. just needs to get over that mental hump. and that dragic bull three-pointer turned out to be big.
His decrease in TOV% is striking (15.4% last year to 10.0% this year), and is imo the best improvement he has made.
I really don't like how easily assists are scored, though. The first two highlights in that video shouldn't be assists imo. But the NBA has painted itself into a corner in that regard; if they start being stingy with assists then there would be far fewer triple doubles and old records would last forever.
Yup I counted at least 3 that I wouldn't count as assist. How could a pass to Keldon dribbled another 5-7 times, or Poeltl making a turn-around an assist?
But I like for Murray to get that triple-double record, just maybe FA's would see a promising All-Star that they would probably like to play with.
Just want to add an observation at just what Keldon's role is. He sits on the bench heavily some nights and when he is on the court, he can go for long spells of not seeing a sniff of the ball. I do love how Keldon never complains and always supports his team no matter what though. DJ does seem like someone who will get better incrementally every year for the next 7 years though. excited too.
For sure. Not a knock on Keldon. He's basically in his rookie year as he didn't see the court with varsity last year until the bubble.
His contract cant be looked as anything but a absolute steal right now. Spurs didnt overpay a penny for dj or white for that matter
Walker IV has always seemed displeased with his role (off ball instead of on + sporadic minutes) and if you saw/heard his post game interview, it was clearly exacerbated with Vassell getting the starting nod.
I'm sure they sense that, which is why Pop throws out the Ginobili talk (both to make him think he can play a similar role and to realize, if it was good enough for him, how could it not be for you?), but the reality is he's not a primary ball handler and the bench is still based around Mills and Gay.
Granted, there's change coming, but I find it hard to believe they don't bring in a shot creator to replace DeRozan (Fournier, Dinwiddie, Nunn?), as White and Murray are insufficient and the former isn't durable either. All of which is to say, his days are numbered and it wouldn't surprise me if he requests a trade this off season.
Umm you can’t get better if you don’t play and if your following Pop coaching we not trying to win we trying to tank.
Lonnie did well on defense? He was all out of place in the 4th and commited 3 dumb fouls. That's an A-?
This concept is absolutely lost for some reason whenever people talk about rebounding battles or second chance points. Keldon is undersized at PF and, even though he's a scrappy rebounder, doesn't have the height, length, nor strength of actual PFs (let alone Cs) to help win rebounding battles most games - not to mention his style of offensive play is incredibly physically taxing, leaving him little energy (and often, opportunity) to help with rebounds. DeRozan's case doesn't even need explaining, dude should've never played a game at PF if it wasn't for the wacky modern NBA, and him continuing to do so is both a critique of his antiquated game, which forces him to be played out of position, and the FO's team building. Lastly, the Spurs as a team are terrible at boxing out, just completely bad and low effort most if not every night. Couple that with Jakob not being an aggressive rebounder, and it's a recipe for losing the rebounding battle every night.
It's funny that people say he should be getting two digit rebounds every night. He's gotten two-digit rebounds many games this season; yet how many of those games did the Spurs as a team outrebound their opponent? Not many, if at all. Rebounding is, moreso in this era of long shots, a team effort, and beyond DJ, we've got little to no players that are better-than-average rebounders for their position. Playing Keldon at SF with Luka or whomever at PF would go a great length towards mitigating this, giving the Spurs a properly sized lineup; currently, Pop loves to use lineups featuring Patty, Lonnie (at SF!), Gay, DeRozan. Undersized at 4 out of 5 positions ain't gonna get you many rebounds in this league, tbh. But scapegoats are always a necessity when things are going wrong - even I tend to do it with Pop's coaching sometimes.
Thanks for the grades. That 3rd quarter was a disaster. Let's go in Boston!
I just want to finish these 11 games left (and the play-in) with no injuries. Its literally the only thing I care about at this point.
I think the team has shown a lot during this crazy season. Hopefully, we can add a quality player in LMA or DeMar's slot and keep pounding next year.
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