Grades: Spurs vs. Grizzlies - Mar. 22, 2024

[z0sa]

When I see Wemby with 30/15/5+ blocks but also 7 turnovers, I see a rookie who just doesn't have the experience or legs to do more than he's doing. He's trying to get his teammates rolling but time and again either he's just clearly gassed from carrying so hard, or he's being put into double and triple team situations where he genuinely doesn't have experience and neither do his teammates.

There MUST be a pressure relief of some sort both when Wemby needs a possession or two off, and when he's not on the floor. Vassell just so rarely fills that role, it's clear to me we need a real #2 option and he's NOT on the roster right now. Would absolutely love to be wrong, as always about certain negative conclusions/facts ...

[Pauleta14]

Nice summary! Often we just see the 30-15 game from Wemby when we overlook the 7 turnovers. I've about had it with Wemby passing the ball OUT of the lane already, also. Come on dude, when you are in the lane with the ball, SHOOT IT!!! Don't throw it out to Branham or Sochan for a 3 pointer.

The good news is the fix is easy, surround Wemby with better outside shooters.

“nice summary”

All your posts seem to show you’ve “had enough” of Wemby for a while ("he didn't even had a block in 1st half"!! shame on him tbh...)

Im fine with those TOs, there’re not even top10 of the issues than need to be fixed. It’ll happen naturally with better teammates and knowledge/comfort (1 was goal tending for ex) of the rules.

Btw of your post criticising him mentioned he finished with +15…

[baseline bum]

This team is soooo hard to watch. Every position is a difficult shot an no one is a bucket get'er. Not one deadly 3pt shooter.. Every time I see Sochan dribble the ball, im like tragic Johnson alert. He should never be a scoring option outside of put backs, open 3s, or cutting to the basketball. Why isn't Barlow playing at all!?!

I hate seeing Victor make these incredible passes in the lane that other PFs would kill to get only for Sochan to blow the layup or get his rejected or fumble the ball out of bounds or dribble it off his foot. I don't want Victor to stop making these plays since hopefully in the next year or two they'll have a competent PF who can finish those plays off but super frustrating to watch right now, like if Manu had been playing throwing highlight passes to Olowokandi and Bogans instead of Tim and Tony.

[weeks]

I hate seeing Victor make these incredible passes in the lane that other PFs would kill to get only for Sochan to blow the layup or get his rejected or fumble the ball out of bounds or dribble it off his foot. I don't want Victor to stop making these plays since hopefully in the next year or two they'll have a competent PF who can finish those plays off but super frustrating to watch right now, like if Manu had been playing throwing highlight passes to Olowokandi and Bogans instead of Tim and Tony.

Manu was something else, he could spin gold out of straw
I remember him making Blair look like an NBA-caliber big man

[Knoxxx]

“nice summary”

All your posts seem to show you’ve “had enough” of Wemby for a while ("he didn't even had a block in 1st half"!! shame on him tbh...)

Im fine with those TOs, there’re not even top10 of the issues than need to be fixed. It’ll happen naturally with better teammates and knowledge/comfort (1 was goal tending for ex) of the rules.

Btw of your post criticising him mentioned he finished with +15…

I wasn't speaking towards whether I think Wemby will improve, I was speaking to the fact that 7 TURNOVERS SUCKS!!! (and does not warrant an A grade). And I am not grading Wemby on the same scale as the others, he clearly has way more natural ability than anyone on the team. That also brings with it accountability to play more efficiently. To me it is important that Wemby be judged harshly, as his play will decide whether we win a game more often than not. Fortunately though, I think he tends to be his own worst critic, but I am calling it like I see it here. How would Wemby improve, if he and everyone else thought he was perfect and it was sacrilegious to criticize him? It's obvious he is still screwing up a lot more than I'd like to see, but he's also amazing to watch. It's not that I don't appreciate Wemby or understand his awesomeness, it's that I expect everyone to be accountable and not keeping making the same dumb ass mistakes over and over, Wemby being no exception.

[Knoxxx]

When I see Wemby with 30/15/5+ blocks but also 7 turnovers, I see a rookie who just doesn't have the experience or legs to do more than he's doing. He's trying to get his teammates rolling but time and again either he's just clearly gassed from carrying so hard, or he's being put into double and triple team situations where he genuinely doesn't have experience and neither do his teammates.

There MUST be a pressure relief of some sort both when Wemby needs a possession or two off, and when he's not on the floor. Vassell just so rarely fills that role, it's clear to me we need a real #2 option and he's NOT on the roster right now. Would absolutely love to be wrong, as always about certain negative conclusions/facts ...

Nice post. See, this poster can observe the same 7 turnover problem, yet not go OMG you are calling Wemby out shame on you!

[Dex]

Awful loss on a must win game against scrubs. Terrible from Wemby with 7 TO’s to Pop’s last defensive stance and play. Moving on…

The loss is embarrassing, but there is no such thing as a "must win" game this season. The goal now is the best draft pick possible in a ty draft.

Winning is good for morale. Losing when you are expected to win is a good reality check, because frankly the players just didn't show up to play. I'm tired of people acting like everything is always Pop's fault when it's the guys on the floor playing like their head is up their ass.

[Pauleta14]

I wasn't speaking towards whether I think Wemby will improve, I was speaking to the fact that 7 TURNOVERS SUCKS!!! (and does not warrant an A grade). And I am not grading Wemby on the same scale as the others, he clearly has way more natural ability than anyone on the team. That also brings with it accountability to play more efficiently. To me it is important that Wemby be judged harshly, as his play will decide whether we win a game more often than not. Fortunately though, I think he tends to be his own worst critic, but I am calling it like I see it here. How would Wemby improve, if he and everyone else thought he was perfect and it was sacrilegious to criticize him? It's obvious he is still screwing up a lot more than I'd like to see, but he's also amazing to watch. It's not that I don't appreciate Wemby or understand his awesomeness, it's that I expect everyone to be accountable and not keeping making the same dumb ass mistakes over and over, Wemby being no exception.

I get what ur saying but again those TOs aren’t that big of a deal really. If you look in detail not just raw stat, maybe 3 were bad, the rest was goal tending and miscommunication that will naturally get better with him getting used to the rule and having better talent and BBIQ around.

Regarding the grade that u find too generous, offense is 50% of it and he ends up with 31pts and could’ve had more than his 5ast had his teammates finish better.

Add the +15 when the rest in négative or low single digit + it as well as his defensive impact…

Only 2 rookies had his stat line (Griffin the other one)

It wasn’t an A+ or A but it was still a very good game for a rookie

[Knoxxx]

The loss is embarrassing, but there is no such thing as a "must win" game this season. The goal now is the best draft pick possible in a ty draft.

Winning is good for morale. Losing when you are expected to win is a good reality check, because frankly the players just didn't show up to play. I'm tired of people acting like everything is always Pop's fault when it's the guys on the floor playing like their head is up their ass.

I'm going to take your post as a nice segue to repeat that we shot BLEEPING 7 for 38 on 3s for this game. These are mostly open shots, too. There is no point to doing much more analysis, when you perform some simple math on that and see that any NBA team (other than the Spurs) would have score at least 15 more points than we did. Even a 15-point win over MEM is probably not that great, but certainly beats having such an ugly L on our foreheads.

Except for the fact that we can use every L we can get, right now. Our best friends at the moment are ping pong balls.

[Pauleta14]

Nice post. See, this poster can observe the same 7 turnover problem, yet not go OMG you are calling Wemby out shame on you!

He made the same points I made

Those TO are almost logical and not a source of concern

[The Truth #6]

From what I saw, Victor had way more than three blocks in this game, I was talking to a person sitting next to me and we thought there was at least six or seven but maybe we're crazy. Also, there was an amazing but small play that occurred that to me showed how strong of a defensive presence victor is. On the same possession two different players started driving towards the paint towards Victor and then just turned around, like nope not going in there. It was something I'd never seen before, which is a cliche people say when you go to see him play in person, but for me it was true.

[Knoxxx]

He made the same points I made

Those TO are almost logical and not a source of concern

Except that IS stupid, for him not to shoot from the paint but rather dish to "wide open" brick layers instead.

Now, I will admit that for each of his 7 turnovers, I don't recall exactly which dumb mistake he was repeating. Was it the dribbling in traffic, or trying too fancy of a pass? Not sure, but I'm ready to see an end to moronic mistakes, since we have been treated to a lifetime of those in one season. I don't care who is making the moronic mistakes, but 7 turnovers is far too many of them. And he has high usage, is tired, blah blah but in the end those are all just excuses.

Like I said, the positive when Wemby screws up is he is less likely to blame the team or city or whatever. And those ping pong balls, keep them coming! So while I gripe about it from the viewpoint of a fan who just wanted to see a win, the reality is I am not concerned either, consider it just my coping mechanism.

[Knoxxx]

From what I saw, Victor had way more than three blocks in this game, I was talking to a person sitting next to me and we thought there was at least six or seven but maybe we're crazy. Also, there was an amazing but small play that occurred that to me showed how strong of a defensive presence victor is. On the same possession two different players started driving towards the paint towards Victor and then just turned around, like nope not going in there. It was something I'd never seen before, which is a cliche people say when you go to see him play in person, but for me it was true.

I always feel like Wemby gets shorted blocks, but I think sometimes what happens is he alters the shot so much it looks so ugly as if it must have been blocked when it was not. For example, when they called Wemby for that foul against Gafford and Spurs challenged turns out he never touched him. Gafford even sold it like he was fouled, when what really happened was he tried to wiggle an ugly shot around Wemby who was just standing there and missed.

On a somewhat related topic, when did they get so picky about offensive goal tending? I understand that the rule was the ball has to be completely outside the cylinder, but in practice if the ball was still slightly in the cylinder but seemed to clearly be coming out, they would not call those in the past. Now we have the whistle police, where were they when Ibaka constantly goal tended on TP's layups?

Oops I almost forgot, yes it is insane how much of a deterrent Wemby is. What is even funnier is when someone goes at him and he just grabs the ball from them like they are a child. When I criticized Wemby for no first half blocks vs MEM, that was a bit tongue in cheek because I knew they were not even trying him.

[Pauleta14]

Except that IS stupid, for him not to shoot from the paint but rather dish to "wide open" brick layers instead.

Now, I will admit that for each of his 7 turnovers, I don't recall exactly which dumb mistake he was repeating. Was it the dribbling in traffic, or trying too fancy of a pass? Not sure, but I'm ready to see an end to moronic mistakes, since we have been treated to a lifetime of those in one season. I don't care who is making the moronic mistakes, but 7 turnovers is far too many of them. And he has high usage, is tired, blah blah but in the end those are all just excuses.

Like I said, the positive when Wemby screws up is he is less likely to blame the team or city or whatever. And those ping pong balls, keep them coming! So while I gripe about it from the viewpoint of a fan who just wanted to see a win, the reality is I am not concerned either, consider it just my coping mechanism.

I know I look like a Wemby Stan and it’s all good banter but I’m really not. Im too old for this lol

I insist on the big picture/perspective thing bc everything is related. What you call “moronic” TOs are not really when u look at them in details rather than just the numbers.

Some are stupid of course but we would need a better name than Alien if he didn’t have any TOs or stupid decisions considering his high % usage and playmaking duties/ambitions.

we keep pointing out the low overall BBIQ of this roster, guess what? It does impact Wemby’s TO as well bc most of his TOs are miscommunications, either him improvising or his teammates not “reading him”. It’s easy to fix and not in the list of priorities the same way those were in the beginning of the season for ex.

As you pointed out it easy to imagine Wemby watching films a being self critic, so BIG PICTURE (my point from the start) those TOs aren’t really a big deal or something to worry about as of now.

cheers

[RC_Drunkford]

I don't understand why people here are surprised that our team can't shoot 3s. Do y'all realize who the coach is?

Prior to the Spurs' 108-107 win over the Chicago Bulls on Monday, Popovich elaborated on how much he loathes the three-point shot, per Sam Smith of the Bulls' official site: "I hate it, but I always have. I've hated the three for 20 years.

[Splits]

From what I saw, Victor had way more than three blocks in this game, I was talking to a person sitting next to me and we thought there was at least six or seven but maybe we're crazy. Also, there was an amazing but small play that occurred that to me showed how strong of a defensive presence victor is. On the same possession two different players started driving towards the paint towards Victor and then just turned around, like nope not going in there. It was something I'd never seen before, which is a cliche people say when you go to see him play in person, but for me it was true.

Well on at least 2 occasions he would have had easy blocks but the primary defender got beat, his man got into the paint, and the defender tried to recover and fouled instead of letting VW swat it easily. I know Keldon did this once, but there was at least one other time this happened last night (don't remember who, maybe Branham or Sochan?)

On that possession where the two guys both dribbled into the paint and were like ah naw, that was a 2 on 1 fast break where he was trailing the play, and single handedly stopped it. Was pretty funny

[Knoxxx]

Well on at least 2 occasions he would have had easy blocks but the primary defender got beat, his man got into the paint, and the defender tried to recover and fouled instead of letting VW swat it easily. I know Keldon did this once, but there was at least one other time this happened last night (don't remember who, maybe Branham or Sochan?)

On that possession where the two guys both dribbled into the paint and were like ah naw, that was a 2 on 1 fast break where he was trailing the play, and single handedly stopped it. Was pretty funny

Branham was the fool who fouled and cost Wemby a block. That video is hilarious!

[paperboy77]

Yeah but still miles better than Jeremy.

[Knoxxx]

Where is our Suns game thread?

[Knoxxx]

I hereby retract my request for a Suns game thread.