Grades: Spurs @ Hornets - Feb. 7, 2025

[timvp]

https://www.spurstalk.com/grades-spu...-2025-game-49/

[LeBowen]

I know you really don't engage on the forum anymore, but how does Mitch get B-?
You also wrote this:

The rotation made sense to me throughout the game.

How did it make sense? We went down early only because of that dumb starting lineup with no size.
Then he played lineups with just Castle on the floor.
Bringing CP3 back late on only to have Bridges attack him right away wasn't a basketball decision.
CP3 obviously knew he shouldn't be on the floor while Castle has it going and they were killing us on the boards, but his ego didn't let him sit this one out and Mitch has no authority to bench him.
And the game was lost because of it.

His leadership and mentorship is obviously a positive, but with Fox on the team what's left of his basketball ability isn't needed unless it's a bench role and with him and Fox being mutually exclusive in the lineups.
We brought Fox to fix our offense, but he'll spend the rest of the season chasing opposition's best guards around because CP3 has to be hidden in the corner.
He wasn't even initiating sets or bringing the ball up most of the time.

Keldon playing 16 minutes with a Tony Snell statline is also a negative for Mitch's grade.
As is Champagnie getting just 2 3pta in 19 minutes.
We're just playing random offense with no structure.

Can't get any easy looks for Wemby, can't get any shots for our shooter.

If he persists with this lineup, it's going to be a slaughter in Orlando and Boston, they have big size advantage on all perimeter positions.

[RC_Drunkford]

Keldon Johnson with 0/0/0/0/0 shooting 0% is a D+? Does he have to score on his own basket to get an F?

[Spurs Brazil]

I know you really don't engage on the forum anymore, but how does Mitch get B-?
You also wrote this:


How did it make sense? We went down early only because of that dumb starting lineup with no size.
Then he played lineups with just Castle on the floor.
Bringing CP3 back late on only to have Bridges attack him right away wasn't a basketball decision.
CP3 obviously knew he shouldn't be on the floor while Castle has it going and they were killing us on the boards, but his ego didn't let him sit this one out and Mitch has no authority to bench him.
And the game was lost because of it.

His leadership and mentorship is obviously a positive, but with Fox on the team what's left of his basketball ability isn't needed unless it's a bench role and with him and Fox being mutually exclusive in the lineups.
We brought Fox to fix our offense, but he'll spend the rest of the season chasing opposition's best guards around because CP3 has to be hidden in the corner.
He wasn't even initiating sets or bringing the ball up most of the time.

Keldon playing 16 minutes with a Tony Snell statline is also a negative for Mitch's grade.
As is Champagnie getting just 2 3pta in 19 minutes.
We're just playing random offense with no structure.

Can't get any easy looks for Wemby, can't get any shots for our shooter.

If he persists with this lineup, it's going to be a slaughter in Orlando and Boston, they big size advantage on all perimeter positions.

It also took forever to bring Wemby back late in the game.

3:18 Victor Wembanyama enters the game for Harrison Barnes

[ffadicted]

Mitch sniffing anything above a C- is crazy to me. Man is way over his head with this roster, simultaneously can’t teach and motivate the young guns, and doesn’t have the balls to bench the oldies, and just plays some crazy questionable lineups.

If pop isn’t coming back next year 100%, we absolutely cannot run it back with Mitch, that’d be season suicide. Even if Pop wants to, I’m skeptical of his health to last an entire NBA season, then we stuck late in March/April with in Brian again.

[RC_Drunkford]

The funny thing is in almost every postgame interview Mitch is like „they were more physical than us“. Well if you can’t get your team to play physical, maybe you‘re not a good motivator?

[Dejounte]

Very obvious to see who has their hate filled glasses on here and are just looking for a scape goat, with no real basketball analysis going on tbh

the loss is on:
-poor 1 on 1 defense. I have liked and defended Sochan, but his defense has been totally ineffective for a couple games or more now
-poor rebounding. This is just everybody. When I saw Vassell let his man come up from behind him and grab the rebound, that was the most face palm moment of the game
-Points in the paint in the first half. Vic was caught out of position way too much
-Star player being a no show on offense. Vic was way too inefficient. He had his mid range shots going, he should have kept doing that instead of chucking up more 3’s.
-and obviously the lapses on defense where we leave a shooter open

[Mal]

Keldon F, Mitch D

[LeBowen]

Very obvious to see who has their hate filled glasses on here and are just looking for a scape goat, with no real basketball analysis going on tbh

the loss is on:
-poor 1 on 1 defense. I have liked and defended Sochan, but his defense has been totally ineffective for a couple games or more now
-poor rebounding. This is just everybody. When I saw Vassell let his man come up from behind him and grab the rebound, that was the most face palm moment of the game
-Points in the paint in the first half. Vic was caught out of position way too much
-Star player being a no show on offense. Vic was way too inefficient. He had his mid range shots going, he should have kept doing that instead of chucking up more 3’s.
-and obviously the lapses on defense where we leave a shooter open

And how many of those could've been avoided with a starting lineup that has more size and better defenders?
You can't put players, especially not fundamentally flawed players like ours, into suboptimal positions and expect them to perform.

CP3 is still a great floor general and has a lot of value when he's in charge on offense, but almost all of that value is lost when he's off the ball and just sitting in the corner. And he spent most of the game in the corner.
Devin is an extremely frustrating player and most of us are done with him, but he could maybe still prove us wrong if he was playing shooting guard, his actual position instead of being shoved into forward role.
Jeremy is a fundamentally flawed player, but has his qualities. Most of which are negated by having him defend either bigs or small guards. He's constantly put in the worst possible positions. I'm not high on him, but he always gets the short end of the stick.
Champagnie was doing great while we had injuries, then his confidence was completely ruined with undeserved minutes reduction. And now he's completely out of it. He's just cardo-ing around without a single action that would generate a wide open shot for him.
Keldon is a lost cause, but somehow still has to get minutes in every quarter. Why is he even on the floor in the 4th if he hasn't d one anything useful all game long?
Wemby can't create his own shot consistently because he's too weak physically. He's got all sorts of issues on offense, but you can't tell me that a properly coached team wouldn't have created at least 10 easy points for him each game.

It's kind of paradoxal that PATFO are all about drafting versatile players with good size for their position despite their shooting issues, but then we manage to lose all of that advantage by playing smallest possible lineups.

It's still early days with Fox and there's obviously a lot of room for improvement in terms of how the team functions, but I can't shake the feeling that we need some addition by subtraction.
Not because CP3 or Devin are useless, but because starting them puts everyone else in uncomfortable situations.

We bring in Fox to carry the team offensively and then he has to chase Lamelo around because old man CP3 has to be hidden.

[heyheymymy]

keldon champ and barnes going combined 0-9 from three plus Wemby going 1-9 from three was pretty decisive but rebounds were an issue too.

[Ni-G]

We are playing small ball but for this to work every one has to be able to box out and try to rebound. With only 2 guys barely able to do it we will be crushed by second chances. On the top of this we are allowing every team to become hot from 3s while our supposed shooters are cold AF or streaky at best..

[z0sa]

Mitch Johnson ain't no B-, friend. He was a D, if that.

One could say oh we promised CP3 a season long start and plenty of minutes. That's fine, you can start him and then still pull him for matchups he's obviously having (or causing, such as Fox being forced to guard Ball) struggles with. That's NBA basketball. He still could've gotten about the same minutes with some lineup adjustments during the game.

Mitch, as I've said before, has the mark of every sub-standard coach - an inability to make adjustments. It's the same gameplan from start to finish. Looks good on paper, but in the guts of the game (which apparently started in the 1st quarter last night), you have to be bold and make changes. He didn't. He's just not that good. He can't command the respect of guys like CP3 in order to bench them, he can't teach the young guys simple things like boxing out (or runs with lineups that can't reasonably be expected to grab every defensive board), and long story short simply makes too many unforced errors. For example, Sochan was well aware it'd be okay if we gave up a 2 on Ball's last drive. He played it right, but Mitch clearly didn't do a good enough job reminding everyone to stick to shooters. That's on the coach, point blank.

[100%duncan]

TimGPT with that B-. Prime TIMVP wouldve given him a F

[RC_Drunkford]

rewatching some posessions and CP3 is definately to blame on a bunch of defensive lapses as well. He doesn't box out either and let the Hornets shoot a bunch of uncontested 3s.

Wemby was out of position a lot under the basket, but he's sick so less activity from him doesn't surprise me.

[KingKev]

Man Fox is fking nice. I genuinely don’t understand the Lamelo disrespect. Maybe has to mature a little but hae is going to be a top 5 PG in the league for a long time. Especially if put in the right position to win.

[100%duncan]

Good news is that Fox is as advertised. That dude is clutch as and has it on easy mode penetrating.

[emanueldavidginobili]

Got out hustled and out rebounded. Their tallest players out on the court was some scrub and the corpse of Taj Gibson both at 6’9. Just embarrassing stuff tbh.

[spurs10]

Thanks for the prompt grades. Those boards were the game. Offensive rebound, 3pts...over and over.

[Mugen]

Lot of quibbling about our ty interim coach and ty supporting players. All of which are true btw.

But the fact of the matter is, the truly great players drag their mid teams to the playoffs.

And our best player hasn't been very good since Christmas. The reasons for that are varying levels of concern.

The cold hard truth is that Vic isn't ready and I'm not sure if he'll be ready next season since the readymade excuses will still be there (international play, allergies ).

[Dejounte]

Lot of quibbling about our ty interim coach and ty supporting players. All of which are true btw.

But the fact of the matter is, the truly great players drag their mid teams to the playoffs.

And our best player hasn't been very good since Christmas. The reasons for that are varying levels of concern.

The cold hard truth is that Vic isn't ready and I'm not sure if he'll be ready next season since the readymade excuses will still be there (international play, allergies ).

This is the truth. We go as high as Vic takes us and as low as Vic takes us. We blame everyone else but Vic when he has bad games because he is responsible for most of the wins and we’re scared to put blame on him tbh

[Sugus]

I'm seriously interested in where the Spurs go with coaching next season.

Especially with all the smoke that came out about them expecting Pop to "be back to finish the season" or whatever. Surely they're not going to subject the elderly, post-stroke Pop to highly stressful situations just because? Hoping Pop's medical staff puts a halt to that and doesn't get pushed over.

If Becky ain't coming over, and no other good-to-great coaches become available, I'd love to hit up Mike Brown and see if he's interested. Maybe not a championship-level coach, but he made the most of those Sacto teams and the Fox connection is obvious. Fox went so far as to say he wouldn't play for another coach, so there's mutual respect there.

[LeBowen]

You two are missing the point.
It's not about his level of performance dropping because he's been playing below his expected level as of late, it's about this team being full of useless charity cases.
Do we really want Wemby to carry every single game, even against G-league Hornets?
I'm somewhat glad his level of play dropped off just so everyone can see how awful everyone other than Castle and Fox is. Including the coaching staff.

Bad since Christmas? 23/12/3 on 46/35/77 with 3.8 blocks.
It's just that we expect him to consistently play on the level of a top5 player in the league.

He has to play through it, but I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for the likes of Keldon and Devin to watch when you're their teammate.

I'm not concerned about Wemby, I'm not concerned about missing the play-in, I'm concerned about there being no indications whatsoever that our coaching staff will have a revamp any time soon.

[Sugus]

You two are missing the point.
It's not about his level of performance dropping because he's been playing below his expected level as of late, it's about this team being full of useless charity cases.
Do we really want Wemby to carry every single game, even against G-league Hornets?
I'm somewhat glad his level of play dropped off just so everyone can see how awful everyone other than Castle and Fox is. Including the coaching staff.

Bad since Christmas? 23/12/3 on 46/35/77 with 3.8 blocks.
It's just that we expect him to consistently play on the level of a top5 player in the league.

He has to play through it, but I can't imagine how frustrating it must be for the likes of Keldon and Devin to watch when you're their teammate.

I'm not concerned about Wemby, I'm not concerned about missing the play-in, I'm concerned about there being no indications whatsoever that our coaching staff will have a revamp any time soon.

Hard agree. Reminds me of the early Luka situation in Dallas. Or LeBron in Cleveland the first go.

Sure, it's nice having the top-5 players who drags the team to wins on superhuman performances.... But it's even nicer to have a supporting cast that doesn't demand that of him every single night. You can't expect any player to consistently have MVP-level performances to get wins.

I liked nothing of what I saw from Keldon last night, almost nothing from Vassell. Wemby shouldn't be breaking his back having to carry them, on top of having to fight through allergies...

[Mugen]

I'm seriously interested in where the Spurs go with coaching next season.

Especially with all the smoke that came out about them expecting Pop to "be back to finish the season" or whatever. Surely they're not going to subject the elderly, post-stroke Pop to highly stressful situations just because? Hoping Pop's medical staff puts a halt to that and doesn't get pushed over.

If Becky ain't coming over, and no other good-to-great coaches become available, I'd love to hit up Mike Brown and see if he's interested. Maybe not a championship-level coach, but he made the most of those Sacto teams and the Fox connection is obvious. Fox went so far as to say he wouldn't play for another coach, so there's mutual respect there.

Aren't you a big PATFO sniffer? I'm surprised it isn't Pop til he's in the grave even if half of his body isn't working.

But jesus christ, Mike Brown? That's literally asking for a redo of LeBron's first stint in Cleveland. Might as well book Wemby's flight to NY if we end up giving ol retread Brown another shot.

[DPG21920]

CP and Vassell to the bench please. It’s a role that can help the team and them get going more consistently and maximize them.

A bench of CP + Vassell + Keldon will be very + against most units.

Fox + Castle + Wemby start with Sochan + Barnes