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So much for my belief that Fin needed babying to snap him out of his funk.
... for all those people who think Fin should just stop shooting when he's shooting bad... He's under orders not to stop.
Spurs' Finley trying to silence biggest critic — himself
Web Posted: 11/18/2007 10:47 PM CST
Jeff McDonald
Express-News
At an otherwise nondescript Spurs practice not too long ago, coach Gregg Popovich looked on as the same jump shooter kept skipping shot after shot off the rim.
Popovich knew exactly what to say to snap the shooter out of his funk.
Absolutely nothing.
Michael Finley was doing a good enough job of haranguing himself.
"Make a shot!" Finley barked.
In the two-plus seasons since Finley arrived from Dallas, Popovich has come to learn the best way to deal with the former All-Star's occasional shooting slumps is simply to leave him alone.
Popovich's belief: Finley will eventually snap out of it, because he always does.
"I don't say a word to him," Popovich said. "Nobody can be harder on him than he is on himself. He beats himself up pretty good."
Popovich's silence proved golden in Friday's victory over Houston, in which Finley made the first six shots he took, finished 7 of 8 from the field and had 17 points.
It was Finley's best night of the young campaign and, among the most optimistic of the Spurs, a sign that he had begun to shake the shooting struggles that had plagued him for the first two weeks of the season.
While the first to admit that making shots feels a whole lot better than missing them, Finley is slow to pronounce his shooting woes completely cured.
It's hard to predict how he will be feeling when the Spurs resume play Tuesday in Atlanta.
"You can't get too high with the highs or too low with the lows," Finley said. "You have to keep an even keel."
For a shooter, that can often be difficult to do. So it was with Finley, who considers himself his own worst critic.
Finley, owner of perhaps the purest jump shot on the Spurs' roster, opened the season by missing 55 of 81 attempts in the first nine games. His worst night came in a loss at Dallas on Thursday in which he scored no points, missing all six of his field-goal tries.
What happened next provided proof positive that shooting slumps don't last. Twenty-four hours after putting up a goose egg at Dallas, Finley was nearly flawless against the Rockets.
For Finley, the season so far has served to strengthen his belief in that old shooter's credo.
"You can't make the shot you don't take," he said.
Given Finley's track record, the Spurs can live with his slumps in order to enjoy his streaks.
Finley actually began last season more frigidly than this one.
He made 32 percent of his shots and averaged 6.1 points per game in the month of November last year. He is making 37.1 percent of his shots and averaging 8.2 points so far this year.
Last season, Finley's numbers rose steadily each month.
By May, he was setting franchise records for marksmanship — the eight 3-pointers he buried in a first-round playoff game against Denver set a club mark.
The Spurs are counting on a similar season arc for Finley in this, his 13th year in the league.
"Percentages are there for a reason," said Brent Barry, another Spurs guard who knows something about overcoming shooting slumps. "They usually work out in your favor if you're a good shooter."
The key, Popovich says, is for Finley to keep taking shots, hit or miss. He would rather Finley — or any pure shooter — misfire on an open shot than to pass it up.
"You know your job is to be out there shooting," Barry said. "Coach gets really upset if you're open and you're not taking shots."
And so, over the course of the coming months, Finley will keep firing away.
He will make some shots. He will miss some shots. He will yell at himself and battle himself.
And through it all, Popovich will give Finley the silent treatment, because he knows what works.
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LINK: http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/b...y.240daf4.html
So much for my belief that Fin needed babying to snap him out of his funk.
... for all those people who think Fin should just stop shooting when he's shooting bad... He's under orders not to stop.
for all those people that want him to stop shooting, rewatch the playoffs.
Didnt they just write this article?
Mike Finger: Bad shots make Finley feel terrible
Web Posted: 11/17/2007 01:07 AM CST
San Antonio Express-News
There are two major muscles in the human forehead, but when Michael Finley gets frustrated, you'd think he has thousands. They crumple the skin below his hairline and tighten his eyebrows like tiny bulging biceps, and they give Gregg Popovich a furrowed snapshot of just how hard his jump-shooting perfectionist is being on himself.
"You can read a lot in that brow," Popovich said.
Popovich has other concerns these days — the latest being the nagging feeling the Spurs hand-delivered a difference-making Argentine power forward to one of their biggest rivals — but he admitted Friday he occasionally worries Finley's self-flagellation is going too far.
Once, sensing Finley was taking his early-season shooting slump especially hard, Popovich told him the police were, in fact, not going to put him in jail and take away his family if he missed another shot.
Finley smiled at the joke, but it didn't relax him for long. He's not a selfish player, but he's not at peace with himself unless he's contributing to victories and living up to his own lofty standards. So games like Friday's — when he made 7 of 8 shots, scored 17 points and swished a clutch baseline jumper in the final minutes to lift the Spurs over Houston — give him a reason to feel relief, not excitement.
Teammates have told him he should be enjoying himself more. But he realizes if his personality hasn't changed by now, it probably never will.
"Sometimes I overdo it," Finley said. "I'm my own worst critic. That can be a good and bad quality."
There certainly is no criticism coming toward him from any other corner of the Spurs locker room. Like Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Robert Horry and others, Finley has the kind of track record that makes everyone confident he'll be where he needs to be when the games really start to matter.
But Finley, who should be familiar with the build-toward-the-finish idea by now, doesn't act like he takes much comfort in it. He was shooting just 32 percent from the field this season entering Friday's game, which wasn't good but was hardly bad enough to consider his career finished.
Still, Finley beat himself up like a rookie trying to impress the old guys, not like a guy who'd been on All-Star teams and won a championship ring of his own. Bruce Bowen said he thinks Finley assumes so much responsibility because his years as Dallas' franchise player still make him feel "like he has to be the foundation of something."
After a loss, like Thursday's at Dallas, Bowen sees Finley take too much blame and makes a point of trying to make him laugh.
"You just have to tell him, 'Hey, chill out,'" Bowen said.
Those pep talks are easier on nights like Friday, when Finley shook off his 0-for-4 performance against the Mavericks and made his first seven shots against Houston. He was the most accurate shooter in the building not named Luis Scola, which probably made a few thousand muscles in some Spurs fans bulge a little bit, too.
Scola, like Finley, had started the season slowly, never scoring more than eight points in any of his first nine games, but he made up for it against the franchise that drafted him five years ago and traded (or sold, depending on your point of view) his rights to the Rockets. In his first regular-season visit to the AT&T Center, he scored 20 points on 10-of-11 shooting, and afterward, Popovich said seeing Scola on another Southwest Division contender was "enough to make you spit."
Scola finally started to cool off about the time the Spurs' on-court promotions crew gave away airline tickets in a timeout version of "Deal or No Deal" (presumably, this was not the process by which the Rockets acquired Scola). And with Scola on the bench in the end, it was Finley who was on the floor to help decide the game.
But there will be nights when Scola will make the Spurs pay even more dearly and nights when Finley will struggle again. Nights like those will make both Popovich and Finley stew.
"But at the end of the year," Finley said, "you just have to let all that built-up frustration come out in the playoffs and hope that's enough to get you through."
Until then, the forehead muscles keep tightening.
I bagged on Finley during the Mavs game, he sure shut me up during the Rockets game.
Mike Finger needs to get his facts straight. Fin was 0-6 against the Mavs, not 0-4.
I was happy to see him hit all those shots against Houston. The Spurs needed it.
Fin is the purest shooter on the spurs no doubt. And I'd rather see him miss an open shot then pass it up. But I am wondering why he is faking a lot of 3's and then taking a step up below the 3 point line and then shooting it? It's not a bad thing I just think he could of jacked up the 3 (in most cases) instead of pump faking and jacking up a 2 point jump shot. Oh well, I have confidence in Fin dog and think he will be fine!
Some may have confidence in him. I don't. I've been watching him jack up too many bricks over the past four seasons or so - even dating back to his last couple of seasons with the Mavs. Dude is WAY TOO inconsistent for me.
I'll give him credit for hitting a few timely shots during the Denver playoff series. And his heart and desire were VERY evident during the 2006 WCSF versus the Mavs. That's the guy I want to see on a regular basis.
At this stage of his career, he's a one-trick pony. Unless he decides to mix it up and occasionally take the ball into the paint or drive to the hoop once out of every 10 times he gets the ball, he's useless. His shot isn't going to be there every night. We just have to face facts.
Since Finley is his biggest critic, I wonder if he'll bench himself if he starts sucking.
Last edited by SenorSpur; 11-19-2007 at 02:25 PM.
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