I'm interested to see how Rudy is going to play off of Miller and Blake this year. I know that he and Sergio had some chemistry, but I don't see why he and Miller can't develop that cohesiveness as well.
Is it just me or is everybody giving the Spurs way too much credit. Sure, Jefferson was a decent addition, but they also lost Drew Gooden and Bruce Bowen. Gooden was a really nice big man to have coming off the bench, and Bowen at least had a little defense left in him. The addition of McDyess is sort of a wash with the loss of Gooden. Who is going to defend Kobe/LeBron/Roy/Carmello/Wade? I guess Jefferson, but from what I've seen his defense has really, really slipped. I'm a little doubtful he's just going to turn it on again. As for offense, the addition of Jefferson reminds me a lot of the addition of Finley a few years ago. Finley had just averaged 15 ppg on a pretty good Dallas squad. He comes to the Spurs and is forever after a 10 ppg role player. Jefferson is a few years younger than Finley was back then, but I just don't think we should expect to see RJ continue on with his 20 ppg nights as he'll get far fewer scoring opportunities. I think he'll settle into a 12-14 ppg role player, which is nice. But is it nice enough to offset the aging problems of this team? Duncan's approaching his 13th year in the league at the age of 33, and Ginobili played barely half a season last year. This is a team that lost in the first round last year 4-1 to Dallas. The Spurs just yanked Parker off the French team to have his ankle looked at. Are the Spurs still a 50+ win team? Sure. Are they much more likely to win a title this year than they were last year? Maybe a little.
I think it's just you. Gooden only played in 19 games last year. If you consider that it took him a few to fit in, they probably only got a dozen or so games of him at his maximum effectiveness. And Bowen was terrible last year. He played in fewer than 19 minutes a game, and even accounting for the fact that he's a POSTER CHILD for being underappreciated by PER, that a man should have a 5.4 is ridiculous. The Spurs essentially went from 0 to something in two spots in their rotation from the beginning of last year, and presumably they won't have all three of their best players get hurt for big chunks of the year this year. I expect the Spurs to be much better. Ed O.
I agree with you. I think the Spurs improved a bit, but not by a major amount. The Jefferson/Finley comparison seems like a reasonable one...while Jefferson is a few years younger than Finley was, he also began slipping earlier, too. The main source of improvement San Antonio can hope for would come from health. If Ginobili is healthy all season and Duncan is spry, they're an elite team. Any major injuries to Duncan/Ginobili/Parker, or slippage in Duncan's game, and the Spurs will drop back to second-tier.
Yeah, probably. Well, me and Minstrel. Isn't that a little, well, presumptive? Duncan is 33. Ginobili is 31. If they were, say, 28, then I think it'd be pretty likely that they'd come back in full force. But it seems to me that vets at that age don't always come back 100% from injury. In fact the odds are much higher that they don't. Tony Parker just suffered an ankle injury last week in international play and was pulled out of the competition. Sprained ankles happen all the time. But it's not exactly encouraging. You've got a really good point about Bowen. That guy sucks now. Jefferson is definitely a huge upgrade. Anyway, my main point is that people don't tend to take into account degradation in older players until after its blatantly obvious they've degraded. It's pretty obvious that Bowen sucks now, but it wasn't so obvious last year at this time his dropoff would so badly hurt their team. This season Duncan will be a worse player than he was 3 years ago. So will Ginobili. That's what happens when you leave your prime, especially amidst injuries. Over the last 4 seasons the Spurs have gon from 63 wins to 58 wins to 56 wins to 54 wins. It's a trend that pretty accurately mirrors the slow decline of Tim Duncan. I don't see enough improvements in this Spurs team to push back enough against that decline to make them a 58-60 win team again.
They might not be as good as they were three years ago, but they will probably be better than they were LAST year. And, as bad as they were, they still won 54 games. I think they have a great system and a very good coach and with even a slight bump in overall health they'll be markedly better. Ed O.
The Spurs are an enigma to me - on paper, if they are healthy - a great coach like Pop will get a lot out of the new guys they added - and they can go down with their guns blazing. On the other hand - last year Duncan had no summer activities and still looked broken down at the end of the year. If this is what we can expect from him from here on - they are a 2nd round team at best. He has lots of mileage on himself. Manu's issues seemed to be pretty serious as well - so... to repeat... who knows?
Thank you! IMO, much too much is being made of the Jefferson acquisition. I think the very good and the elite are separated by the quality of their Stars, not by the difference in their peripheral players. And in the Spurs case, until they upgrade their Star core, they're just bailing water like the rest of the pretenders. In a lot of ways, their situation reminds me of the later Drexler years. Once Clyde started to breakdown and miss a substantial amount of games, and Porter leveled off and began declining in his productivity mostly due to age, the team tried upgrading the role players to offset. Kersey's minutes were reduced to allow more minutes for the productive but flawed Uncle Cliffy, and guys like Mario Elie and Strickland were added to the roster. On paper it looked great, and the team continued to win on a good to very good level. But they had no real chance at contending.
odd article from David Aldridge. In the first sentence he claims the Lakers got younger despite everyone in their returning core aging a year and swapping out Ariza for Artest. Then he puts the Blazers in the category with this header... The haves These are the teams that feel they have a legitimate shot at a championship, and acted accordingly, throwing money around like they were Mr. Monopoly (or, more accurately, given the business arrangements of the pro sports leagues, Mr. Cartel). They have high payrolls and don't care about paying the salary tax next season if the payoff is the Commish handing them the Larry O'Brien Trophy next June. the Blazers won't be paying the lux tax next season.... they're nowhere close. STOMP
I think they would do good by handing out turkeys at Christmas or visiting kids in the hospital. Ed O.
Agreed. He had several interesting inconsistencies in there. Or, he was just modifying the truth to support his hypothesis. For example, he starts the article saying that the Lakers lost nothing, and gained Artest. I guess he could just be stating that Ariza is close to "nothing", but then I would have to question if he even watched the Lakers in the playoffs last year.
I just don't think Duncan is the player he once was. He looks broken down and a shadow of his former self. This is going to amplify as he grows older. Sure, he still has talent, but I don't think he can carry the Spurs. Without Duncan, that team is not a championship caliber squad.
