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SPURS 118 - SUNS 130 | SPURS SUFFER FIRST LOSS OF SEASON AND FALL TO 5-1 | THE SKY IS FALLING
Scott's Notes:
Next up: @ the Lakers and Jake LaRavia on Wednesday. Hope we see some guys back. If the same dudes are ruled out AND we're missing Harper... it could get ugly.
Scott's Notes:
- As soon as Castle missed Wemby for a lob on the first play of the game, I wondered if this was going to be one of those days... and it was.
- We've seen this kind of game from Wemby before (the first time and only time I've had a chance to see Wemby live, early in his rookie season @ LAC, was one of these games). I saw a lot of talk about how the elite don't have these types of games... while I don't think that is necessarily true, the thing that stood out to me was the lack of aggression. A few of his jumpers just rimmed out. In games like this he needs to make a point of going hard to the hoop and earning FTs. I didn't like that he was still forced into 34 minutes of action in a blowout loss, but that's the reality of our depleted roster right now. Hopefully the calvary is coming soon.
- One note... the team was still only -3 in Wemby's minutes... which just goes to show the impact he has overall.
- Castle, Harper and Keldon were the guys who showed real heart last night. I don't think I need to talk too much about Castle and Harper... but I do want to address Keldon. His fight was notable but I do think winning 5 straight to start the season was covering up the fact he is still Black Hole Keldon. Once he gets the ball, his mind is made up he is going to the rack. Of guys getting regular minutes, only Bismack has a lower AST% and AST/100 than Keldon. Homie, you need to pass the ball too. One play really stood out to me as an example of Keldon's tunnel vision. He got the ball in the corner while Wemby had a smaller player posted up on the low block. It would have been an easy feed into Vic, but instead Keldon faked the pass and then drove right into where Vic was standing, forcing Victor to vacate the space to try and make room for Keldon but it ended up just being a congested mess. Classic Low IQ Keldon on that one. He needs to do/be better.
- We got the return of Pre-Turned-Corner Devin. Or maybe he's turned the corner so many times he's back where he started... whatever that was though, was gross. Bring back the Devin of the first 5 games please.
- I was higher than consensus on both Barnes and Julian. I almost went with a 2 for Champ because he was getting torched defensively... but overall I thought both guys played the game they are generally supposed to play. Also, for all the talk of Barnes being worthless without his shot falling... he's now shooting .393 for the season from 3. Had one additional of his 28 attempts had fallen, he'd be at .429, just off his .433 from last season. HB's shot hasn't gone anywhere, it's just that the defense and rebounding is still what it was a year ago (which isn't great).
- I give Mitch some credit here for keeping the effort up in the 4th quarter.
- I was also higher on JMac than consensus. Thought his game was fine, shots just weren't falling. He's been generating steals in his limited minutes this year, which I love. Of guys who have been getting regular playing time, he actually leads the team at 4.7 stls/100.
- Lastly, I'll say that I'm not ready to jump off a bridge quite yet. This game was Exhibit A in why we acquired Fox. With all due respect to Steph, who did his best to carry the load while Wemby struggled, Fox is a different level of scorer.
- @spursfanfromafar
- I wouldn't minded this loss - which was due as the Spurs were over-performing relative to their talent and their current roster which features injuries to a number of star and key role players. But the loss combined with a calf non-contact injury to Dylan Harper is a really bad blow. It is good to see the Spurs' sputtering and on-some-off-some shooting offense being exposed this early into the season. The first five games gave us irrational confidence.
- The poor play of Devin Vassell and Julius Champagnie just tells us how much farther they must go in their fulfilment of their respective roles and in working on consistency. Speaking about consistency, the only thing that Victor misses compared to the Big 4 (Giannis, Luka, Jokic, SGA) is their offensive consistency even in losses or loss like situations. I thought he had achieved that this season in the first five games, but game 6 showed that he still had some ways to go. He tried to overcome the scrambling, physical and double teaming defense on him by looking to pass but his teammates weren't cooperating and his energy seemed subdued in this game as well unlike what we saw in the Dallas or Heat game where he handled the physical side of the game much more robustly.
- Clearly, the Spurs cannot continue to rely on a short handed rotation with all of its back-up/reserve bigs except for a washed up Biyombo, injured and yet to return. Here's hoping that Kornet is recovering quickly and it is high time Sochan is fielded as well.
- @mazerrackham: It's strange that I actually think the general effort of the team was decent, but this game did reveal the value of having creators like Fox, Castle, Harper all on the team together. The Suns defensive scheme was to take Victor out of the game, and they did just that. I'm not happy with how Victor responded to being the target of the defensive gameplan, but imo one of the necessary counters to a scheme like that is aggressive guard creation and allowing victor to be the secondary action. With Fox out and with Harper sidelined after his injury there was not nearly enough of that on the team outside of Castle (and Castle does better in iso, rather than playmaking off of, say, a screen and role). Tough loss but good to take the learnings now.
- @Area 51.247:
- Cleared up a main source of debate going forward: the three-headed Hydra of Fox, Castle, and Harper are a necessary level of depth for a high level team. Needed: a Patty Mills instant offense guard.
- Focus and intensity are hard to maintain, day-in, day-out. How is the lesson the Alien should have been talking about with the Shaolin monks, NASA, Hakeem, and KG. It's what propelled Timmy, Tony, Manu, DRob, AJ, and Pop to five titles, not five wins.
- Nice to see Carter Bryant get his first double digit scoring effort in front of his family and friends. Jacob Tobey's pre-game interview with him was fun.
- @NotoriousHOP
- When a team is killing you from the 3pt line, you change up your defense and force them to beat you from inside the arc. Mitch made no noticeable adjustments. He laid a rotten egg on this one.
- Wemby was lacking energy, enthusiasm and his body language spoke volumes. He's been putting up fantastic lines but the truth is that the eye test shows he's been struggling in every game since the Mavs. I'm hoping there is not a physical issue going on with him.
- Biyombo with -15 in less than six minutes. He's got to go. I'll pitch in $50 for his bus ticket out of town. Not sure why Ingram is still on the team but a fifth emergency big on a two way would be a great thing to have because Biyombo is just not a viable NBA player right now.
- @heyheymymy: Different looking Spurs team tonight with poor effort and low intensity. Hope it was just an off night. Concerns that Harper will be sidelined for a significant amount of time.
- @flox: The team needs to embrace the mundane on offense if it wants to succeed. Take more care of the ball. Make smarter passes. We need the ball to move more and Fox should help with that when he comes back. Castle handling the rock is good for Castle, bad for the team especially if we want to get Wemby going and establish a good offensive flow. Sure if Wemby is bad Castle looking for his shot today like he did is great, but we gotta get Wemby in better spots to open up our offense.
- @LeBowen:
- Disgustingly bad from the tip-off.
- Wemby can have bad games, noone is perfect, but he can't be so disengaged and passive.
- Harper was great and Castle did well even though he's obviously not a point guard and our offense is stagnant with him in that role.
- Devin reminded us of his true level and Keldon tried his best, but it's still Keldon.
- Bryant hitting a 3pt is a good sign, but he's got a long way to go from understanding the game side of things.
Next up: @ the Lakers and Jake LaRavia on Wednesday. Hope we see some guys back. If the same dudes are ruled out AND we're missing Harper... it could get ugly.
