Matching Up With the Bobcats

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Another road game, and the start of another back-to-back for the Spurs tonight, where they’re in Charlotte to take on the Bobcats. The Spurs are just a half-game behind the Dallas Mavericks for the best record in the Southwest Division and the second-best record in the Western Conference.

If the Spurs win tonight and the Mavs lose at home to the Thunder, the Spurs will have the second seed all to themselves for at least 24 hours.

Considering the growing pains this season’s Spurs have had, San Antonio is in fantastic position to build momentum going into the playoffs. And this team doesn’t seem anywhere near its peak. Getting there is a matter of staying healthy and trying to get better every day.

Stealing two very winnable games in two nights, against the Bobcats this evening and the Memphis Grizzlies tomorrow night, can go a long way in the development of this team. Nothing teaches newer players what works in the Spurs system more than winning.

As always, there are a couple of things to keep an eye on. The first being, how much Tim Duncan plays (if at all). As Tim pointed to this morning, Coach Pop has his methods in resting players. Sitting Duncan tonight gives him an extra day to rest those knees. It may not seem like much now, but think of it as an investment that will be worth more down the road.

The second thing to watch is the eventual matchup between George Hill and Stephen Jackson. Spurs fans remember Captain Jack from his time in San Antonio and see how good of a scorer he is now. And if the last two games are any indication, George Hill is becoming one of the better on-ball defenders in the league. They probably won’t start out on each other, but they’ll get there eventually. This will a fun matchup to watch.

Enjoy the game, folks.

  • ruth bader ginobili

    Good points.

    I’d also like to hear your guys’ thought on how the team matches up differently without Bonner and Finley. Surely there are some benefits to having a tighter rotation, too? What could be different when they return?

  • duaneofly

    I hope Finley doesn’t return. I thank him for his contributions to this organization, I’d love the Spurs to retire his jersey, hire him as some type of coach when he retires, but as a player, he is done. He cannot play at an nba level anymore.
    I’ll welcome Bonner back (on the bench). I admit, I hated him the past two years, but after Pop moved him to the bench this year, he really came into his own. I imagine when he’s healthy, he’ll split bench minutes with Mcdyess. If we need O, he’ll play, D, Mcdyess will play.

  • Sauce

    george hill will sufficate jackson. i predict an 8-27 shooting night. and also a technical.

    i hope duncan doesn’t play today again. not to take the bobcats lightly, but duncan is not needed. we have better players top to bottom except maybe for wallace. i would like to see ian, blair and mcdyess go at it tonight, particularly the former two because the bobcats have no big men to speak of.

  • TheRed&Black

    I would agree that Finley doesn’t really do anything for us, except that he knows what he is doing. Bonner should be in the starting lineup…depending on the team we play. Bonner can space the floor well for either Duncan or Blair. Blair plays well with Ginobili. A second unit of Hill,Ginobili,Finley/Bogans,Bonner,Blair, would be very intimidating with a starting unit of Parker,Mason,Jefferson,Duncan, Mcdyess. Mcdyess and Bonner should never play together.

  • SpurredOn

    Fin will be a valuable reserve come playoff time. He may only play in one or two games per series (barring blowout situations), but he’s the kind of vet that can smell both another championship ring and the end of his career in the very near distance. In a situation where you need a guy who knows the system and can come in for half a quarter, help spread the floor and knock down a few 3′s, he can be that man. Recall Kerr’s contributions in ’03 and even the occasional key bucket from Glenn Robinson in ’05.

    Bobcats are solid defensively and every win by the Spurs there has been competitive. Tonight should be no different. If TD does not play I do hope Ian and/or Haislip get a few minutes of PT while the game is competitive. With Bonner and Fin out let’s shave some minutes off other guys. Tomorrow in Memphis isn’t just another b2b; it’s also the fourth game in five nights. That’s never easy.

  • junierizzle

    I still think we need Fin dog and especially The Red Rocket. We need some easy threes to go down.
    One of the reasons the Thunder came back was because the Spurs couldn’t make a shot. Bogans has missed his share of Wide open threes. I love Bogans D. But when your lead goes from 20 to 12, Im sure if you bring in Bonner he can hit some shots to keep the other team at bay.

  • lvmainman

    Will someone tell Pop the NBA is not a 6’6″ and under league? Playing 5 guys 6’6″ and shorter at a time for 8 minutes in a row is asinine.

    In garbage time Haislip, Mahinmi, and Ratliff all blocked a shot. (Haislip’s was mistakenly called a foul.) Derrick Brown was dumb enough to try and dunk and rub it in the Spurs face, but Ratliff told him get that sh……ot out of here.

    Pop play the bigs! Haslip, Mahinmi, and Ratliff can help defensively on nights like tonight when the Spurs can’t make a shot.

    Stop the Duncan and the 4 midgets with Bogans or Jefferson playing the 4. Stop please. The NBA is not a 6’6″ and under league.

  • JT

    I don’t care what anyone says but having not even one player a decent game, no one hustling. This game was completely fixed by Pop to give his all adored Larry Brown a win. All small ball, No McDyess, no Ratliff. This is ridiculous, this was by far the most boring game this season. I could barely watch it, BORING OFFENSE on both sides.

    I don’t really think we want to catch the Lakers…

    Ha, and now we will sit Duncan tomorrow against the better team – another loss.

  • SpursfanSteve

    mainman, that lineup got us a W against OKC, except it included Blair instead of Duncan. Those lineups are usually either feast or famine. Tonight it was famine.

  • SpurredOn

    Ugly all around. Third game in four nights was the biggest issue. That and Charlotte is now a good, defense based Larry Brown team. If one guy had their shot and could’ve pulled in 26+ points, maybe he carries the team over the finish line. But no one had it tonight. Happens over the course of 82 games. At least it was a non-conference loss.

    My only question to Pop, who I thought might sit TD, was why not sit Duncan and Parker more when it was obvious that neither they nor the team had it? Play the younger guys and keep TD and TP under 30 minutes. Saturday will be the fourth game in five nights. We’ll see how many guys bring their “B” much less A-game.

  • SpurredOn

    Ugly all around. Third game in four nights was the biggest issue. That and Charlotte is now a good, defense based Larry Brown team. If one guy had their shot and could’ve pulled in 26+ points, maybe he carries the team over the finish line. But no one had it tonight. Happens over the course of 82 games. At least it was a non-conference loss.

    My only question to Pop, who I thought might sit TD, was why not sit Duncan and Parker more when it was obvious that neither they nor the team had it? Play the younger guys and keep TD and TP under 30 minutes. Saturday will be the fourth game in five nights. We’ll see how many guys bring their “B” much less A-game.

  • Easy B

    Resting The Big Fundamental:
    Why not do this…put Timmy in for Junk minutes late second quarter, late third quarter and all fourth quarter. He finds his rhythm bouncing around in the second, can be the focal point of a rudderless offense late in the third and set the tone for a good start to the fourth. Nothing happens in the first two quarters that is worth him playing these minutes, and if something does happen to our detriment – like going down 20, he plays 10 minutes to see if they can bring in the decefit, then sits the fourth if they cant. We need him at his best in the fourth quarter of games and seasons….not the first and second. Why not manage these games the same way they manage the season?

  • Ivander

    Pop gave this one away. Just like I said yesterday; he is falling in love with smaller ball (I can’t even call it small ball anymore).
    The Bobcats had 10 blocks, we had 3 (2 of which came by Mahinmi and Ratliff in the final 5 minutes). Instead of going into the paint to score, because frankly, the Bobcats aren’t the team with the most impressive PF’s/C’s in the NBA, the Spurs shot 25 times from 3! 25/80 shots from the field were threepointers! That’s nearly 33%!! How many did we hit? 5! OK, we had a lot of decent looks too, but if we can’t hit’em, we have to go into the paint some time?!
    I guess we won’t see Timmy today against Memphis and its high-scoring frontcourt. I really don’t know what Pop was/is thinking. Doesn’t he know that Zach Randolph is red-hot since December and that Duncan’s D would be a huge help? I say Gasol and Thabeet will combine for 10 blocks tonight. I don’t have a good feeling about this game, Memphis is 14-6 since December and they’re one of those young athletic teams we usually struggle against.
    I have the feeling that Pop ,for some reason ,doesn’t want the Spurs to climb in the standings. It’s really frustrating.

  • Easy B

    Re: Ivander comment.
    Take it easy on the pop smackdown….whilst I agree that maybe this was the game to rest duncan…I think fatigue for our team, and hustle from theirs told the story in the loss. someone else commented that if just one person on the team got hot, it might have swayed the outcome in our favor. Such is the spurs this season – when the cylinders are firing we are in the elite 4 or 5 teams…LA, Boston, Spurs, Cleveland, Denver then Orlando in that order right now with Dallas next ( but raise them to fourth when playing the spurs).

    We are looking at a mid 50 season again and probable 2/3 seed which gets us lakers in the cf’s if we succeed- exactly what we aspire to do.
    We need to work on our road games ( which ironically the schedule is providing late in the season), in order to prevail out of the western conference.
    Do we have the team to do it? Thats why we watch the games.
    My last post suggested duncan play predominantly the second half of games deemed rest-worthy. In Soccer this happens often with veteran world class strikers who can play at top level for 30 minutes or so but not the 90…..Maybe NBA teams should think outside the sport a bit more….especially since the intro of the hand-check rule dramatically sped up the game and forced teams like the spurs to focus more on offensive dominance or fall by the wayside like the pistons. In poor economic climates there is inevitably a push for a more entertaining product to boost revenue -thus the shift towards a more offensive game right now. I’m not surprised the spurs are playing ball right now with what the league is demanding…..they always do.

  • wannabe_fan

    You guys crack me up! Come on now, earlier in the season all I heard here was trade Tony, dump Manu, bench RJ, etc… Now we have Oliver Stone posting conspiracy therories…Pop “wants” to lose games, Pop “gives” away games to his buddies, Pop does’t want to win the division. I’d like to see Tim ask Pop about this after a game!

    It is very frustrating to get blown out by a crappy team, no matter road or home, no matter back to back or plenty of rest. I couldn’t get a good stream last night, so all I saw (between pauses) was Bobcats rebounding Spurs misses, and S-Jax’s goofy sneer after making a basket. That told me the story.

    I’m no expert, and I’m sure some of you will gladly point this out…but along with several of you, I don’t understand why Pop won’t play some of the young bigs (excepting Blair); I don’t get his substitution patterns, etc… I do understand limiting Tim, Dice, and Ratliff’s minutes…nothing else, tho.

    It could very well be that Pop is still “figuring” out the players. We’re not there at practices. Who knows what we don’t see. Maybe Ian isn’t fast enough when fetching Pop a bottled water. Maybe Haislip loses to Manu at horse too often. Who knows. It’s common knowledge that Pop treats the regular season as a tuneup for the playoffs. I really think that on “meaningless” games like this (no chance of meeting the team in the playoffs), Pop will try an experiment to see what may work…or may not. As a chess player, maybe he’s trying to sandbag the other team’s scouts. Possible I’m just grasping at straws to explain why they lost a game they should have won.

    One good thing: at least for 2 games, the talking heads can’t talk about our inability to beat + .500 teams.

  • agutierrez

    1. We always have trouble against young, athletic teams. 2. When one of our big three is on his game, we have a chance to win; when two of our big three are, we seldom lose; when all three are on, we’re unbeatable. 3. Pop: please do not play McDyess with Manu. He simply cannot catch his passes

  • Bentley

    That game was kind of sad to watch for me, we played ugly the whole entire game and then the Bobcats got it going and we never responded. I like the idea of playing Haislip and Mahinmi more, but they both looked lost in defensive rotations and we an’t have liabilities out there.

    I would really love to have David Lee on our team, I wonder what it might take to get him

    And what is up with our third quarter play, for some reason we always struggle to get it going in the third quarter, and it usually costs us games.

  • VP of Common Sense

    Funny how everyone is blaming Pop..

    Maybe I was watching another game because what I saw was a great defensive effort by a much improved Bobcats team.

    If anything, this loss goes on the players for not being more aggressive (Charlotte was gambling a lot on D and we didn’t make them pay) and guys just missing open shots or not taking open shots.

    This loss is on the Big 3′s shoulders. They have to lead by example and they didn’t against the Cats.