The Splitter Factor

[Nolan]

We all know he's a great defender but the guys at Project Spurs put together a interesting piece on what he's done against Aldridge so far and the numbers are pretty staggering.

http://projectspurs.com/2014-articles/through-2-games-aldridge-having-to-work-hard-for-any-points-vs-splitter-spurs-defense.html

Team Points FGA (FG%) PFD FTA OR DR
Rockets 29.8 PPG 23.7 (47.9%) 7.5 8.3 115.0 109.7
Spurs 24.0 PPG 24.0 (37.5%) 5.0 6.5 88.8 113.5

Those numbers explained: FGA = Field Goal Attempts, FG% = Field Goal Percentage, PFD – Personal Fouls Drawn, FTA = Free Throw Attempts, OR = Offensive Rating, DR = Defensive Rating

Defender FGM/FGA Field Goal Percentage
Tiago Splitter 9-of-28 32%
Boris Diaw 7-of-9 78%
Tim Duncan 1-of-4 25%
Aron Baynes 1-of-3 33%
Other 2-of-4 50%

[SPURt]

The whole season I've seen places like Spurstalk trash Splitter saying we should have signed Robin Lopez instead. Splitter is gonna be a big key to what we do defensively. I just hope he can contain Blake, Ibaka, Bosh, or David West one on one.

[Boarder Patrol]

He's amazing at defending man to man in the post. Remarkable. Help D is solid too.

The only problem is Miami (and it's not a guarantee we get there) doesn't have a post-up scorer and he's still not stopping Wade or LeBron so in a potential finals your looking at a $9 million waste like last time. Just my negative nancy view of things, but it's undeniable he's really important to what we do.

[co_laper]

He's amazing at defending man to man in the post. Remarkable. Help D is solid too.

The only problem is Miami (and it's not a guarantee we get there) doesn't have a post-up scorer and he's still not stopping Wade or LeBron so in a potential finals your looking at a $9 million waste like last time. Just my negative nancy view of things, but it's undeniable he's really important to what we do.

Well, he's valuable when we have to go big. Againts small ball teams, he's not going to be much of a factor.

We're going to see this first hand if we meet OKC in WCF. While I haven't seen OKC do this much this playoff, I know they like to play small ball with KD at PF. If they do that extensively, we're not going to see much Splitter.