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Kabookalu wrote:I have to ask you guys, how was Kawhi's effort level during preseason in years past? Because his defense for us right now is complete garbage.

imagump1313 wrote:White playing much better in the 2nd. His aggressiveness draws a foul on Young and a hard cut to the basket gets him a bucket.
We need work with our second unit. It looks just like our team last year. No one can make a shot for themselves and we have to settle for contested threes or bad shots. We need to figure out how to mix it up a little with the 2nd unit.

The play wasn’t drawn up for Young to pull up from just inside halfcourt. Young said the play was supposed to be a quick pick-and-roll that Alex Len would set at the top of the key. The Hawks ran that play numerous times in the final few minutes of the game, so Young had picked up some tendencies of Spurs point guard Bryn Forbes when the screen was coming. Forbes turned his head toward Len, who was coming to set the screen, and when he did that, Young fired.

Gregg Popovich called timeout and asked his team if it could maybe play a little defense....

“Two defensive juggernauts, don’t you think?” Popovich deadpanned after a pinball-score loss that offered renewed concerns about his team’s ability to stop people....

Still, the defensive anti-clinic the Spurs put on Wednesday was not predictable to anybody. Not to this degree.

“I think that’s the highest score of a game I’ve played in, maybe ever,” guard Bryn Forbes said. “That was ridiculous.”

Popovich wasn’t apoplectic about the Spurs’ lack of defense, even on the final play. It is preseason after all. But Popovich did think Forbes could have invaded Young’s space a bit better on his final shot, even from 30 feet out....

Rudy Gay enjoyed his best night of the preseason, and maybe his best in a Spurs uniform, with 28 points on 10-of-15 shooting. Pau Gasol ended with 14 points and 10 assists, while White pumped in 15 points in his debut with the Spurs’ starters.

All of it was wasted in a storm of blown defensive assignments.

“Got a lot of work to do,” Popovich said. “But the competitiveness was great. The camaraderie was great. The defense left a little to be desired....”

To say the Spurs did not play very good defense would not be accurate, if you ask guard Patty Mills.

“We didn’t play defense at all,” he said.

Atlanta was the first team the Spurs faced this preseason that emphasized pushing the pace and ball movement. It was a different kind of test for a Spurs defense that had shown the makings of being a solid unit against Miami, Detroit and Houston.

“It probably exposed what we’ve been trying to work on this preseason, which is good,” Mills said. “It’s what we need.”

Forbes said the Spurs were experimenting with coverages they might not use when the games start to count. Many of those coverages might next end up on the cutting room floor. Though Murray was the undisputed defensive pace-setter of this Spurs squad, Mills scoffed at the notion his absence accounted for his team’s defensive troubles in Atlanta.

“It doesn’t take superpowers to get back in transition,” Mills said. “It’s more of an awareness thing. That was terrible....”

Instead, the Spurs fell to 2-2 and will move on to their preseason finale in Orlando on Friday. Popovich hopes the team’s defense might meet them there. He noted previous Spurs teams — even those that wound up historically good defensively — often began the season lagging on that end.

“Hopefully we’ll follow the same path and get better as we go,” Popovich said.