Well, people want the young guys to get some burn. Here are the growing pains:
In all seriousness, it was good to see Keldon, Lonnie, DJ, Derrick get more minutes than Bryn and Beli.
Lonnie even got more minutes than DD. Also good.
Our perimeter D... needs work. We had some plays with 3 Spurs at the ball handler who then had his pick of passing to unguarded teammates to pass to. Communication and rotating on help D will need some practice. These should be inplace no matter who the teammates are, but then gain if one teammate screws up, it has a trickle effect.
I like that Derrick looked for his 3 shot. Was only 1-4 but it has to start somewhere. I thought Rudy shot too many 3s and not enough of anything else, but maybe that's the way we wanted it? Team-leading 6 3s... but only 2-6. Then Bryn with 1-5 from 3 (FFS - it's like we never had a long break from basketball).
I liked DJ's and Lonnie's passing. Good vision and crisp decision making. Lonnie needs to work on his handles, but his control at finishing at the rim was noticeably better. Nice shooting form.
We had more assists and rebounds (including on O) but our old nemeses of not enough 3s and not enough FTs got to us. They put up 40(!) to our 23, making 12-8; they were 27-34 FTs to our 14-19. Of course, there were lots of line-ups - I'd say all of them - that were never actual NBA line-ups before, but it's interesting that despite that, we had the same problems. It's like when Bryn or DD are in we just revert somehow to certain habits like out of position D and one and done shots to try and make up for getting scored on.
We understandably looked disjointed at times, but I liked the juice that the young guys brought. We're still in between two styles of play, but there was more cohesion among the young guys in terms of transition play. It's drilled in them to make the quick outlet pass and push ahead to score.
D has to improve, and limiting the one and dones. Get the 3s up more, get to the FT line more. Great to see Spurs in action again!!!
p.s. Patty didn't play today. Hopefully we see him guiding the back court unit at some point. Fewer minutes for other vets ie/ Rudy, maybe DD and definitely Bryn - we know what we have with him.
Some highlights from our first scrimmage -
https://www.nba.com/spurs/video/teams/spurs/2020/07/23/3338419/1595544526794-san-antonio-spurs-highlights-vs-milwaukee-bucks