RealGM

YOUR Washington Bullets are at 2-1 after a pathetic showing in the home opener vs. the Knicks!

The short home stand continues vs. the new look San Antonio Spurs. Lamarcus Aldridge comes to DC in a non-Blazers jersey for the first time paired up with the ageless Tim Duncan in the front court. Kawhi Leonard has taken the reigns of the franchise and will be a great test for Otto to go against. I anticipate John Wall dominating Tony Parker. I am worried about the defensive ability of Green and Leonard in shutting down Beal with their length.

The Spurs have also re-tooled their bench adding David West for the veteran's minimum, the Serbian big man Boban Marjanovic, Rasual Butler, and Ray MacCallum to replace players that left over the summer.

Can the Wizards take advantage of a Spurs team trying to fit all its new pieces together? Or will they falter again due to turnovers, long twos, and bad defensive rotations once again?


-------------------------AT-------------------------


Last game:

Knicks @ Wizards - 117-110 (L)
Spurs @ Knicks - 94-84 (W)


Lineups:











Bench:

LaMarcus Aldridge will likely have his best game as s Spur.

I posted before last game that Carmelo might go off for forty. (37 was close!). This game either or both of Kawhi Leonard and Aldridge will hurt the Wizards. Danny Green on Bradley Beal will be interesting to watch. Mark West, a Wizard killer, comes off their deep bench.

This game I would rather see the old lineup of Nene with Gortat as the starting front court.

Probably looking at a second straight home loss which will put the Wizards at 2-2.

The Spurs have too-much depth.

actually, sans Neal our bench isn't that far off theirs... Sans Wall our starters are probably no match for theirs. I expect this to be ugly... hope I'm wrong.

The Spurs are clearly a better team. They're a favorite to win the title this year; the Wizards are not. It's going to take an unusually awesome performance out of someone on our team, or an unusually bad performance from someone on their team for this game to be close. It could happen, but I'm not betting on it.

This will be a loss, but I expect the team to come out with a better showing in ball security and a stronger defensive effort.

These are the kinds of games where you just have to try and take away the positives. I'm looking for continued positive play from Otto and Bradley and for improved bench play from Neal (specifically more 3pt attempts and less mid-range jumpers). It would also be nice to see Gortat go off but that's unlikely against the Spurs frontline.

Washington should put forth a better effort against the Spurs than they did against the Knicks given it's not a back to back. The Wizards do need to step up the defensive intensity and hope for some frontcourt players to come through like Gortat/Humphries/Nene/Gooden/Blair. Maybe Gary Neal can try to get revenge.

closg00 wrote:The Spurs have too-much depth.

Spurs are actually lacking some depth compared to past years. They signed Rasual in training camp, lol
Depth problems won't matter as much in the playoffs though, they'll be strong as ever come postseason time.

At least SA isn't an athletic running team. Their frontcourt are slower, older guys like ours.

Hopefully playing against SAS will remind Gary Neal of when he was good. In fact, I'm counting on it.

Neal bows up and the Wiz win by double digits. Book it!

Spurs by 12. Book it

They can't beat the Knicks they are not beating the Spurs. Our big men will get owned along with our SF's

Games against the Spurs have very rarely been competitive over, don't expect that to change.

queridiculo wrote:Games against the Spurs have very rarely been competitive over, don't expect that to change.

While this has been generally true in the past, last year it wasn't. The Wizards split the series. In the loss, the Spurs were only leading Washington by 1 point going into the 4th quarter.

Tobias Harris
Giannis Antetokounmpo
Carmelo Anthony
Kawhi Leonard

The SFs in this league just keep coming. Never a break.

Another good test for Otto. Leonard isn't as good a scorer as Melo is, so there's that, but he's arguably the best two-way perimeter player in the game right now and probably the next best small forward in the league after James and Durant.

If we play defense as bad as we have so far, this game will be over early.

15 posts and no one has made fun of this guy?



I don't even know where to begin.

Kawhi is playing well and looks like Aldridge found his stride last night. Our guards are better than theirs, but their forwards are a lot better than ours. They'll probably win.

We're also not playing anywhere close to where we'll hopefully end up this season, and the Spurs almost always execute up to their ability.

Friggin schedule. I wish we could have gotten SA on the second night of the B2B so we could just take the loss and get the rest for playing the Knicks.

AFM wrote:15 posts and no one has made fun of this guy?



I don't even know where to begin.

Medieval Serbs would have considered him to be a troll.

are we still going to start Hump? We've gotten no advantage from that. He's been atrocious defensively--and while he's hitting a three or two per game, he's absolutely terrible around the rim.

I suggest we just go back to Nene--for whatever reason he's just not very good off the bench. I know we all wanted to see what the stretch offense could do for a full season but we don't have the group for it right now. With Beal being a better player along with Otto--just running the stuff we did last year should be good for 50 wins. Get Oubre minutes as well---swap Temple for Gary every now and then because I think he's the better player atm.

Dark Faze wrote:are we still going to start Hump? We've gotten no advantage from that. He's been atrocious defensively--and while he's hitting a three or two per game, he's absolutely terrible around the rim.

I suggest we just go back to Nene--for whatever reason he's just not very good off the bench. I know we all wanted to see what the stretch offense could do for a full season but we don't have the group for it right now. With Beal being a better player along with Otto--just running the stuff we did last year should be good for 50 wins. Get Oubre minutes as well---swap Temple for Gary every now and then because I think he's the better player atm.

In addition to starting Nene in place of Humphries another option would be Gooden. Statistically speaking, when Drew played next to Gortat last season it worked exceptionally well.