Season Opener : Spurs v Suns

[UDRIH14]

This is the thread on your opener??? San Antonio Spurs have no fans.

they usually post at spurstalk.com whether its livechat or gamethread...

[Great]

Team needs to put Farmer on the floor.

Mason, Ime, Bowen, Bonner, and Finley are all jumpshooters.

The team needs a jump shooter and slasher. That's what Manu does. That's what Farmer does.
Team needs more FTA's. The bigs here don't attack the rim to get FTA.

FTA's control tempo. Get other team in the penalty. Other players in foul trouble.

[tsherkin]

Man, Duncan and Parker looked great.

Good game, that 3 at the end had me worried until it missed. I was kind of surprised that with 7 seconds to go in the game, a Duncan 3 was the Spurs' best attempt, but it worked out for Phoenix.

Manu's absence was definitely significant. Hopefully,he gets healthy soon. I may want Phoenix to win, but it's cheap victory until Ginobili is back.

[DBMethos]

I actually thought our offense was really good last night. It was our defense that wasn't quite there. That will come with time, so I'm not too worried about that loss.

[ChargerMan]

Duncan is gonna have a monster year but he needs another low post presence to help on Defense and rebounding.

[Ballings7]

Not too bummed about the loss

Great to see Duncan and Parker play real strong (though Tim couldn't get on the boards)

Impressed with Mason, and there'll be more goodness from him, too

It sucks that our two young guys are hurt/out, in Ian and Hill, and Tolliver is behind Bonner. Bonner has to be better in order to stick around.

I still think we need to get more agile up front, either through Ian, or a trade of some kind. That'd help on both ends of the floor.

[ss1986v2]

our defense is still in early season form. pop will let it ride until sometime in january or so, then he will publicly call his team out. that will light a fire under the old guys, and the defense will begin to round itself out through the 2nd half of the year. its like deja vu all over again...

[coyotes_geek]

Some of the defensive lapses I think can be attributed to the Spurs just being so shorthanded in the frontcourt last night. The Spurs were basically down to Tim, Kurt and Bonner as the only available bigs and they just could not afford to get into foul trouble last night. I don't think either Tim or Kurt played very aggressive defensively.

Mason looked good offensively, and the effort was there defensively. But you can tell he's still learning the ropes. He missed a few rotations, but that should get better over time.

[tsherkin]

I actually thought our offense was really good last night. It was our defense that wasn't quite there. That will come with time, so I'm not too worried about that loss.

WRT your offense, I was only referring to that single play at the very end of the game; obviously, the offense was clicking last night in general. Duncan and Parker looked outstanding.

[the southern dandy]

I was initially furious when we lost this game. When I thought about how shorthanded the team is I wasn't as upset.

Bonner impressed me in the first half, mostly with his post defense. I still can't get past how weak and slow he is. As soon as the rest of the frontcourt returns they have to be given a shot to take Bonner's minutes.

Roger Mason was impressive all night long. His shot was a thing of beauty and he tried to make things happen defensively. Also he's a really smooth and composed player, I had a lot of fun watching him.

Duncan's all round offensive really amazed me, he's still the player he was years ago. We're now seeing it because it's required again.

The team defense was really quite worrying. I chalk that up to Finley and Bonner playing extended minutes. Finley is just a lazy defensive player and Bonner has no idea what he's doing.