GAME DAY, BALA! GAME 21: SPURS AT PISTONS, 1-12-2019, 4PM (CT)

[G R E Y]

Consistency is the key for this single road game before we head home again. We did so many things well in putting together our most complete game of the season, and now need to build on those good habits and the energy they create for positive results.

WHERE: Little Caesars Arena, Detroit, MI

WHEN: Sunday, December 1, 2019, 4pm (CT)

Read on Twitter

GO SPURS GO!!!

[ducler]

Read on Twitter

[G R E Y]

DeMar has now hit a 3 for the second game in a row. Must be some rare planetary alignment. I'll take it!

[G R E Y]

Allowing 50% from 3 against isn't going to cut it. We started off contesting these late but did better as the Q progressed. Need to get the rebounds to limit their second chances. Good that we're communicating.

Also, Rudy and Trey have combined for 0-8 so they both need to get it going on O.

[G R E Y]

Better defensive effort saw us cut a 15-point lead down to 8 at the half.

We looked a bit out of sync on O and that made us tentative at times. We had three or four missed bunnies close to the basket, a couple by Jakob, who could take a page from Drew who smashed the rim.

I like Rudy's fight to get himself scoring again.

We need some more grit and intensity in the second half to rotate, prevent passes where possible, contest the rest, and make sure we limit turnovers, keep driving, and be more aggressive. D to O.

We really need to start hitting our 3s at a decent rate.

Also, this game feels like one Lonnie could do some good in.

[Ballings7]

Mills, Belinelli, Forbes: combined 2-7 from the field. Belinelli got to the line with 0 shots..

Walker and Carroll? 0 minutes. Why both of them aren't playing at least a little bit is unreal. Detroit is a big team with some athletes, and their size and rebounding ability is needed. Heck, Keldon Johnson should be playing a little bit too.

Glad to DeRozan finally taking some threes, in this system I believe it'll be better than in Toronto where it was less designed to get him open shots. He did well in the pre-season then stopped until recently, probably had to to try and make the starting line-up's spacing better.

Good to see them get back in the game and Rudy Gay got going towards the end of the half..

Murray having a nice all around game

2nd half change... bench Forbes if he doesn't get his shot on, and Belinelli as well. Give Walker and Carroll a chance.

[G R E Y]

Mills, Belinelli, Forbes: combined 2-7 from the field. Belinelli got to the line with 0 shots..

Walker and Carroll? 0 minutes. Why both of them aren't playing at least a little bit is unreal. Detroit is a big team with some athletes, and their size and rebounding ability is needed. Heck, Keldon Johnson should be playing a little bit too.

Glad to DeRozan finally taking some threes, in this system I believe it'll be better than in Toronto where it was less designed to get him open shots. He did well in the pre-season then stopped until recently, probably had to to try and make the starting line-up's spacing better.

Good to see them get back in the game and Rudy Gay got going towards the end of the half..

Murray having a nice all around game

2nd half change... bench Forbes if he doesn't get his shot on, and Belinelli as well. Give Walker and Carroll a chance.

Looks like Beli-itis is contagious and now Bryn's got it. So weird.

And now Lonnie is in with over 4 minutes left in the 3rd Q and immediately we score.

You really like Keldon, eh? He's our leading G-League scorer though the majority of points are inside, which is his strong suit already. Outside the paint it's another story. Hopefully he develops his game from farther out.

Luka looking good, too.

[G R E Y]

O rebound second chances and made 3s for them, and missed 3s for us are the main killers. Rotations are spotty now, too. It's really the energy in every play that we're not exerting.

[Ballings7]

Game is over, in all likelyhood... Mills/Belinelli/Forbes lost this game.. Lyles had an unusually bad night, but he isn't someone the team is "counting" on for offense.. Mills/Belinelli/Forbes they are out their for offense primarily, and are all at a great disadvantage defensively against most backcourts. Mills has usually been good and I'm fine with him in the rotation and coming off the bench, but Forbes and Belinelli's roles need to be scaled back some. Mills + Belinelli on the floor at the same time against a team like detroit is just not gonna be good.

Bad combination, especially against a team like Detroit, who while not a "good" team, are talented and have athletes and a lot of size. They've also been struggling and were going to probably beat the next team they played at home.

Walker played way too late. Caroll?? Not at all.

Mills, Belinelli, Forbes: combined 2-7 from the field. Belinelli got to the line with 0 shots..

Walker and Carroll? 0 minutes. Why both of them aren't playing at least a little bit is unreal. Detroit is a big team with some athletes, and their size and rebounding ability is needed. Heck, Keldon Johnson should be playing a little bit too.

Glad to DeRozan finally taking some threes, in this system I believe it'll be better than in Toronto where it was less designed to get him open shots. He did well in the pre-season then stopped until recently, probably had to to try and make the starting line-up's spacing better.

Good to see them get back in the game and Rudy Gay got going towards the end of the half..

Murray having a nice all around game

2nd half change... bench Forbes if he doesn't get his shot on, and Belinelli as well. Give Walker and Carroll a chance.

Looks like Beli-itis is contagious and now Bryn's got it. So weird.

And now Lonnie is in with over 4 minutes left in the 3rd Q and immediately we score.

You really like Keldon, eh? He's our leading G-League scorer though the majority of points are inside, which is his strong suit already. Outside the paint it's another story. Hopefully he develops his game from farther out.

Luka looking good, too.

yeah, keldon has a great make-up to me as a long, athletic NBA wing.

Keldon can shoot the ball from distance, he proved that to me in college and summer league, just has to get the reps and time in NBA games, and I believe he'll be a nice utility, floor-spacing athletic wing for the team.

The thing is, Keldon would bring more to the team than Belinelli right now, without a doubt. I guarantee more often than not if he got in the rotation over Belinelli, actually got 8-10 MPG, he'd surpass Beli's impact. But, that won't happen... I'd prefer to see Keldon even over Carroll in the rotation, but know that is unlikely as well... I like Carroll, though. He's a gamer from what I've seen and gathered, wish he was a bit younger, but still is usually solid on both ends. I remember in his prime with Memphis he'd always hurt the Spurs.

Carroll should replace Beli in the rotation, and Keldon should get spot minutes and then break into the rotation eventually. Kind of like J Simmons did.

What makes Keldon unique to me is his confidence, not to the point where he thinks he's Kobe or something, but in what he's able to do on the floor.

[G R E Y]

Game is over, in all likelyhood... Mills/Belinelli/Forbes lost this game.. Lyles had an unusually bad night, but he isn't someone the team is "counting" on for offense.. Mills/Belinelli/Forbes they are out their for offense primarily, and are all at a great disadvantage defensively against most backcourts. Mills has usually been good and I'm fine with him in the rotation and coming off the bench, but Forbes and Belinelli's roles need to be scaled back some. Mills + Belinelli on the floor at the same time against a team like detroit is just not gonna be good.

Bad combination, especially against a team like Detroit, who while not a "good" team, are talented and have athletes and a lot of size. They've also been struggling and were going to probably beat the next team they played at home.

Walker played way too late. Caroll?? Not at all.

Mills, Belinelli, Forbes: combined 2-7 from the field. Belinelli got to the line with 0 shots..

Walker and Carroll? 0 minutes. Why both of them aren't playing at least a little bit is unreal. Detroit is a big team with some athletes, and their size and rebounding ability is needed. Heck, Keldon Johnson should be playing a little bit too.

Glad to DeRozan finally taking some threes, in this system I believe it'll be better than in Toronto where it was less designed to get him open shots. He did well in the pre-season then stopped until recently, probably had to to try and make the starting line-up's spacing better.

Good to see them get back in the game and Rudy Gay got going towards the end of the half..

Murray having a nice all around game

2nd half change... bench Forbes if he doesn't get his shot on, and Belinelli as well. Give Walker and Carroll a chance.

Looks like Beli-itis is contagious and now Bryn's got it. So weird.

And now Lonnie is in with over 4 minutes left in the 3rd Q and immediately we score.

You really like Keldon, eh? He's our leading G-League scorer though the majority of points are inside, which is his strong suit already. Outside the paint it's another story. Hopefully he develops his game from farther out.

Luka looking good, too.

yeah, keldon has a great make-up to me as a long, athletic NBA wing.

Keldon can shoot the ball from distance, he proved that to me in college and summer league, just has to get the reps and time in NBA games, and I believe he'll be a nice utility, floor-spacing athletic wing for the team.

The thing is, Keldon would bring more to the team than Belinelli right now, without a doubt. I guarantee more often than not if he got in the rotation over Belinelli, actually got 8-10 MPG, he'd surpass Beli's impact. But, that won't happen... I'd prefer to see Keldon even over Carroll in the rotation, but know that is unlikely as well... I like Carroll, though. He's a gamer from what I've seen and gathered, wish he was a bit younger, but still is usually solid on both ends. I remember in his prime with Memphis he'd always hurt the Spurs.

Carroll should replace Beli in the rotation, and Keldon should get spot minutes and then break into the rotation eventually. Kind of like J Simmons did.

What makes Keldon unique to me is his confidence, not to the point where he thinks he's Kobe or something, but in what he's able to do on the floor.

Agree about scaling Bryn's minutes some, and Beli's way more.

That trio was part of it for sure as we were very weak in terms of interior presence and the multiple chances on O these generated for them.

It was basically an O rebound and made 3s against game. We were thin coming in at the former, but particularly ineffective on the latter and that was to be one of our main ways of scoring.

Lonnie and DC were in for much of the fourth so that was good. Lonnie from what I saw proved he deserves more minutes, DC looks like he had a hard time scoring (I had to leave at around 7 minutes left of the 4th Q).

Agree about Keldon's infectious attitude. Our rookies actually complement one another well. The balance with giving KJ minutes is to make sure he doesn't lose any of that fire should he not play well against pros. I'm fine with him developing at Austin for now as we already have guys who need more minutes with the Spurs.

Anyway, best to put this one behind us and get ready for the next one.

November was a brutal schedule, and December is it's opposite so we will have time to practice. I hope Pop puts them through the paces, and we're better prepared.

Post- December 15 should be interesting. I wonder if this is the year we make a trade and address the glut of guards and need at 3/4?

[G R E Y]

Read on Twitter

[imagump1313]

Crappy traveling and playing at a weird time for one road game and without Aldridge so I wont take much from this game. This was a scheduled loss.

Lonnie and DC were in for much of the fourth so that was good. Lonnie from what I saw proved he deserves more minutes, DC looks like he had a hard time scoring (I had to leave at around 7 minutes left of the 4th Q).

We were down like 8-10 when they started playing and we lost by 34 so there you go. Not that it was entirely their fault but they helped. We should have never been down by 10 to that crap team in the first place. Even without Aldridge.

[G R E Y]

Crappy traveling and playing at a weird time for one road game and without Aldridge so I wont take much from this game.

Lonnie and DC were in for much of the fourth so that was good. Lonnie from what I saw proved he deserves more minutes, DC looks like he had a hard time scoring (I had to leave at around 7 minutes left of the 4th Q).

We were down like 8-10 when they started playing and we lost by 34 so there you go. Not that it was entirely their fault they helped.

This isn't in any way an excuse because we've shown patterns of play that explain the bad outcomes, but take a look at November schedule compared to December - an inversion in terms of tons of travel and hardly any rest in between games, and then this month we have so many more days off and many more home games. Just a strange set of circumstances that can't be overlooked in terms of getting some sort of rhythm.

And this game and its situation as you've mentioned is emblematic of that - one game all the way to Detroit only to get home for 3 more that are so widely spaced out, and an earlier one on a Sunday will have more of an effect on a slightly depleted and more vulnerable team.

LMA for all his faults is still an anchor for us and we do need him playing well to succeed. Not sure he'd have made a difference to the outcome given how we played, but we did miss him.

Meh, have to put this one behind us and on to the next one.

[G R E Y]

Oooof. Jekyll/Hyde inconsistency continues.

After the game several players weren't sure what to make of it, but it's not really hard to figure out.

We were coming into this game at a bigs disadvantage even had LMA been able to play, but with him out, we would have to limit their strengths and play to ours. So being disadvantaged inside had to be offset by our guard strength and outside shooting, neither of which really clicked out side of DeMar finding ways to score early.

I find that when we play taller bigs we play tentatively and stay more on the outside rather than moving defenses, taking advantage instead of our mobility and moving defenses for back door cuts and drives. But if our outside shot isn't falling it's harder to bring bigs out from under the basket, too. And so that all feeds on itself and we get pushed back farther.

Some smaller guys play bigger than they are, some bigger guys play smaller than they are, and they had bigs who played big. 7'1" Jakob looked like a toothpick next to AD because of the physicality imposed on him. AD's a rare specimen and he puts the hurt on many other bigs, but it's the after effects of his presence that hurt us. He only scored 9 points, but grabbed 16 boards and crucially 6 on O for multiple second and sometimes even third O chances, many of which they capitalized on. Blake was frankly a non factor scoring-wise, but we got pushed around by his physicality on post-ups in particular and as he took up our attention, he was able to make assists for others instead. Their third big benefited the most and feasted on us.

We lost the rebound battle 50-31 including 11-7 on O boards, and got clobbered 70-44 in points in the paint. But like I said, the effects of their inside presence is what hurt us - it was their multiple guards who ended up benefiting the most from their bigs. They shot the lights out from 3 at 48% and 59%FG.

While the bigs situation was less in our control in terms of coming in underhanded, guarding 1s, 2s, and 3s, however, was very much within our power to do something about. So I don't accept the "I don't know what went wrong" answer post-game from several players when we got beaten down the court in transition for too many not well enough contested 3s - was there anything preventing us from running back hard on D? No, so it's on us. Not a mystery. We went over screens and tried going under but didn't guard the perimeter well enough to make sure that the help D got a chance to rotate in time. At one point Bryn got spun around running backwards on his defender. Jesus.

Even as we did well to get to the FT line for 19-22, a night after we shot decently from the 3 it dipped once again to almost 27% and only almost 41%FG. Not sure what accounts for the up and down shooting, but we are a team that feeds off energy, be it bad or good, and so when we start missing it snowballs. It used to be only Beli, but now Bryn has caught it, and Rudy and Dejounte's shooting nights fluctuate heavily, too. Trey, Patty and DeMarre didn't shoot well tonight either. So we had seven players not scoring well and ended up with only three on double figures. We gave up three 30+ quarters and had none of our own.

So it turns out that not defending well enough or scoring efficiently ends in losses. We were overmatched in some aspects of the game coming in, but during we were also outhustled in other aspects from what I saw. We had stretches of good defense and made stops but didn't reward ourselves on the other end. Even though we had only eight turnovers, we gave up 15 points on them; they had 17 turnovers which we converted for only 16 points.

We tried to get it going, but it felt a bit off from the start. Sean was right when he said that this was a game in which a team had to generate its own energy (as opposed to feeding off the crowd, for instance) and we tried in spurts but in the third Q we really were on the receiving end of the opponent generating their own.

I've mentioned it before, but when some guys get minutes (ie/ Beli) it deflates the team and when other guys play we are energized (Lonnie). There's something to the spirit of one guy's game or another that affects teammates in opposite ways; some you have to keep pulling up and that takes a toll after a while; others lighten the load and it resonates positively on others. When some guys keep not defending well and others keep having to pick up the slack, that poor defender's lack of scoring then weighs down the team all the more; when others come in and make an immediate impact on either or both ends, we feed off it.

I think it's easy to sit here and say oh we always have to play with great intensity, but when mired in a slump, it does affect us. Yes, it is ultimately up to us to show more grit, and part of that generating of energy is having players out there who can create that impact. The good feeling comes from good effort, not the other way around.

There were some games last winter in which Pop pulled the entire starting group for poor play, and the bench guys went in and played their hearts out. So now if any guy doesn't feel like running back or fighting through a screen or contesting hard, I hope there's more carrot and less stick and that guys who have shown a willingness to compete get more minutes. It's not about coming down hard on guys, but connecting minutes to defense. We know we can play better because we've shown it.

We're the same team that two nights ago put together the best game of the season, so we are capable of defending well enough and shooting well enough to be in most games (save this one and the one versus Cs). Some teams are a bad match-up for us and some games in a weird November schedule like this one created a perfect storm. But it's clear we have it within us to play better - we've just shown it. We can't get too overwhelmed by this outcome, and while there are takeaways going forward, both the December schedule and its days off should provide a much needed respite and more practice time to go over and instill the fundamentals. It will take the collective will and energy of the guys in the room to get going; the balance of a more forgiving space of games at home will help facilitate it.

[-Sammy-]

It's brutal. I'm not going to fixate too much on this one given our shorthandedness, but we just can't give up that kind of offense to a team that's in the bottom-third of offensive production.

Obviously, the roster has problems, but I'm pretty convinced that this is psychological more than anything else-- a perspective GREY's covered nicely in the last few writeups.

Ah, but on to the next one. GO SPURS!

[Ballings7]

Always seems like at Detroit has been a tough game over the years, or the game is just noticably bad in quality/flow... even if it was a win (though doesn't matter of course there).. even during some of the Duncan prime years.

Like, either its gonna be a boring loss, or a boring win for either team : )

Excluding the playoffs series in 2005, thats one of my fav series of all time.

Got curious and looked it up: https://www.landofbasketball.com/head_to_head_gl/spurs_vs_pistons_game_log_season.htm

Guess have done some better than I thought the last decade or so, at Detroit, except two of the last 3 seasons... however, the scores definitely reflect how the game quality is. Guess I was spoiled by the 2005 series and everything since then has just been "meh" or worse at Detroit. That Game 5 was legendary.

The pistons games have always been better level of quality at San Antonio, regardless of result. Their crowd in Detroit doesn't help either.