2015-2016 San Antonio Spurs Thread: Tim Duncan Retires After 19 Seasons

[antidope]

 
Baynes HAS to come back. We cant afford to lose the guy. My number one thing about this team for years was needing another big, and Baynes has been the biggest guy we've ever gotten in that span. He does need to polish things a up a bit for sure, he'll never be Tiago in that regard, but if he can get one move besides going straight up into a guy I will be thrilled.

Welp..... In Pop we trust though, I'm sure he knows what he is doing.

 

[mister friendly]

Baynes is gone

 

[madgame87]

Baynes gone to Detroit..

So effectively we've got TD and DIAW as people over 6'9 lol.  Surely LMA is coming.  I'm still not sold on him (fitting our system), but I can easily be convinced lol.  RC and Peter Holt will be making their moneys worth.

David West has been linked with us too - not too sure how he is now, but back then with CP3 he was 'All-Star' level. 

Trading Splitter and not landing LMA

 

[antidope]

The GOAT returns .

 

[gtmorgan23]

I sure hope we get LA or dumping all these other pieces will leave us high and dry.

I dont like that he went and had second meetings with LA and the Knicks. 

Guess he might want the money more than winning.

 

[antidope]

Cant even blame Marco for taking the money

 

[antidope]

 

 

[freakydestroyer]

Wow I can't believe it

 

[dmxfury]

 

[louigi]

WOOOHOOO....

 

[antidope]

Friday, July 3, 2015 Becky Hammon to be first female head coach in summer league ESPN.com news services Becky Hammon will coach San Antonio's summer league team in Las Vegas, the Spurs announced Friday. She will be the first female head coach in summer league history. Natalie Nakase served as an assistant coach for the Los Angeles Clippers in 2014. becky hammon watching pregame with the san antiono spurs Becky Hammon is heading to Las Vegas, where she will coach the Spurs' summer league team starting July 11.

The San Antonio Express-News earlier reported that Hammon would coach the Vegas summer league team. Hammon became the first female full-time assistant coach in NBA history when she joined the Spurs before the 2014-15 season. She played 16 seasons in the WNBA, making the All-Star team six times, and moved to the Spurs bench upon her retirement. "Nothing in my life has really ever been easy. I've always been someone who did it uphill," Hammon said in August. "I'm up for challenges. I'm up for being outside the box, making tough decisions and challenges. ... And I'm a little bit of an adrenaline junkie. Throw those all in there and this was the perfect challenge and opportunity."

Now Hammon will be taking the next step in her coaching development. The Las Vegas Summer League begins play July 10. The Spurs play their first game July 11 against the New York Knicks. San Antonio will play at least five games in Vegas. San Antonio is also participating in the Salt Lake City Summer League. Will Hardy, the team's video coordinator, will coach the Spurs there. Information from ESPN's Marc Stein and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/13193330/becky-hammon-coach-san-antonio-spurs-summer-league-team

Progress

 

[domertx]

We got LMA ish cray , first big free agent here in forever...

 

[antidope]

[h1]BREAKING DOWN HOW LAMARCUS ALDRIDGE FITS WITH SAN ANTONIO SPURS[/h1]

• By Jared Dubin, bleacherreport.com
• View Original
• July 4th, 2015

We interrupt your holiday weekend to bring you the biggest news of theNBA  offseason: All-Star power forward LaMarcus Aldridge  is leaving thePortland Trail Blazers  for the San Antonio Spurs, according to AdrianWojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports.

Let's go live to San Antonio for the team's reaction.

Yeah, it's a big move, folks.

It's a move that was long-rumored; one that required a significant risk on the Spurs' part in the form of a salary-dump trade of starting center TiagoSplitter to the Atlanta Hawks  in the opening hours of the free agency, but also one that will likely prove well worth it.

In a Southwest Division that somehow keeps getting crazier and even more talented (all five teams made the playoffs last year, and the Dallas Mavericks  stole DeAndre Jordan away from the Los Angeles Clippers  on Friday), the Spurs found a way to not only keep pace, but to stay ahead of the pack.

Now that we know where Aldridge will be plying his trade for the next three-plus years (Aldridge's contract is for four years and the maximum $80 million, and it contains a player option after Year 3), it's important to take a look at how he'll fit with his new teammates. The Spurs machine is a different animal than the Blazers squad Aldridge anchored for the first nine years of his career, after all.

Aldridge does have a skill set that's tailor-made for the Spurs, though. He moves well without the ball, he's a skilled passer and he's very smart. He can be a ball-stopper on occasion, but it's not at all difficult to envision him moving the ball more quickly in San Antonio than he did in Portland. The Spurs are infectious that way.

Aldridge will likely slot into San Antonio's starting lineup at his normal power forward spot, taking Splitter's place while bumping Tim Duncan back to the center position. (Yes, Spurs fans. Duncan indeed played center for a while.) They'll be joined in the frontcourt by newly minted max player  Kawhi Leonard, while Tony Parker and Danny Green will man the starting backcourt spots. If that lineup sounds terrifying, it should. There are no weak spots, no hiding places in which subpar defenders can camp.

Within that specific group, though, there will be slight adjustments to be made by both Aldridge and the incumbents.

Aldridge is a high-usage player who can serve as the foundation of a high-level offense. His usage rate over the last four seasons combined was 28.4 percent, and it peaked last year at 30.4 percent. The Blazers often leveraged just the threat of Aldridge into open looks for the other players on the floor, and it worked well. They ranked fifth and eighth in offensive efficiency the last two years under Terry Stotts' Aldridge-led offense.

The player Aldridge is replacing in the Spurs' lineup is nothing like that. Splitter is a solid-enough offensive player, though more of a complementary piece than one who was likely to create his own looks, let alone one who could be used as a decoy to open up other players on the floor. He's had a usage rate above 20 just once in his career, and he used only 18.1 percent of the Spurs' possessions during his three years as a starter.

Aldridge's ability to soak up possessions at above-average efficiency is a good thing. At the very least, it will considerably ease the burden on both Duncan and Parker, long the engines that powered the San Antonio offense, but each of whom is on the far side of 30 and not getting any younger.

Parker was the team's the primary offensive weapon over the last few seasons, but last year he showed signs of wear and tear for the first time. San Antonio shifted some responsibility to Leonard and Green, but it was important to find another high-level option to depend on for the future. Now they have one.

But what, specifically, does Aldridge bring to the table?

As you can see, he loves to operate from the left side of the floor, particularly near the elbow and along the baseline. Knowing head coach Gregg Popovich as we do, you can expect the Spurs to incorporate Aldridge into their sets in ways designed to get him the ball in those locations and also create all-new sets that free him up for easy looks.

That can mean using him as a screener in pick-and-pop plays with Parker, the outlet man when Parker and Duncan do their pick-and-roll dance, or even running him off pin-down screens from Leonard or Green designed to create just a smidge extra space for him to release his jumper, as they've done with Duncan on occasion in the past.

That video is from a few years ago. The Spurs ran that kind of set for Duncan considerably less often last season—he took only 18 jumpers off screens all year. It's perfect for Aldridge, though, especially if Leonard is the one setting the screen, Green is spacing the floor from the corner and Duncan himself is the trigger man on the pass. That creates threats all over the floor.

Another thing I imagine we'll definitely see more of is Aldridge stepping out behind the arc to take threes. He set a career-high with 105 attempts from deep last season, just 11 fewer than he'd taken in his previous eight seasons combined.

The Spurs were one of the first teams to discover the power of the corner three, and they've turned players from Kawhi Leonard to Boris Diaw into better three-point shooters once they landed in San Antonio. It's not a stretch to imagine the same happening with Aldridge, who hit a perfectly respectable 35 percent in his first go-round at taking a high volume of threes last season.

The Spurs probably won't pound the ball down into the post quite as often as the Blazers did, but they're sure to take advantage of the fact Aldridge is able to score down there at an efficient clip while shouldering heavy usage. According to Synergy Sports, Aldridge averaged 0.96 points per play on post-ups, the fourth-best mark among 30 players that used at least 200 possessions out of the post.

The Spurs will run their familiar "4-Down" set (watch Duncan after the offensive rebound in that link to get an idea of what it looks like) to get Aldridge good post position. They'll have him set screens and roll into the post while running decoy action on the weak side. They'll get him duck-ins after he sets an off-ball screen. There are all kinds of ways to feed him the ball on the block.

Aldridge's combination of height, length and versatility also makes him a good option to anchor bench-heavy units when Duncan takes a breather. He can easily fit next to Boris Diaw, or even Leonard in small-ball frontcourts.

Aldridge has long shown an aversion to playing center—he even canceled a free-agent meeting with the Knicks  when it was revealed they wanted him to play the position exclusively, according to NBA.com's David Aldridge—but something tells me the franchise that got Duncan to play center for years while referring to him as a power forward will be able to convince Aldridge to do the same.

Those lineups will likely rely on getting the ball to Aldridge in the post and at the elbow more then the starters, which will allow him to get his touches and his shots without screwing with the Spurs' Spursiness. His presence in those lineups will help players like Patty Mills get cleaner looks than in the past as well, which will boost their efficiency.

The concerns with Aldridge's fit in San Antonio will likely come on the defensive end of the floor, but it should be noted those concerns are very, very, very  small. (Did you hear me, Spurs fans? I said the concerns arevery, very, very  small. There is basically nothing not to like about this singing. You are the big winners of the offseason. Be happy.) He's not a great defender, but he's a pretty solid one. He's just not quite as solid as the guy he'll be replacing.

Aldridge moves his feet fairly well defensively and is usually in proper position, both of which are key, but he's left something to be desired as a rim-protector of late. He checked in 59th in Nylon Calculus' Points Saved Per 36 Minutes in each of the last two seasons. That could become a concern in small-ball lineups, but the Spurs are so solid everywhere else in the floor and in their rotations that it might not. You can't score at the rim if you can't get to the rim, after all.

With Splitter, though, that concern didn't really exist. (Note: There were other concerns with Splitter, like when teams went small and played him off the court as the Heat  did in the 2013 NBA Finals, but those were alleviated a bit the last two years.)

Aldridge graded out 0.36 points per 100 possessions better than the league-average power forward on defense, per ESPN's RPM. That placed him 45th among power forwards. Splitter, meanwhile, was a plus-2.70, the 10th-best mark among all centers.

Much of defense is dependent on context, though, and Aldridge's could tick up in San Antonio if he doesn't have to carry quite as heavy an offensive load as he did for Portland last year. When the Blazers were healthier during the 2013-14 season, he was seventh  among power forwards with a plus-3.23 defensive RPM. The possibility of him playing high-level defense is there, for sure.

The biggest benefit of adding Aldridge, though, is it gives the Spurs a third anchor for the future that will presumably be built around the league's best perimeter-defense duo: Leonard and Green.

Green is a hyper-competent role player, one of the best three-and-D guys in the NBA. He's terrific, but he's also ultimately a complementary piece. Leonard is a top-10 NBA player at this point on the strength of his defense alone, even before we get into what he brings on the other end.

He improved immensely as an offensive weapon last year, though, particularly once he came back from injury, but he's also still yet to show he can anchor an entire offense himself. Now he has ample help, in the form of one of the top offensive anchors in the league.

The Spurs have been contending for titles since the start of the Duncan-Popovich era, and were right in the mix before that when they were anchored by David Robinson. You can consider Aldridge the next link in that big-man chain, and now that we know Popovich plans to stick around  at least through the end of the extension he signed last summer, you can expect San Antonio to play deep into the playoffs for the foreseeable future as well.

All statistics courtesy of NBA.com  and Basketball-Reference.com  unless otherwise noted.

 

[antidope]

ESPN sources say newly unrestricted free agent Cory Joseph is closing in on a deal with the Toronto Raptors
— Marc Stein (@ESPNSteinLine) July 6, 2015

@Chris_Broussard: Sources: Cory Joseph and the Toronto Raptors have agreed to a 4-year year deal worth $30 million

Welp. I didnt want to lose him either, with the slowdown that we saw from TP9 last year we need to have a solid 3rd PG. 

 

[antidope]

Ok so now we're basically in Fill out the Roster mode, and theres some pretty good pieces out there that I would take for the right price of course.

David West-Already said he wants to play for a contender and would take less money doing it

JaVale McGee- Fixes my neverending cries for a big to back up Timmy, dependent on whether or not he would actually become serious about basketball.

Amar’e Stoudemire- Would also take him. Great in limited minutes.

Aaron Brooks- The guard market is drying up fast and with Tony Parker seeming to be on the downslope we need a third PG. Would like to get someone who's a better defender to fill that role that was assumed by CoJo but Brooks can score the ball like nobodies business.

Gerald Greem- Just love the guy and his skillset.

Leandro Barbosa- We gonna be championship again?

Jeremy Lin would be another pipe dream acquisition, but we have no trade chips.

 

[7th Chamber]

So who's currently signed to the squad and will be on the roster for sure?

TP
Green
Kawhi
LMA
GOAT

Mills
Diaw
Kyle Anderson

I'd love to see David West and Amar'e come in. I think both as role players could contribute greatly to a team making a deep playoff run along with Diaw in the rotation. Barbosa would be a nice replacement for Joseph. He's they type of player you want during the playoffs. I feel like thee loss of Joseph was pretty big as I liked the depth at PG he provided, but he got paid and I can't hate on that.

I see a lot of people doubting this team already saying that they won't have depth to compete. I find that amusing considering it's only July and it's like they haven't seen this front office work before. I'm fully confident in the roster that they will have on opening night and so long as health doesn't become an issue, they'll be a contender for the title.

We can go ahead and squash the talks of Golden State being a dynasty as well :x

 

[M. Fresh]

David West-Already said he wants to play for a contender and would take less money doing it

JaVale McGee- Fixes my neverending cries for a big to back up Timmy, dependent on whether or not he would actually become serious about basketball.

Amar’e Stoudemire- Would also take him. Great in limited minutes.

Aaron Brooks- The guard market is drying up fast and with Tony Parker seeming to be on the downslope we need a third PG. Would like to get someone who's a better defender to fill that role that was assumed by CoJo but Brooks can score the ball like nobodies business.

Gerald Greem- Just love the guy and his skillset.

Leandro Barbosa- We gonna be championship again?

Jeremy Lin would be another pipe dream acquisition, but we have no trade chips.

I would prefer West as the first option but I'm not sure we can get him. I think Javale or Amare could be very helpful but I don't see the front office taking a chance on them.

 

[antidope]

Joseph was the biggest loss by far, and I'm a fan of Tiago. I never really thought West was on the Radar until last week and now my heads being filled with all sorts of dreams. 

I can see where all the talk about this team not being ready is coming from, too bad its just the same thing as its always been "X player is old, too much reliance on role players" etc etc etc. The roster can be filled out and even so, we have a player who really can be considered a counterpart to Tim Duncan and when is the last time we've been able to say that, 2003? That plus another year under Kawhi and we can offset some of the depth with two top 20 players in the league capable of logging heavy minutes.

I do think JaVale is the last guy the FO would go after, I dont think he fits the mold of someone that Pop could work his magic on, but it would be nice.

 

[gtmorgan23]

Well if West wants to win he knows where he needs to be.

 

[paulminus]

So who's currently signed to the squad and will be on the roster for sure?

TP
Green
Kawhi
LMA
GOAT

2016 WCF, at least.

 

[7th Chamber]

On Kawhi, how much better do you all think he can be? He grew so much these past two seasons and I feel like he's not even near his prime yet. It's like Pop has been bringing him along slowly so he can develop properly without the pressure of having to carry the team.

I'd love to see Kawhi make the jump to being a consistent offensive force night in and night out. I don't think we need him to be that just yet with Duncan and Parker still around, but to know you can get him the ball to close and be confident that he'll make a big play would be clutch in the playoffs. He showed flashes in these last playoffs, but I felt like he wasn't truly consistent enough.

It's crazy to think that Pop has never had a player like this either. He's had Robinson, Duncan and then Parker and Manu. Kawhi has the potential to be a vastly superior player to all of them, but whether or not that potential will be reached is yet to be seen. With that being said, he's in the best possible situation to do so and I'm going to enjoy watching it all play out

 

[antidope]

I'm not ready to say that he can be better than Duncan but everyone else yeah. He and Duncan are both similar in the aspect that they both are elite on both ends of the floor. 

Kawhi had it rough last year in the sense that he had to become the the offensive focal point in March without really getting any chance to feel it out. Playoffs were right around the corner and there was no breaking in period for him.

This coming year provided he stays healthy with the addition of LMA I expect a high level of output from that end of the floor for him. He's going to make the all star team for sure, and down the road who knows what could happen. He's already a top 10 player in the league in my opinion, and like you said nowhere near his prime. Sky is the limit for the kid.

 

[7th Chamber]

Agreed; better than Duncan is a stretch but the sky is the limit as you said.

 

[antidope]

@manuginobili Happy to announce that I'm coming back next season. #gospursgo #TDwouldvemissedmetoomuch.

It continues.

 

 

[7th Chamber]

I'll take whatever he can give us.