San Antonio Spurs' LaMarcus Aldridge Will Bolster Entire Team

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Justin Ford, USA Today Sports
Justin Ford-USA Today Sports

One year removed from putting together one of the greatest championship performances ever seen, the San Antonio Spurs have added a perennial All-Star to their roster in LaMarcus Aldridge. Everyone’s talking about it.

Questions you might have are:

“How did they pull this off again?”

“How is anyone going to beat them now?”

“This is almost unfair. Is Jeff Van Gundy going to call for a rule change about this?”

But in the process of all of the bold forecasting and the explosions of joy among the Spurs fanbase, people have lost sight of what this means for Aldridge’s role.

In Portland, he’s been the primary scorer for the majority of his career. He has a wide variety of post moves and excellent touch from all over the court, enabling him to attack defenses in an array of ways. But he’s never been on a true championship contender.

The Spurs have lacked another big with offense to help Tim Duncan ever since David Robinson left. Last year, with a hobbled Tony Parker and the limited offensive game of Tiago Splitter, the paint became more clogged than it has been in several years. The Spurs still showed off some many golden moments of premier ball movement, but the offense wasn’t quite as flowing as it had been the year before.

LaMarcus Aldridge’s range extends well beyond fifteen feet — he even shot 35 percent from the 3-point line this past year — and his post-game mastery will help make defense quite the challenge for those guarding him. Splitter was useless from outside of five feet; Aldridge can be effective from five times that far.

This addition will make things easier for everybody on the team. Tony Parker will have an easier path to the rim, which will in turn open up more long range shots for Danny Green. Kawhi Leonard gets an extra man to pass out to and a younger teammate to stay around as he continues to grow as a basketball player. Tim Duncan gets one-on-one in the post every time because of Aldridge’s spacing, and vice versa.

On a talented roster coming off of several individual drop-off years, this boost could be exactly what the Spurs need in order to chase after the Golden State Warriors‘ trophy next season. It might be huge further down the line, too. This means dark times for the rest of the NBA.

 

Drew James is a beat writer for www.RantSports.com. Like him on Facebook.

 

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