Your Cowtown is Boring and You've Made Timmy Angry.

Game 10 @ Sacramento: Spurs 108, Kings 99

As my good friend Joey Russo would say,

“Whoa!”

Where the hell did that come from?

That right there folks was vintage Tim Duncan right there. We so take the guy for granted. Sure, Manu had his comet-like two month run in the ’04-05 playoffs, and it could be argued that Tony was our team MVP last season since he was our most consistent player, but c’mon, we’re kidding ourselves. It’s always been Tim. Always. He’s the guy. Not only that, but he’s the best power forward, people. Ever.

You want your All-Time NBA Starting Five? It’s this dude at the point, you know who at the two, a superfreak at center, the best trash talker ever at small forward, and Tim motherfuckin’ Duncan at power forward. That’s your list. No arguments, no debates, I’m not listening.

Does he play like this as often as he used to? No, he’s 30. The point though is that he can. And when he does, we’re the baddest team in all the land. I can’t even describe the feeling, it’s like I want to put it on a neon orange T-shirt.

If we can get performances like this even three times out of every seven in the playoffs, it should be enough for another ring, no matter how awful Finley and Horry play, no matter how shaky Manu’s shot is, and no matter how much Tony “le trou noir” hogs the ball.

I think.

(Have fun with the Altavista Babelfish translation of that one, kids)

Besides Timmeh’s heroics, there isn’t a whole lot to say about this one. As expected, Bowen struggled with another muscular ballhandling three in Tru Warier. Shareef gave us fits early on as well. For a while it was looking hairy there at the wrong end of a 48-41 score, but I wasn’t ever really worried since most of Sacramento’s baskets were jumpers. An 8-0 run right before half really took the piss out of them and their shooting percentage dropped back down to Earth in the 2nd half to make it a pretty one-sided affair.

Sacramento isn’t awful, it’s just that Artest is the only guy on the team remotely capable of playing any defense, and even he’s not as committed to it as he used to be. Hiring Eric Musselman was an odd choice for the Maloofs if you ask me, since the whole reason he got canned by the Warriors (besides the teamwide mutiny that is) is that he couldn’t get it through to his players’ heads to play defense. It doesn’t look early on like these guys are listening either. It was getting almost painful to watch there at the end. After every stoppage of play he’d be pleading with his guys to get a stop on this possession, and without fail we’d either get an easy bucket from Tim or a wide open look from three from whoever.

Nobody really went off for us besides Duncan. Barry looked like he was on his way to a big night, but he slammed his head againt the Kings’ Ronnie Price’s (who?) shoulder late in the 2nd quarter and wasn’t much of a factor for the rest of the game. Except for the goofy white headband. That was priceless.

Anyway…

Your 3 Stars

3. Manu Ginobili– One the surface, another miserable shooting night — 4 of 12 — but thanks to free throws, he did manage to squeeze out 16 points out of those 12 shots and his bomb right at the end of the 3rd quarter put this game to bed. Also loved that one bounce pass in traffic for an Oberto lay-up. I don’t understand why he’s shooting so many threes though, especially when his stroke is so off. 7 attempts tonight? Ridiculous. He shouldn’t take more than two or three a game. Pop might need to give him the red light here until he starts playing more aggressively.

2. Fabricio Oberto– A sneaky good performance from Fab-O. 11 2nd half points, and he repeatedly buried open mid-range jumpers to keep the Kings at arms length. His interior D was pretty decent too.

1. Tim Duncan– Really, he deserves to be first, second, and third star all by himself. 35 and 14! 13 of 17 from the field, 9 of 11 from the line, 7 offensive rebounds. Yowza. Obviously his finest performance thus far in the season. I wonder what he’ll have left in him for tomorrow against a rested Zach Randolph, who’s been playing very well so far.

Record: 8-2 Streak: W-2
Up Next: @ Portland Trailblazers
Another cursed second night of a back-to-back. So far we’re 1-2 in these. And the Blazers have been spunkier so far than I anticipated, winning five of their first eleven games, including a palindromiffic 86-68 thumping of the Nets in Jersey. Howevuh, we have a significant advantage in the backcourt, and we’re a lot better at shooting threes. I’d be a bit flummoxed if we drop this one. Flummoxed and sleepy.

I’m already going to have to miss “Heroes” for this, so they God damn better win. Spurs by a dozen.