San Antonio 104, Memphis 111  //  57-16  //  1st in the West

Third verse? See here and here for discussion of our faltering execution down the stretch of close games.

I don’t want to have a third discussion about how we gave another game away down the stretch of close games. Rather, I’d like to talk about the fear of facing the Grizzlies in the first round, which is what would happen if playoff seedings hold. The Grizzlies, like the Lakers, have what hurts us the most: size and length and interior scoring. They don’t have it in the quality of the Lakers, but they still have it. They also have scrappy perimeter defense that can slow down Parker and Ginobili.

We’ve split the season series 2-2 with them, each team winning on their home floor. But the Grizzlies have won the last 2 and have done so quite convincingly. Yes, we didn’t have Tim Duncan tonight; yes, Ginobili got hurt early and didn’t really play the second half. That doesn’t change the fact that I’m completely terrified of this team and hope to God that they pass the New Orleans Hornets and move up to the 7 seed (assuming we can hold on to the 1 seed, a proposition that gets shakier and shakier each day). The Hornets, while still a good team, just lost their second best player in David West and, even before that injury, don’t scare me nearly as much as these Grizzlies do.