The Spurs started the game sluggish and out of sorts, looking like the scared, untested playoff team.
Manu Ginobili missed an open-court fast break dunk…
The Jazz out rebounded us by 6…
The Jazz also had 8 more fast break points than us…
Leonard and Green were mostly invisible the entire game…
Splitter injured his wrist in the first half and never made it back into the game…
The Jazz got away with a few muggings at the rim that were not called fouls…
When we did finally get to the line, we missed 8 free throws…
For long stretches the team looked lifeless and non-dominant…
And the Jazz played about as well as they possibly could…
And we still won by 15.
Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images
The Jazz are a very good team, and I was impressed with their energy, tenacity, and relative lack of ‘fear’ of the spotlight. But the Spurs have a LOT of room for error to still be able to easily win by double digits, whereas the Jazz have pretty much none. We didn’t really pull away until late in the 3rd/early in the 4th, but it never felt like the game was out of hand or that we wouldn’t win. Parker was a beast throughout, and Ginobili and Duncan were intermittently brilliant and a bit off their games. (Ginobili was a whirlwind of energy, playing as if he hadn’t played a playoff game in 4 years. He was seriously keyed up. As always, this led to some “bad” Ginobili. But the “good” Ginonbili so far outweighs it. And it’s awesome to see this Ginobili again.) Jackson provided a huge spark off the bench, Diaw had some nice moments, and everybody else was pretty much ordinary.
And we still won by 15.
As a side note, if you haven’t already been there, check out The Big Fundamental for a comprehensive playoff and series preview featuring SpursDynasty and several other great Spurs blogs. Well worth the read for any Spurs fan.
