San Antonio 99, Sacramento 79
In honor of the opening weekend of the NCAA March Madness Tournament, the Kings and the Spurs decided to play a game of college basketball. By that I mean really bad shooting, shoddy execution, and lots of frenetic play and wild energy amounting to almost nothing.
Every time I watch college basketball, I’m reminded of the tremendous gap in quality of play between the two leagues. Even the worst NBA game exists on a plane well above the best NCAA game. You can’t always account for ‘excitement’, but you can account for ‘talent’ and ‘execution’. The NBA is just a different beast entirely.
Of course, tonight’s game sure put that to the test. Particularly that 3rd quarter. I would say it was like a Globetrotters game out there, but that’d be insulting to The Globetrotters (and The Generals). It was just a complete circus out there, a comedy of errors, where laughter was the only recourse because crying would be counterproductive. Luckily it cut both ways, and the Spurs came out of that quarter 2 points further ahead than where they started.
From there, they got their act together and put the Kings away in the 4th quarter. The Kings are actually a pretty dangerous team, and it’s risky to let them hang around too long. The Spurs had to fight out tough wins twice against this team in San Antonio earlier in the year. So when the final buzzer sounded, despite all that had preceded it, it was a good victory. There will alway be nights like this in the NBA, when offense is hard to come by and made shots are even harder to find. “Finding a way to win” is a good skill to have, and this team has it in surplus. Thankfully.
The Spurs take a short bus ride over to Oakland and face the Warriors on Saturday night. Given the 12-game win-streak and the back to back nature of the game, I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see Pop rest some players. The Warriors are always dangerous, and might be a playoff opponent. It’ll be interesting to see what this game becomes.
