Season 48, Game 06
San Antonio 89, Los Angeles Clippers 85
3-3, 10th in the West

Even though it still wasn’t pretty (I’m looking at you, Tony Parker, 3-point shooting), given the early season struggles, that was a nice win against the Clippers. The team even started to resemble a distant cousin of last year’s team. So in the spirit of victory, I’ll focus on the positive and save the negative for a rainy day.

All positivity from the game must necessarily start and end with Kawhi Leonard. Holy heck, did Mr. Leonard have himself a game. 26 points, 10 rebounds, 3 assists, 3 steals (though I’m pretty sure it was closer to 30, if I had to guess), and 1 block. He looked like NBA Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard. Most impressively, he was able to assert himself into the offense without overwhelming it or clogging it up, plus he was able to get a lot of his ‘garbage’ points off of offensive rebounds and TOs leading to fast break points. It was also his best game defensively of the year.

Speaking of, the defense has been pretty solid (with moments of being really good) this early season. Only one team has scored over 100 points, and that was the Pelicans…who scored exactly 100 points. It’s the offense that has been suspect. But in the last 7 minutes of this game, the offense actually came alive a little bit, with smart passing and cutting and getting high quality shots in crunch time of a high pressure game. Even if it wasn’t all the way there, it was still a sight for sore eyes.

Also a sight for sore eyes? Only 8 turnovers. TOs have been a big problem in this early season. Taking care of the ball so well covers up all manner of sin (like shooting 10% [!!] from 3 and just under 40% overall and getting out-rebounded).

At the center of it, as he’s been since forever, was Tim Duncan. I’ve almost quite literally run out of ways to talk about how great he is. But he still is great, and he and Kawhi were the backbone upon which the victory was built.

Everyone else varied from ‘meh’ to ‘pretty good’, but it was enough for the win. Considering we play the red-hot Warriors in Oakland on a back-to-back, it was crucial to get the win tonight, especially once Pop went ‘all in’ with big minutes for all the key players. There was always a high likelihood of players resting against Golden State; with the victory in hand, that can happen with less reservation and consternation. Not that Pop probably worries about such things, but I do.

With 2 days off after the Golden State game, it will be interesting to see who plays and how much. No matter what, it’s going to be a tough game and a possible schedule loss. But it’d be nice to see some of that Spurs’ shorthanded magic. Hell, any type of magic would be nice. It’s been in short supply this season.

It was nice to see a glimpse of it tonight.