Season 48, Game 28
Dallas 99, San Antonio 93
17-11, 7th in the West

Tonight’s game would have been better at 46 minutes, though. Given that the Spurs have played 30 extra minutes of basketball over the last 3 nights, the NBA should have at least knocked 2-3 minutes off of this game. If they had, the short-handed Spurs would have miraculously beaten the full-strength Mavs.

The Spurs dressed 10 but only played 8, giving Green and Tiago the night off, too. The 8 that played gave the Mavs every ounce of fight and effort they had, and were in position to pull off the upset until the final minutes. In the end, Monta Ellis took over and was just too much for our tired squad. Lest we forget, it wasn’t just Manu and Tim putting up big minutes in those back-to-back 3OT games; Marco, Boris, and Cory all played big minutes, too, and Bonner and Anderson played meaningful minutes in those games. Boris, in particular, looked rather tired tonight. If only one of those shots had been a few inches longer, perhaps this game breaks the other way.

These games are great fun to watch. I think Pop loves coaching in them, too. Pop did a couple of brilliant things tonight to give his team a fighting chance. First, he slowed the pace way down. The team almost never pushed the ball, and once in the half court, usually used up most of the shot clock. It might seem counterintuitive to some, but slowing down is a great way to give a less talented team a better shot at winning. Think about it like this: if the Mavs score 1.0 points per possession, but the Spurs can only muster 0.85, if you play 100 possessions, the Mavs win 100-85. But slow it down, and the margin shrinks. So over 75 possessions, the score would be 75-64. Suddenly, that’s a workable margin. Throw in the randomness of scoring on any given night, and a lesser talented team can be within striking distance near the end.

The other thing Pop did was play almost exclusively zone defense off of dead balls. This helps to contribute to the slowed down pace, as it will often take several passes (and time off the clock) to find a good shot in the zone. It also saves the players’ legs from having to chase any one player around. It can really muck up what a team wants to do. And while the Mavs have an elite offense, they only have average long-distance shooting.

Of course, they have a few elite shooters, and they had a few too many wide-open corner 3s. Harris and Ellis hit some back-breaking 3s to keep the Mavs in the game, and the Spurs just didn’t have the talent or energy to ever fully pull away. Had they been able to keep the margin closer to 7 points, maybe they could have held on.

A fully healthy playoff-ready Spurs squad has trouble stopping Monta, so it only makes sense that this 8-man team would break eventually. Still, I can’t believe how well they played and the team should be very proud of the way it competed. It counts as another loss, and there are no moral victories; but there are nights when individual players and collective teams grow, and tonight just might be one of those nights. Each of those 8 players can come away from this game a more confident player, and perhaps more ready to contribute down the line. Remember, it was on OT loss in Dallas 4 years ago that spring-boarded this team’s current run, and really set off Green’s confidence and career.

The grind of December continues as the Clippers–on a grind of their own–come to San Antonio Monday night. Let’s hope the losing streak ends there.