A Long December…Finished With A New Year’s Eve Miracle

Season 48, Game 34
San Antonio 95, New Orleans 93 (OT)
20-14, 7th in the West

Maybe this year really will be better than the last.

(Obviously, the “year” in question is just this NBA season, as the only way to top 2014 is for the Spurs to go 16-0 in the playoffs, beating Dallas, Houston, OKC, and Cleveland, topped off with Pop, Tim, and Manu immediately disappearing in a cloud of smoke, their apotheosis as Gods into basketball heaven complete.)

In 0.7 seconds the tenor of the last month changed, ever so slightly. Perhaps the best thing one can hope for, after a December best forgotten, is just that: a glimmer of hope at the end. Boris Diaw through a pinpoint pass to the left of the rim, Asik’s hand held it up, Tim’s fingers extended just enough to tip it up and over the rim, and the Spurs got their first break of the month as Duncan sprawled out along the baseline smiling. Perceptions change in a flash, grimaces turning to smiles.

Like many games this month, it wasn’t a pretty game. Both teams were coming off of back-to-backs, and the Spurs played as if the entire month of December was strapped to their backs. The starters, in particular, were dead on their feet. Pop played his hockey shifts again, doing mostly full substations every five minutes or so, until the end of the game when he mixed the two line ups. In the first half, the score was 25-13, second unit. In the second half, the score was 25-21, second unit (the second unit getting credit for the end game when Green and Duncan joined them, which only seems fair as Belinelli was actually responsible for some of those first unit points in the first half). For the game, it was Manu and the second unit beating the first unit, 50-34.

Surprisingly, Manu was one of the few players on either team who played with energy. It was a vintage performance, as he went for 26 points, 7 rebounds, 3 assists, and 1 steal with only 1 turnover. More, he just looked lively, driving past defenders to the rim, hitting his 3s, and playing with that typical Manu mania.

The rest of the team was hit or miss: Danny Green couldn’t hit a shot to save his life (0-8 from 3), but played his usual solid D, and had a game-saving block late; Patty continues to bring the energy, and his 2-point shot is coming back, but still has no legs on his 3; Cory had no luck running the offense on the first unit (only 34 points produced in 24 minutes), but had some nice drives when everything else was broken down; Kyle Anderson showed some good flashes, but still remains on an understandably short leash.

Still, it’s hard to complain. 0.7 seconds is sometimes all you need to change the course of a day, and ending the month with a win is big for this team.

Just how bad was December? At 8-10, it was perhaps the worst month of the Duncan era. The team played a whopping 5 OT games, losing 4 of them. If you think of OT games as 50/50 propositions, that’s pretty bad luck. 2 of the team’s 3 most important players sat out most of the month with injuries. More bad luck. The team played 18 games in 31 days; but, with 9 (let’s say that again: NINE!) OT periods, that’s the equivalent of 45 extra minutes of basketball, or essentially one more entire game. So the team played 19 games in 31 days with 7 back-to-backs against a slate of heavy hitters from the Western Conference. (The team plays 25 games over the next 59 days, to put that in perspective.)

In their 10 losses in the month, the average margin of defeat was 6 points. At least 2 of those losses came with starters sitting out. The Spurs were in most of those games, they just couldn’t always find a way to close. Bad luck. Of course, when you’re missing many of your top players, it’s hard to close. Bad luck.

Nobody feels sorry for you in the NBA, and other teams will go through equally brutal stretches. Pop said it best (from Dan McCarney):

“I’m just really proud of the guys. I can’t imagine a better group to do what they’ve done this month, to have 18 games and seven back-to-backs. And the quality of the teams is ridiculous. So I think these guys persevered really well. We probably could have won a few more games. I know we could have won a few more games. Just exhaustion got us several times. It looked like it did it tonight when we were down 5 in overtime. That’s why these guys are a fantastic group. They just keep playing. Like I said before, nobody cares about your schedule and all that sort of thing. We don’t let them dwell on it, but it is a fact. It did put us in a hole, so now we have to do what we can to see if we can recover without Tony and Kawhi for a while.”

I’m an optimist, I tend to agree with Pop. The team deserves a lot of credit, for persevering, for surviving. For possibly even growing stronger and getting tighter, even as their legs grew wearier. They have a lot of ground to make up, but the souls of teams are forged in the heart of the regular season, in these impossible stretches. We know what we have in this Spurs team; it’s why we’ll never forget 2014. Perhaps this month of December was the crucible they needed to wake them up, to get them ready for the task of repeating, which stands to be even more difficult than last year’s title.

If nothing else, I agree with Pop on one more thing: I can’t imagine a better, more fantastic group to do this with. I’m proud of this team, and proud to be a Spurs fan.

Here’s to a great 2015.

Go Spurs Go.

1 Comment

  1. Camroc

    I love your blog and read it regularly, but you and I and Timmy and everyone else know that Asik tipped that 0.7 lob in. The replay clearly shows Timmy never touched it…just sayin…