Season 48, Game 35
San Antonio 101, Washington 92
21-14, 7th in the West

A tired team playing a grueling road schedule ran out of gas late in the game, eventually falling. For the first time since November, that team wasn’t the Spurs.

Fresh off two days rest and with the toughest stretch of the schedule in the rearview mirror, the Spurs held off a scorching start from the Wizards to close out the game late. Washington, on the other hand, had lost a close game the night before in Oklahoma City. You could see them running out of gas late in the third, and things finally fell off in the fourth.

After scoring 35 points in the first quarter (and 58 in the first half), the Wizards were held to just 34 points in the entire second half. Some of this was the Spurs’ defense tightening up. But a lot of it was just fatigue, as the tired legs of the Wizards led to settling for plenty of midrange jump shots, and a good majority of those jump shots coming up short. Their shooting percentage fell off each quarter, ending up below 20% in the final frame.

The Spurs, on the other hand, kept up consistent play throughout. They fell behind by double digits in the second quarter, but fought back to tie it by halftime behind great performances from Cory Joseph and Patty Mills. (Tony who?) Cory continues to impress as an aggressive penetrator able to break down defense and score at the rim; Patty showed off his re-discovered jumper, scoring 10 points in about his first 3 minutes of action on 4-4 shooting.

In the second half, Playoff Boris (aka Aggressive Boris) made a rare appearance, taking his game down into the low block, scoring at will and running the offense out of the post. It’s nice to see this Boris. A little bit of regular season malaise is expected from him, so it’s refreshing to see this Boris is still in there. Hopefully we’ll see a bit more of him before the playoffs, and a whole lot of him in the playoffs.

Tiago and Marco also had really nice second halves, both playing their own brand of aggressive basketball. Marco had 12 points and Tiago had 16, both kind of quietly. On a night when Tim and Manu weren’t scoring much, it was good to get production out of those two.

Manu had a pretty bad “Bad Manu” night, but then there was this. So all is forgiven. Manu has to Manu.

It was a nice win, and it’s nice to have December behind us. The schedule eases up a bit, so hopefully the team can get a little rhythm, get healthy players back (it’s looking like Tony will be back soon, Kawhi could be a few to several more weeks), and make a little move in the Western Conference.

Up next, Detroit comes to town on Tuesday night. Detroit has had a pretty bad season so far, but is undefeated since trading Josh Smith. Still, this should be another Spurs’ win.