Season 48, Game 60
San Antonio 112, Sacramento 85
37-23, 7th in the West
It’s good to be home.
There are many counterarguments to be made against the impressiveness of this win. The Kings were on the back end of a crazy back-to-back, having played in NYC last night (before heading back East after the game). The energy was low, and they’re ‘giving up’ point wasn’t hard to find. And they’re the Kings. The Spurs have 3 nice wins in a row, but two of them are against the Kings (once without Cousins) and one of them against an unhinged Suns team.
To get up 40 points on a team in the NBA, however, means something, no matter the competition, no matter the night. At it’s worst/best, the score was 110-70.
Don’t underestimate the importance of these blowout games in gaining rhythm and confidence, either. Perhaps this is the game where Patty and Danny and Marco find their 3-point stroke; maybe somewhere in the 3rd quarter is when Parker starts to feel confident in that teardrop again. Maybe this is the game that Kawhi starts to discover how to get his offense in the framework of the rest of the team. These things all matter, and often come about in seemingly meaningless moments of meaningless games.
What is not meaningless: the defense being played over the last two games. The Spurs held the Suns to a record-setting low for a first half; tonight the Kings scored just 38 points in the first half after finishing the second quarter with a meager 11 points. The defense is clicking right now.
(AP Photo/ Eric Gay)
Perhaps not coincidentally, Splitter has been reinserted into the starting line-up and has seemed to find a little bit of his mojo from last year. (That stuff of Cousins at the rim was pure beauty.) When Splitter is on, the Spurs starting five is as good a defensive unit as you’ll find in the league, with great to elite defenders at 4 o the 5 positions.
Speaking of defense, the story tonight was Kawhi Leonard. He had an incredible first half on both ends of the floor, and almost single-handedly put this game out of reach in 24 minutes. Much like Bledsoe from the last game, Rudy Gay is going to have nightmares about Kawhi. It’s hard to overstate just how good his defense is. We saw his on-ball defense on Gay just completely stifle and frustrate him. On two occasions, he just took the ball out of Kings players’ hands in the air (once on Gay, once on Andre Miller). With his length, he can shut down ball handlers, but also completely shut down passing lanes off the ball, and help and recover on penetration without losing his man. When he is on, he can completely remove a player from the game and more or less shut down an entire half of the floor.
On top of this, he is probably the team’s best (or second best) rebounder, gets deflections and steals, and can turn all of those things into fast break offense and easy points.
If we measure effectiveness not only in points scored but also points prevented, we’d get a truer measure of Leonard’s brilliance. He scored 19 points in the first half, but it’s not out of the question to think that he also might have prevented 8-12 points from his defense, for a net effect of 27-31 points. In a half when the Kings only scored 38 points, that’s impressive.
Leonard’s offense was also on point tonight, particularly his jump shot. If he can get that midrange jumper going, it loosens up everything for the team. It’s also nice to see Kawhi start to be able to get his offense going in the flow and rhythm of the team offense. Before the game, Pop said he wants to see better ball movement and more “Spurs” offense for the rest of the season. Force-feeding Kawhi is over; it’s time to bring the two concepts together. Tonight was a good start.
It was also nice to see Tony start to get comfortable and confident. Particularly in the 3rd quarter, his jumper and teardrop really started to fall and he looked as much like the old Tony as we’ve seen in a while. During his period of struggles, so much of the problem was just him missing the shots that he often makes, and he would often miss them short. This often means that there aren’t enough legs in the shot. Tonight they had just a wee bit more ‘oomph’ behind them, which might indicate that he is getting his legs back.
Whatever the case, it’s nice to see him at ‘decent’ Tony, rather than ‘horribly awful’ Tony. We have 6 weeks and 22 games to get to an even better Tony.
The homestand continues Friday night as Denver (another reeling team that recently fired their coach) comes to town.
