Season 48, Game 66
San Antonio 100, New York 104 (OT)
41-25, 7th in the West
Almost. Instead, it was just just plain pathetic.
Pop said it best after the game: the team didn’t respect the game, didn’t respect the opponent. It was a pathetic performance, all around.
Lou Amundson (he’s still in the league?) should not be out-rebounding, out-hustling, and out-playing Tim Duncan. Alexey Shved (who?) should not be driving by Kawhi Leonard and getting to the rim at will. Langston Galloway (did I make that name up? It’s a fantastic name) should not have his career-best game against us, and be so confident that he’s throwing up heat check 3s against Duncan… and making them.
Up and down the roster, the Knicks just played better. To wake up a tired cliche, they simply wanted it more. A lot more. The Spurs second and third units should handle this Knicks team fairly easily. They are the worst team in the league, more or less playing to lose games. The Spurs are in the middle of a crowded West, jockeying for position (and presumably trying to get better).
Pathetic. There was no life in the team. This is the kind of game that Kawhi should just take over and dominate on both ends of the floor. Instead, he was mostly invisible for three quarters, and I’d argue he was a net zero in the 4th in OT, as his mistakes balanced out the good he did.
For the first time I can possibly ever remember, Duncan played with a lack of passion and urgency, getting pushed around under the rim.
Parker started strong, but missed a bunch of easy bunnies at and near the rim. (To be fair, so did most of the team.) He tried to do as much as he could alone, and the offense was stagnant and–for lack of a better phrase–complete shit. That’s not all on him, but it starts with him.
(Adam Hunger/USA TODAY Sports)
Pop tried a little bit of everything, even putting in Ayres and Joseph and Reggie Williams to see if anybody could bring some energy and spark to the game. Nope. Nobody could. Only Splitter acquitted himself well, playing hard, scoring at the rim, and gobbling up rebounds. I was disappointed to see Pop sit him in favor of Diaw late, especially since Diaw continues to play sloppy and without passion.
Again, the team missed 4 “clutch” free throws late in the 4th and in OT, which is impossible to quantify or assign any meaning, and yet means everything irrationally. Just make your free throws and….
Widening the scope, a loss like this more or less solidifies the Spurs in back half of the Western Conference. You just can’t keep losing these types of games and expect to be a top seed. Also, I think there’s a good chance this is the year that the Spurs fail to reach 50 wins, and it won’t be because of tough losses to the Clippers, or the Cavs, or those double OT heartbreakers; it will be this loss tonight, that stupid OT loss to the Lakers at home, that loss at the buzzer to Detroit. So many games this season should have never even been close, and the Spurs have lost too many of them.
The other disappointing thing about this loss is that the Spurs now have to turn around and play in Milwaukee tomorrow night. The hope was that the team could dispatch of the Knicks easily and rest their starters, and have a good chance to come back home with two wins. Now the most likely outcome is two losses. With all the starters and key bench guys playing big minutes, it’s hard to know what the team will have left for Milwaukee, or even if some players will rest. Once the game was tight late, the Spurs had to win it to salvage the effort invested. Instead, they lost tonight, and might very well lose tomorrow night because of it.
That’s a bad two days in the NBA.
At the very least, let’s hope that tomorrow night’s performance isn’t as pathetic as this one.
