Season 49, Game 18
San Antonio 89, Chicago 92
14-4, 2nd in the West
First to 90, wins. Let’s go ahead and call that a defensive battle, and ignore the other possibility.
We know that San Antonio has the best defense in the league. Despite a coaching change to fix their offensive woes, the Bulls still maintain their identity from the last few seasons: stout defense, unimaginative offense. This is the game you’d expect between two defensive squads.
The last three minutes of the game featured a score of 3-2, in favor of the Bulls. Three free throws (and probably 4 or 5 misses) from Chicago; one Tim Duncan team drop from San Antonio. That’s it. Over the final 6 minutes, the Chicago Bulls had exactly ZERO made baskets. And won the game.
(Getty Images)
To find the turning point of the game, though, you have to go back to an earlier 3-minute stretch: the first 3 minutes of the 4th quarter. The Spurs entered the final frame up by 3. Over the first 3 minutes of the last quarter, the Bulls bench put together an 11-2 run against the Spurs bench, taking an 81-75 lead. The Spurs would fight back to even it up, but in a game measured in inches, not feet, that 9-point margin was gigantic.
The Spurs are still very much a work in progress on offense. There will be nights it looks like it’s really close, and nights when it just seems hopeless. As the team struggles to figure itself out offensively, there will be fits and bursts in different areas. Sometimes Aldridge will have it going, some nights it will seem like he’ll never hit a jumper again; some nights Kawhi will be an unstoppable force, some nights he’ll miss every shot he puts up; and some nights the bench will be our salve, and some nights the bench will be our undoing.
We’ve yet to really put a complete offensive game together, and that will just take time. Pop is still figuring out lineups and player combinations that work, also while managing minutes and keeping an eye on the long view. The Spurs probably could have won this game, but Pop is unwilling to win a battle at the expense of the war.
We lost a game on the road to a very good team full of players that always seem to play well against us. You go to dinner and get ready for the next one.
Milwaukee comes to San Antonio Wednesday night.
Go Spurs Go.
