Season 49, Game 63
San Antonio 91, Indiana 99
53-10, 2nd in the West
A day after the Warriors shot a disastrous 4 for 30 from the 3-point line in a loss to the Lakers, the Spurs almost matched them by shooting 4 for 28 in a loss to the Pacers.
In a perverse (and inverse) way, this is a microcosm of the season: anything the Spurs can do, the Warriors can do just a little bit better. Or worse. Either way, the Warriors “performance” on Sunday was more noteworthy than the Spurs.
But both games go to illustrate the same point: no team, no matter how great, can overcome horrendous shooting. Four for 28 from behind the 3-point line is just absurdly bad. And while Indiana played really solid defense (particularly in the paint), this was just missed shot after missed shot after missed shot. Plenty of those 24 misses were open enough.
The Spurs fought hard, but they just couldn’t get over the hump. The team shot 13 for 50 in the first half (an abysmal 26%), and dug a hole they could never get out of. They made a strong push to start the third quarter, and for most of the second half, 6 was the magic number. Every time they cut the lead to 6, the Pacers would pull away again. Finally, with 4:04 remaining, they reduced the deficit to 5. They even got it to 3 eventually, but too many empty possessions and missed shots doomed the team.
Let’s credit Indiana, too: they played excellent defense. They played the type of stout interior defense that the Spurs showed in the first few months of the season which seems to have slipped as of late. The Spurs missed a bunch of easy layups. Whenever that happens, you have to give credit to the defensive presence for effecting those shots.
Paul George also outplayed Kawhi. Neither shot the ball particularly well, but I thought George played strong defense on Kawhi, who had another really poor shooting night (9-of-23, 39%). More than that, though, I thought Leonard was forcing his offense, and playing right into the hands of the Pacers’ help defense. Too many times he turned right into the secondary defender, and the Spurs were seldom able to find the advantage on offense, stopping at ‘good’ in their ‘good to great’ ethos.
The fact that the game was close late is a testament to the Spurs’ ability to continually pound that rock. Sometimes, though, the rock just never cracks. The Spurs just couldn’t quite get there. Conversely, the Pacers just couldn’t quite put the Spurs away. It was one of those nights, and it broke Indiana’s way tonight.
San Antonio isn’t going to win every game, even if it feels like they should. Still, with the schedule getting really difficult from here on out, they can ill-afford to drop too many winnable games. (“Only four of the Spurs’ final 23 games are against bottom-10 offenses, while 12 are against top-10 offenses. That includes six games against the teams that rank No. 1 (Golden State) and No. 2 (Oklahoma City) in offensive efficiency.“) This makes tonight’s game in Minnesota a lot more interesting and more necessary to win.
Go Spurs Go.
