Season 51, Game 25
San Antonio 117, Miami 105
17-8, 3rd in the West

On Monday night, the Spurs used the 3-ball to stay in contact with the Pistons, eventually eking out the win. On Wednesday, the Heat were on fire from deep, nearly pulling off the upset of the Spurs at home. Luckily, the Spurs were mostly able to match the Heat from deep and were able to out-execute the Heat in the other areas to get the win.

Miami hit a ridiculous 18 3-pointers in this game (on 53% shooting from deep). They seemingly could not miss. The Spurs, though, hit 13 (on 52% shooting), keeping up enough to win the game in other facets. While you never want to give up 18 threes in a game (to be fair, some of them were shake-your-head-and-laugh shots that went in), it was nice to see the Spurs embrace the deep ball themselves.

In today’s NBA, you have to be able to shoot from deep. Sure, you can zag against the rest of the league’s zig and continue to play traditional bigs and emphasize the post and midrange; but not at the complete eschewing of the 3-pointer. It just means too much in the game, and you have to take them (and make them) to keep up.

While the Heat are no Warriors or Rockets, they do like to play that style. So to see the Spurs match them was encouraging. Also encouraging: watching the Spurs start the 2nd half small (with Rudy Gay essentially playing the 4 instead of the 3) and try to speed up the pace a bit to match the Heat. Again, it’s nice to be able to play two traditional bigs together and impose your will, but a team needs to have flexibility to compete. Over the last two years, it felt like Coach Pop was a bit too inflexible in his rotations and line-ups, so it’s nice to see him tinkering a bit more at this stage of the season.

Also nice to see: for the second straight game, the Spurs recorded 30 assists. Everybody who played more than garbage time recorded at least one assist, except for LaMarcus Aldridge, who did other things to hold his own. (Though, once again, he did not have a great game, and the Spurs were still able to play well.)

And finally, the bench came to play. The Spurs bench scored 49 points, led by Bryn Forbes channeling his inner Steph Curry and going a perfect 5-for-5 from deep and scoring 17 points total. Kid has game, and it’s nice to see him get the opportunity to succeed (and fail) and grow into his game. Manu Ginobili and Patty Mills also scored in double digits off the bench.

Up next: the team with the best record in the NBA comes to town. The Celtics beat the Spurs in Boston at the beginning of the season. Hopefully the Spurs can return the favor on Friday night.

Go Spurs Go.