Season 51, Game 69
San Antonio 98, New Orleans 93
39-30, 8th in the West
It wasn’t always pretty, it wasn’t always easy. But it was a victory.
For the first time in a very long time, the Spurs strung two wins together, and in doing so, put themselves back in the playoff picture. Only a Clippers loss to the Rockets allowed them to squeak back into 8th. But a few more wins, and they’ll shoot all the way back up to 4th. That’s how tight this Western Conference race is.
After a very easy (and expected) win agains the Magic on Tuesday, Thursday’s contest against the Pelicans set up to be a more thorough test of the Spurs, hoping to provide an indicator of what we might expect over the final stretch of games.
The team started hot, scoring 37 in the first quarter, and 60 in the first half. Pop recently changed up the starting line-up, putting Danny Green back in as the 3, sliding Kyle Anderson to the 4 and LaMarcus Aldridge to the 5. Pop has long been reticent to go small (and especially to start small), but I like this new wrinkle. Aldridge is more and more the prototypical center in this “new” style NBA, and Anderson’s future in the league is almost certainly as a small 4. Against most teams, he has enough size and length to defend the opposing 4, while his PG-like skills cause problems on offense for most opposing defenses.
In the very small sample of this starting line-up, the team is definitely getting off to better offensive starts, which is critical.
Of course, the real issues in this long losing morass has been closing games in the 4th quarter. While the offense was still pretty ugly (a trend that started at the start of the second half), the defense was very good, particularly in the closing moments of the game. The Pelicans were limited to only 35 points in the second half, with just 15 coming in the 4th quarter. The Spurs didn’t score a basket in the final 5:55 of the game, but it didn’t matter, because their defense completely stymied the Pelicans, and they made just enough free throws to pull out the win.
Before we wrap this up, let’s give special recognition to Manu Ginobili. He had a stretch in the 3rd quarter where he took a charge from Anthony Davis (seeing a split second ahead of everybody else, he clearly stepped into the charge, baiting both Davis and the refs), blocked Davis from behind (what Spurs fans like to call “a Harden”), then pulled a Chris Paul and baited Davis into another foul by running him over at half court. And lest we forget, the charge was almost the direct cause of Alvin Gentry getting a technical foul, while Davis was assessed a technical after the second foul. Naturally, Ginobili made both technical free throws. For good measure, he knocked in a bit 3-pointer a few minutes later.
All this to say, at 40 years of age, Ginobili is as electric as ever. Never retire, Manu.
This was a huge win in the playoff race, as the Spurs gained a whole game on the Pelicans by both winning and forcing the Pelicans into a tough loss. The Pelicans now go home and play 5 games in 6 nights due to a being forced to play a game from earlier in the season that had to be rescheduled. That’s a brutal stretch, and hopefully the Spurs can make up even more ground on the Pelicans over the next week.
On Saturday night, the Spurs play another game with huge playoff implications against the Minnesota Timberwolves. They are playing without Jimmy Butler, so this is another great opportunity to get a good win and make up some ground in the West.
Go Spurs Go.
