Season 48, Game 80
San Antonio 104, Houston 103
54-26, 3rd in the West
Tim Duncan capped off a tremendous game in which he put up 29 points and 10 rebounds with one last important number: 1. As in, 1 clean block.
(And lest you think it a foul [though I doubt many reading this would], the NBA officially ruled it a clean block.)
Of all the tremendous things Duncan does, my favorite aspect of his game is probably his ability to get blocks without any real ability to jump. It’s just those long arms and tremendous timing and coordination. He does it routinely, so it takes a game-saving and season-enhancing one to really remind you of it. We needed every one of those 29 points we got from him; but we needed the two he denied even more.
Photo: Bill Baptist/NBAE/Getty Images
What a game. This near to the end of the season, playing the same team in back-to-back games, with the outcome of the game having a huge impact on seeding, this had the energy and intensity of a playoff game. Imagine if these two teams meet in the first round? It’ll be like starting with Game 3. We’ll really despise the Rockets by the end of that series.
It’s hard to talk about the game without talking about Pop’s strategy of hacking Josh Smith. This is a divisive subject. It’s hard to argue against its detriment to the game: it slows the game way down, it’s ugly to watch, and it tends to rob the game of the beauty and joy that makes basketball such a wonderful sport. But it’s often sound game strategy, and there’s a certain childish logic to rewarding players for being so bad at an important aspect of the game (shooting) that you want to remove a rule to have them not do it. Horrible (and by horrible, we are talking historically bad, usually) free throw shooters should not have the rules amended for them.
The game theory gets a little slipperier. In the time that the strategy was employed, the Spurs were more or less zero sum. But the impact can’t strictly be measured in plus/minus. For one, it still requires the Spurs to execute and score on offense. If they don’t, it doesn’t mean that the strategy of fouling is a poor one, it just means they failed to capitalize on it.
The other impact is that it completely kills the Rockets’ offense, and, most importantly, it takes the ball out of James Harden’s hands. If you think that James Harden-led offense is going to score more points per possession than a Josh Smith-at-the-free-throw-line offense, than you put Josh Smith at the free throw line. Sometimes the best defense is to not even let the offense begin.
Danny Green also played solid defense on James Harden. He played him one-on-one about as well as you can. Deny him the ball as much as you can, try to keep him out of the paint, and dear God, for all that is holy, do not foul him. The bigs have to show before he gets all the way to the rim and encourage him to pass out or pull up. He’s an All-World offensive player and impossible to completely stop, but in a playoff series it’s really easy to slow down a one-dimensional offense.
Baynes was also important in this game. In a game or series featuring Dwight Howard, that second big is always going to be crucial. Splitter is the ideal option, but Baynes has had a great season and offers a better than average replacement for Splitter. On offense, he even adds some things that Splitter doesn’t, like a little more range on his shooting. Mostly, though, he offers a big body to bang with Howard and frustrate him. (And who doesn’t love seeing Dwight get frustrated?)
I was really happy to see Kawhi play through early game struggles. His offense was just off in that first half, but he kept playing great defense and kept trusting his game, and in the second half, his shot was there and he was critical in the win.
And did you see those two huge Patty Mills’ threes? And the fist pump he gave after each? If that Mills is here, look out.
The win puts the Spurs in the catbird seat for a top seed in the West. There are still way too many scenarios to suss out between the 4 teams fighting for the 2, 3, 5, and 6 seeds, and it’s even conceivable that four teams could end the season with the same record. A few things to note: Memphis and the Clippers hold the individual tie-breakers over the Spurs, unless the Spurs win the Division (meaning they finish ahead of Memphis); the Spurs have it over Houston. In the event of a three-way tie at the top of the Southwest between Memphis, San Antonio, and Houston, the Spurs hold that tiebreaker. If the Spurs win out, they almost certainly get a 2 or a 3 seed; if they lose one of the remaining games, they are most likely the 5 or 6 seed.
As weird as it feels, we should root for the Clippers to beat Memphis tonight, and for Houston to win out. I know, fight the urge to vomit in your mouth.
The most important thing–and easy to root for–is that the Spurs win their last two games of the season. Up first, the home finale against Phoenix on Sunday.
