Season 49, Game 46
San Antonio 130, Houston 99
39-7, 2nd in the West

Lose a game by thirty, win a game by thirty (one). It all comes out even in the wash.

Of course, no amount of beatdown to the Rockets can change what happened on Monday, but it’s nice to know that the Spurs didn’t magically lose their ability to dominate in that game, that the Warriors didn’t some how steal their powers. The Spurs are still doing to the rest of the league what the Warriors did to them.

I can’t think of a team I’d rather have a cathartic bounce back win against than the Rockets. It always feels good to beat them. It feels really good to beat them by 31 points.

So in the spirit of good tidings, here are some positive things to take away from this game:

–Is that Danny Green’s 3-point stroke returning? He was 6-8 from long distance tonight, and is 11-18 (61%) over his last 4 games. A very small sample, yes, but an encouraging one. More encouraging? He is 25-50 for the month of January (12 games), for a nice round 50%. That’s good. And his defense is still holding up.

–LaMarcus Aldridge did not forget how to play basketball. We can fret as much as we want about how he’ll show in big moments, but those questions won’t really be answered until the playoffs. Until then, we have a stud All-Star PF that we can use at our leisure. When he’s aggressive looking for his offense, he can put up games like this (he does seem to enjoy taking it to Houston): 25 points, 10 rebounds, and 5 assists, on 9-13 shooting.

–The offense looked more fluid and devastating in spurts than it has most of the season. Some of that is the Houston defense, certainly. But as we say over and over, things are a lot different when that 3-ball is falling. It just opens up so much inside, and eventually it will stretch out a defense until it collapses. The team was 12-23 from deep tonight.

–After a hard night against the Warriors, Parker looked spry again facing the Rockets. He was aggressive in attacking and breaking down the offense. The Warriors are a tough match-up for him (as they are for most players), but the season-long trend is overwhelmingly positive for Parker.

–Anderson played great minutes as a starter. Boban got quality garbage time in and put up another double-double. More importantly, he got a lot of reps figuring out how to be most effective in the post with his size. McCallum showed some much needed shooting touch. Simmons again showed an aggressive floor game. The end of the bench role players all got quality time in.

Another big test for the Spurs as they face the Cavaliers in Cleveland on Saturday night.

Go Spurs Go.