Season 49, Game 77
San Antonio 88, Utah 86
65-12, 2nd in the West
I don’t want any part of this Utah team in the first round of the playoffs.
(The irony is, by beating them, the Spurs probably make it more likely they’ll meet the Jazz in the first round.)
In reality, this Utah squad is more like a 4 or 5 seed. They’ve been beset by injuries this season, and haven’t quite lived up to their full potential. However, they are putting it together late in the season and peaking at just the right time.
They will be a handful in the first round. They play really strong defense. They now have just enough offense to match. They have a real home court advantage. They are well-coached and play their butts off. Despite the Spurs sweeping them on the season (with the first 3 games being pretty significant blowouts), this is the team I think the Spurs least want to face in the first round. Even though I’m confident they’d get through, it’d be the most taxing of the potential series. (The ideal situation would be the Jazz getting the 6-seed and playing the Thunder in the first round. They could really push the Thunder.)
Still, last night the Spurs won a thriller. The Jazz caught fire in the 4th quarter, hitting 14-of-17 in the quarter, including 5-of-5 from 3. After giving up 53 in the first 3 quarters, the Jazz managed 33 in the final frame. The Spurs could not stop a single thing the Jazz wanted to do on offense. It seemed inevitable that they would pull the win out.
The Spurs got just enough. A Kyle Anderson 3 – only his 11th of the season. A Tony Parker 3 with Rudy Gobert draped all over him. OK, Tony. Every time I wonder why Tony is out there and wishing that anybody else would run the offense, he does something that at least momentarily justifies his presence on the court.
And with 6 seconds left in the game and the Spurs inbounding, they eschewed the trickery, and just gave it to Kawhi isolated on the post. Swish.
I actually thought Kawhi had a pretty poor game. He seemed low energy in the first half, having very little impact on the game. He got a bit more aggressive in the second half, but seemed to have a bit of tunnel vision, missing a couple open shooters and passes that would have led to obvious advantages, instead trying to do too much for himself.
With the game on the line, though, the boss put the ball in his hand, and said ‘shoot it.’ Why not? His jumper is pretty un-guardable, and he’s proven he can make it in pressure situations. A similar moment may come in the playoffs, and we’ll know that we can trust the man with the giant hands to get us a good shot.
Photo credit: Bleacher Report
Most notable, however, was the significance of the win in the record books: with the victory, Tim Duncan notched his 1000th career regular season win, becoming only the third player in NBA history to achieve the feat (Kareem Abdul-Jabaar and Robert Parish being the other two). And Tim is the only player to do it with one franchise.
This is rarified air, and perhaps the truest, simplest measure of Duncan’s brilliance and impact. Parse the numbers any way you want it. In the end, you end up with just one: 1000. Wins. All Tim has done for nearly two decades is win games.
The Spurs next travel to Golden State to face the Warriors tomorrow night. All sorts of things are at play over the final week of the season as the Warriors and the Spurs play two more times. The Warriors are chasing 73 wins, the Spurs a perfect home record. Each team has the chance to hinder the other.
But there are bigger things at play as a potential Western Conference Finals showdown looms. Neither team wants to give away too much. I expect Pop to rest several key players for Thursday’s game, and play it more straight up in Sunday’s game in San Antonio.
Go Spurs Go.
