Author: Stephen Hale (Page 17 of 22)

I don’t even know where to start. My cup runneth over. After six years and what seemed like an eternity, the San Antonio Spurs are back where they belong, in the NBA Finals, the place we call home. Familiar territory. Old stomping grounds. It’s where we hang our hat.

Before we go any further, let’s take a second and give some credit to the Memphis Grizzlies. I cannot recall another playoff series that was as physical and yet respectful. This wasn’t like the Clippers series that had players taking each others’ heads off. It wasn’t like the cage match between Chicago and Miami. This was true basketball, the way it was meant to be played. You foul a guy, make sure he doesn’t score, and then help him get back up.

This sense of mutual respect had a spotlight shown on it when Marc Gasol abandoned a potential 5-on-4 fast break to check on Tony Parker, whom he accidently poked in the eye. Grasp that. Gasol is down three games to none. He is on his home court. He is trailing in the game. His team has the ball and is charging down the court and Marc is concerned about his opponent who is down on the ground.

Class.

Memphis just was not the better team in this series. They fought hard and showed resilience, but they just didn’t have the pieces to compete with the Spurs. Maybe that Gay-for-Prince trade can be blamed, maybe Z-Bo’s headband can be blamed, maybe Karma can be blamed. Regardless, we say goodbye to our fallen foe and press on into the NBA Finals, our home, on 9 days rest. We deserve it. In this series, the Spurs finally played four games to their full potential and it was scary good. Well, except that game 3 where we went down 18, Pop went hockey-line change on everyone and we climbed back into it. But like I have been saying all year long, a sign of a good team is when you can play like crap, and still win.

Tony Parker is the best point guard in the league. I hate agreeing with Stephen A. Smith, but he is. You saw the full repertoire from him this series. You saw him control the pace of the game with extremely high efficiency, you saw his incredible court vision (18 assists? Really? Freak…) and then he caps it off with 37 in a close out game. He was 15-21. He missed six shots. Six. Uh, Carmelo? Well, this is awkward…

Manu Ginobil. That guy, man. I tweeted last night that in about six seconds I went from wanting to stab him to wanting to hug him. I think Popovich has given up trying to coach him and instead just crosses his fingers. That being said, when he went 5-hole on Prince to CoJo for the lay-up, I wanted to dance Gangnam Style (my wife didn’t let me). FYI, last night he had the Devil’s stat line 6-6-6. That might explain his 6 turnovers too…

Speaking of Cory Joseph, he might be one of my favorite Spurs. That kid deserves a spot on this playoff roster and deserves some clock. He works his butt off on every play and doesn’t make a lot of mistakes. I love him. I think everyone loves him. Except Nando De Colo, but that’s for another time…

Matt Bonner and Tiago Splitter deserve huge credit. Take a look at Zach Randolp’s stat line in this series. He had 44 points in the entire series. To put that into perspective, Quincy Pondexter had 61. Save for his rebounds, Z-Bo was virtually non-existent this series (48 rebounds for Z-Bo, Duncan and Splitter had 49 combined). I mean, those two completely took him out of his offensive game. He got nothing easy. The Red Mamba didn’t have his best shooting series, but he is a pest on defense. Tiago also swatted away that Bayless reverse lay-up at a crucial time. By the way, Tiago needs to dunk the ball more. He gets a lot of lay-ups around the basket where he could dunk the ball and create a more intimidating persona, but instead, he just does a lay-up. He is like a Liger: fun to see, but gets weird after a while.

Guys, Boris is a blessing in disguise. His court vision can’t be taught. He came into the league as a Point Guard. He had a few Whataburgers along the way, but his vision stayed. That shot he made in the middle of the lane had Jeff Van Gundy drooling and rightly so. His Hi-Lo game with Duncan is Disney-quality magic.

Danny and Kawhi are rockstars. I think our Hammer action sets are probably my favorite. If you aren’t familiar with Hammer action, take a look at this YouTube video about San Antonio Spurs offensive sets and learn about it. Teach it to your sons.

But Danny and Kawhi are starting to make a living off of it in these playoffs. And that isn’t even their best skill right now. Those guys are some very impressive defenders, Kawhi in particular. I think KL2 is extremely underrated and would do a superb job on either LeBron James (more on that in a minute) or Paul George. Danny is coming into his own as well.

And all that defense talk brings me to our Anchor.

Timothy Theodore Friggin Duncan. He is having a great rookie year. He should have been the Rookie of the Year. Of course he made First Team All NBA, but that was to be expected for this bright, young star. This young kid runs the floor better than any big man in the game right now. His youthful exuberance is a bright spot for this franchise and I expect him to have a long, successful NBA career throughout the next decade.

***reads note that has been handed to him

Correction folks. Tim Duncan is 37 years old. Apparently he was a rookie in 1999? This doesn’t add up. Shouldn’t he be moving like Will Purdue right about now? Why is he beating players down court on a consistent basis? Something isn’t right here.

I’m not going to say anything else about Tim Duncan. Bill Simmons said everything that needs to be said in that pre-game segment. That was the greatest thing ESPN has ever done. It was perfect. Show that to your sons as well.

Now, on to the Finals. Of course, everyone is already saying Miami. Look, Miami has to get past Indiana first. Miami will probably win that series in 6 games, but they still have to do it. Right now, we have a guaranteed seat at the table and until Miami’s ticket gets punched, they still have to go through the motions. They are 2.9 seconds away from being down 1-2 in that series. They have to win another big game in Indy and the Pacers CAN win that series. Miami is the better team, but not by the margin most people think.

I hope Miami makes it to the Finals for a ton of reasons. First, I think we match up better against them than we do Indy. Indiana is built like us and has the size to give us fits. But I also want Miami for the same reason that every other Spurs fan worth their salt wants Miami: they represent everything that we oppose.

San Antonio and Miami couldn’t be more different. They love the lime light, we hate it. They make Harlem Shake videos, we don’t. They have an offense built around one player, we play team ball. Their Big Three are all formed through free agency due to deep pockets. Our Big Three has been formed through the draft and have been together for over a decade. Their fans don’t show up until the second quarter of games, our fans have to be asked to leave the AT&T Center. Their fans buy Miami Heat gear online, our fans wait outside Academy stores at midnight.

(photo by Scott Glenn @scottie87)

But the scouting reports might as well be thrown out because neither team has played against each other at full strength. It’s too early to scout them anyways. Miami has a big obstacle in front of them and they have to win two more games to get to the table. I won’t pick Indy, but I am not going to count against them either. I abstain.

One thing is for sure, the San Antonio Spurs are going to the Finals. ’99, ’03, ’05 and ’07 were great. But this one seems a little sweeter. We have been counted out all year long. We continue to piss off David Stern and ESPN and we withstand all the “old” jokes, even though

The Spurs have a great chance to win their fifth ring. I expect Rookie Tim Duncan to lead them all the way.

Finally. Adversity.

Going into Wednesday night’s game, the Spurs were the only team still undefeated in these playoffs. I’m not going to be so trite as to suggest that we were arrogant and cocky, but I will say this: we seemed complacent. The problem is that you can’t be complacent when playing a team like the Golden State Warriors. They can shock you, quickly. We’re talking about a young team, with a short memory, that can shoot the lights out on any given night. I’ve always believed that you live and die by the three, but these guys have yet to even break their stride.

Our biggest struggle so far has been the first round “bye” we played against the depleted Los Angeles Lakers. I was as excited as the next person to see the Spurs draw the Lakers in the first round. Given our own health concerns, I felt like it would be a breeze for us, and it was. But the bottom line is this: throughout those four games we did not play San Antonio Spurs basketball. We did not look like the San Antonio Spurs team of last February, or of the earlier months of the season, the team that looked unbeatable at times. We played down to a level that complimented the Lakers. And even though they were depleted and weak, we could not count them out because they are still the Lakers.

The San Antonio Spurs I know and love are always counted on to be the San Antonio Spurs, known for solid basketball, good ball movement, quick, smart decisions and solid defense. IThroughout that Lakers series, we focused on the Lakers not being the Lakers, rather than the Spurs being the Spurs. We had the luxury of flying under the radar and not being exposed by a depleted team.

It was great that we won four in a row, but now we’re facing a young, energetic Golden State Warriors team. These guys are good. Really good. They aren’t your father’s Golden State Warriors. They are not scared. And in Steph Curry and Klay Thompson, they have two kids who just have to be in the gym and they are officially in range.

We won the first game, but it was an awful win. I was jumping up and down screaming in my living room like a 5-year-old and almost lost control of myself. Afterwards I felt stupid when Manu pointed out the obvious: we did not deserve to win that game. I felt really dumb. Then the worry bugs started to squirm in my gut.

There are two ways of looking at the first two games in this series:

1) we can say that it’s a sign of a good team when you can play like crap and still win. We played awful and we swept the Lakers. We played awful and we came back from 16 down with under four minutes left to rally to beat the young, energetic Golden State Warriors in double overtime in the first game. Those are both good things. The problem is that we’re playing a seven game series. We’re not as young as the Warriors and we weren’t able to pull off two giant comebacks within 72 hours.

2) I’m more concerned (and encouraged, strangely) that we are not playing San Antonio Spurs basketball yet. That is also why I’m grateful that we are finally facing legitimate adversity.  Now that we’ve lost homecourt advantage, our backs are officially against the wall. We haven’t had any issues in the first round, save Splitter’s ankle. And while the first game win was great for us in the series overall win-loss column, it didn’t help us stop playing bad basketball. Now we find ourselves on the ropes. We have to go into Oracle Arena for two games and hope for, at worst, a split.

I think this is the type of adversity this Spurs team needs. They need to play a little bit on edge, almost scared. They need to play with a bit of urgency and a little bit of panic. 99.9% of the time I don’t agree with Skip Bayless. The one thing I do agree with him is that, for some odd reason, we played better on the road. I watch Tim Duncan’s post-game interview and something he said encouraged me. David Aldrich from TNT asked him how he felt about going into that loud arena on Friday night. Duncan being Duncan, kind of rolled his eyes, paused for a second, and then said basically that they never really care about that kind of stuff. Yeah it’s going to be loud, but they don’t really get caught up in all that kind of stuff.

And that’s my hope in all this craziness right now. I think this adversity can help us in the long run.  We could talk about matchups all day long. We could talk about how great these guys are shooting. We could talk about wanting Danny Green or Kawhi Leonard on Steph Curry. We could talk about our shooting percentages, lack of ball movement and lack of assists.  We could talk about Warriors getting into the paint anytime they want. We could call Tony Parker a liability on the defensive end right now.

All of that stuff is valid, but it leads us back to the main problem: we’re not playing San Antonio Spurs basketball. And up until this point it’s been acceptable. We’ve been okay getting by with “good enough.” The truth is you can’t win in the playoffs on “good enough.”  And if there’s one team that knows it, it’s the San Antonio Spurs.

Let’s also keep in mind, Pop is not worried. Pop has to appreciate what’s in front of him. I’m sure he is enjoying it to an extent. He’s appreciating the fact that there are two kids shooting the lights out, unconsciously at times. He’s appreciating that Steph Curry is going bonkers and that there’s not really anything we can do to stop that. But he is probably pissed that we can do a better job of controlling the tangible things and we aren’t doing them. Things like hustle plays, loose balls and boxing out. You know, the stuff that normally works for us.

I don’t expect too many changes moving forward. As far as match-ups are concerned. But I do expect this team to come out with a sense of urgency. I wouldn’t expect a bubbly Coach Pop at their next practice and I would think a pretty grueling film session is in order. Then again that’s probably not what he will present to the media. I expect him to be “bubbly” with them and talk about how “fun” it all is.

Pop is the one person I want in my corner right now. I also want the greatest Power Forward of all time paired with a top 3 point guard. If only we could package them with a couple years of playoff experience, one of the best benches in the league and a solid road record, we would be fine. If only…

If we can get our heads out of our respective backsides, we’ll be in good shape. Let ESPN throw the baby out with the bath water. Let them be the ones to count us out.  As fans of the black and white, we can’t be moved and swayed by any of that. I fully expect to get a “W” in Golden State. It’s going to be allowed to be crazy, to be a riot.

Better shooting isn’t the answer. It either goes in or it doesn’t. More stamina isn’t the answer. Tracy McGrady or Stephen Jackson is not the answer.

Pure, authentic, solid, bust-your-butt San Antonio Spur basketball is the answer. And we may have just found the adversity we needed to get back to playing it.