The Spurs wallopped the Nuggets in Game 6 Thursday to force a Game 7 in that 2-7 series in the West. We’ll see on Friday night if the Clippers can force a Game 7 against the Warriors and make it a do-or-don’t weekend.
No one should be mystified that the Spurs are doing this, and not just because the Nuggets have very little collective playoff experience beyond Paul Millsap. The Spurs often do this! Here’s why, in my humble opinion: they always know what they are supposed to be doing, and the Spurs’ system on both ends is always designed to support the players’ strengths.
On the latter, for instance: in a league gone mad with three-pointers, the Spurs have few knockout three-point shooters (four of them, none of them top-three options on the team). As a result of playing to their strengths, San Antonio had the lowest three-point rate in the league. They still had the No. 7 offense in the NBA this season, though. The offense was based around ball protection and getting good shots wherever you find them. DeMar DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge shot quite efficiently on twos (DeRozan at 49 percent, Aldridge at 53 percent), Rudy Gay had his most efficient and lowest usage season ever as the third banana, and the others who mixed in focused on taking good shots and moving the ball without giving up turnovers. It worked! On Thursday, the Spurs had seven turnovers and shot 20-29 in the mid-range.
Meanwhile, the game plan every night is perfectly clear to everyone in a Spurs uniform. They know who they are and who they are not. Some of them are still learning the finer points of defensive philosophy, and it’s not the quickest or longest bunch, which has led to some problems on that end this series and season.
Both of these things come back down to this, the sole constants in the franchise over the past two and a half decades: the roster always makes sense, and the coaching is impeccable. When the roster has All-NBA-caliber players, the Spurs will be a title contender. When the roster has a fringe all-star or two, the Spurs will be competitive in the playoffs. It’s clockwork, and it should be celebrated.
All hail the Spurs, the anti-trend, ultra well-managed NBA team that will apparently never go away.
Scores
Nuggets 103, Spurs 120
Series tied 3-3
Schedule
Warriors at Clippers, 10 ET (lmao welp), ESPN
Golden State leads series 3-2
Links
Rest in peace, Hondo. A key part of the latter Russell-era title run and one of the greats from the oft-ignored and maligned ‘70s era of the NBA. Here’s Bill Simmons’ appreciation of Hondo from ‘07. And a somewhat more recent appreciation from Professor Parquet on CelticsBlog.
Nikola Jokic had a perfect game, what would have been a signature NBA playoff moment that’d live forever in fame in Denver, Serbia ... everywhere, really. And the other Nuggets let him down.
Oh, no. Oh, no. Someone delete this post about these Raptors worth getting overconfident about!
As much as it would delight me to share laughter over the report that Magic Johnson quit because he was accidentally CCed on emails between Jeanie Buss and Rob Pelinka that ripped on him, it comes from an unreliable reporter and as such, is probably not believable until someone else reports it. At the same time, Magic has alluded to something about “truth coming out” so we’ll see.
On the Clippers’ bright future.
The Kings and NBA hired some very well-placed lawyers to investigate the Luke Walton allegations.
Zach Lowe has some early winners and losers from the first round.
We have been updating our eight big questions to be decided this spring.
How the fraud against Lonzo Ball was discovered.
Sheesh, Diana Taurasi is going to miss a bunch of the WNBA season too.
A really fantastic piece from Candace Buckner on the Bucks being the talk of the town in Milwaukee, and wanting to talk to the people of Milwaukee about race.
Be excellent to each other.