After losing the series to Dallas in 2006, Pop asked “How athletic Spurs need to get to not lose by 1 point?”. Well, not a whole lot, but difference is instead of squeaking by other teams, you could put them away easily gaining precious rest for aging players. This off-season should be pretty interesting and lets see what the management does this time.

spurs need to get over game 3. focus on game 4. come out with the intensity that they had in game 2 and obviously, knockin down shots help.

go spurs go!

I have a question about Bonner – again. It’s obvious that he’s trying to body up Dirk when Dirk has the ball, but he takes like a 45 degree angle on him every time. Now, if I remember correctly, the most basic concept of defense, the one that I learned before anything else, is “Stay between your man and the basket.” Granted, it gets more complicated when you have professional, notably Pop’s, defensive schemes. So is Bonner expecting help defense on the drive? Even so, you have to obstruct the path to the basket at least a little bit when he drives in order to give the help defense a fighting chance to get there. What’s the deal here?

Another thing I noticed, and that I hope Pop is not happy about, it our closeouts on open perimeter players. In the days of yore, our defense closed out effectively on EVERY pass, sprinting to get there and breaking down in front of the man in case he decided to drive. On several occasions this series, the Mavs have kicked it out to the perimeter, and if we think we don’t have a chance of getting there, we all stand around and watch the open 3-pointer go up. That’s not Spurs basketball.

I’m by no means jumping off the bandwagon or anything like that, but I think we’ve become a little too accepting of the fact that the team takes days off and can’t seem to flip the “playoff switch” like they used to. I know the window is still open with Duncan (and potentially Parker), but now, the team is filled with a lot more questions than answers.

I hope I don’t lose my Spurs card for saying this, but a part of me almost hopes we lose to the Mavericks in the first round. I think it’s time to make some big changes and that may be the only way for them to happen. Our series against NO last year was very telling, but our ability to squeak by gave us a false sense that we would be fine, once Manu was healthy. So they brought back older players and didn’t really revamp the roster. Hill and Mason were great additions, but did any of us really think a Championship was within our grasp when Bowen, Finley, Bonner, Thomas, and Oberto were going to be playing such huge roles?

I love the Spurs and I want them to win. They have been the most consistent and dominant franchise in all of sports the past decade. They are the team everyone is trying to emulate. They have raised the bar to the highest level. So why am I complaining? Because we can’t begin to be complacent. We can’t accept not changing. And we can’t accept loses like last night.

But I still can’t shake the fact that we no longer have a road assassin w/out Manu and Horry. With Manu playing hurt last playoffs, four of our first five road games were double digit losses. Only the 41pt night by Tony resulted in a win. I also don’t like that we’ve had two chances to lead this series and put pressure on a fragile team only to come up lame in both. Missed layups and defensive assignments did us in during game 1; missing everything got us tonight. Credit Dallas from the 2nd quarter on but in the first, those misses had to do with bad luck more than Mavs pursuit.

Where is the desire to punk a team like Dallas, push them down and keep them there, whether we win in 5 games or 6? These are the Mavs; truth be told, nothing special. The only message we’ve delivered is that we can play our best on short rest and our worst while fully rested. It used to be that consistency was our personality. What is it now?