Sacramento Kings 106, San Antonio Spurs 118

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The Spurs beat the Kings last night in a game punctuated by San Antonio dunks.  It’s not often that a Spurs scribe can write those words, so I’m getting them in while I can.

Sacramento played the Spurs tight, but the Spurs more or less controlled the game from the start. It was, I suppose, a comfortable win, despite a late 4th quarter run by Sacramento. (The Kings, for what it’s worth, have five good young players in Tyreke Evans, Omri Casspi, Jason Thompson, Donte Greene and Spencer Hawes. If you didn’t know, now you do. They’re fun to watch.)

This game should come as a welcome relief for Spurs fans as the team finally got a solid performance from each of the Big Four in the span of the same 48 minutes. Richard Jefferson came out swinging from the opening bell, and the team fed off of his early aggression. He scored 3 of 4 of the Spurs’ opening baskets, two of which were dunks off Tony Parker assists.

Jefferson had his best game as a Spur, especially because he found ways to contribute alongside San Antonio’s established core. Or, put differently, this is the first game of the season when all four Spurs All-Stars played well within the flow of the game. Hopefully, the injuries and learning curves that have slowed the team’s progress this season will begin to fade from view.

The game began with a dunk, and that’s more or less how it ended. Manu Ginobili had an and-1 layup and dunk on consecutive possessions with about two minutes remaining-these plays effectively put a halt to the Kings’ comeback attempt. The game was bookended by Spurs plays at the rim. The Spurs are a team that could use more of that.

LJ Ellis recently spoke on behalf of the Spurs’ faithful when he wrote:

Since returning from injury, Ginobili hasn’t been able to finish at the rim — it’s that simple. He’s just 6-for-25 on two-pointers in the last four games. On the season, he’s shooting 42.9% on shots around the basket. Last season, that number was at a sizzling 65.5%. As well-rounded as Ginobili is as a player, he’s no longer a star if he’s lost athleticism to the point that he can’t finish consistently at the rim.

So this victory offered hope that Manu Ginobili is, in fact, a star returning to form. No need to cue the houselights just yet.

The Spurs have shown that they can beat middle of the pack and bottom feeder teams. But they’ve yet to show they can beat the league’s best teams. In order to do that, they need to play consistently dominant defense. And they need Richard Jefferson and Manu Ginobili to play, well, like they did last night.

  • SG

    Good job Spurs! Beating the teams you’re supposed to beat is a must.

    Ginobli is showing signs of progress, but he needs more playing time to get his groove back. Hill is taking too much playing time away at the SG position.

    What do you guys think? Does Pop use too many rotations?

    I think the front-court is now set: Duncan/Bonner and McDyess/Blair or some combo of these guys depending on matchups and performance that game.

    What about the back-court? What are the roles?

    Spurs team have been really good at executing in the past because players understood their roles and played extremely well within it. I don’t think a lot of guys on this team know their role because Pop has been tinkering with line-ups too much.

  • Vic De Zen

    Seemed like everyone was on Jefferson’s case lately. If I’m honest, there was good reason to be. Happy for him that he had a breakout game.

  • JT

    Thank God we got a win, but it was disappointing that we gave up so many points. The Kings came back from 15 down twice in the game, we cannot afford to have this against the “TOP 5 or 6”.

    Tony is playing great, but at times I still think he tries to force himself in, if he goes to the basket and is surrounded, just send the ball back, don’t try to score against 4 guys.

    Finally we see Jefferson emerge as the player we all know he can be. Thank you Pop for giving him the OK.

    Also, I see how much Bonner has quieted people lately, Bonner has improved a lot this season ans shooting very well. I wished he trained a bit on jumping abilities and became a better shot blocker, then he would be perfect.

    Lets see if we can beat the Bobcats team, funny how the have a player from almost every team in the NBA.

  • Dr. Love

    Do that against a seasoned team that plays defense and then I’ll be impressed. Doing it against the Kings was fun to watch, but not that much of an accomplishment.

  • Sauce

    We should be dominating the paint against a team like the Kings whose frontcourt (and backcourt) is made up of second year players.

    I agree with JT. I always saw use of Bonner and it’s nice to see people have stopped pleading for a trade with him.

  • http://www.48minutesofhell.com Timothy Varner

    Too true, Dr. Love.

  • pastrypride

    Good win. Glad to see so many guys contribute, especially Manu and RJ.

    The glass half full perspective, of course, is that the Kings shot over 50% and scored over 100 pts. Can anyone say what was missing from our D?

  • Dr. Love

    Some of the high score was bad D, but also the Kings scored many easy buckets on a lot of fast breaks and offensive putbacks. We’re still turning it over way too much, and we still need an elite center to dominate the boards.

  • Chris K.

    WATCH FOR THE COIL! Great article on the Spurs. That and the Kings win gave me a lift…

    http://www.hardwoodparoxysm.com/2009/12/10/watch-for-the-coil/

  • drew

    how great it’d be if we played non-playoff teams in the playoffs.

    sigh.

  • http://www.goodtimescomic.blogspot.com Jordan

    Statistically, our defense was horrible. However, I don’t think that was the case last night. I would argue that the offense was bad while the defense was pretty good.

    Yes, I know we scored nearly 120 points, but with the turnovers and positions that our guys were in on offense, when the Kings ran the break we gave up the points. They had 24 fast break points for the game and close to 50 points in the paint last night. Nearly all of those fast break points were layups which increases FG% and points in the paint. So if we had committed half the turnovers, the Kings would have scored 98 points give or take and we’d be talking about how the Spurs did a good job holding a young athletic team in check.

    Turnovers and transition defense were the reason the Spurs let the Kings stick around. When we got back and were able to set up, our defense did a passable job. Not great, but passable.

  • DanielB

    Just some input real quick on the defense. I thought we played pretty decent defense last night. We had one real bad stretch when we had a Bonner/Blair frontcourt, so the Kings were penetrating with ease. That wasn’t necessarily a lack of defensive effort in my opinion. Bonner/Blair aren’t exactly big men that can stuff up the lane or intimidate with shot blocking abilities. I believe it was both Duncan and ‘Dyess that came back in the game and the defense tightened up again.

    Then, a thing to note, is that the Kings were just knocking down shots period. We contested a lot of jumpers but the Kings were still making their shots. So it wasn’t ALL bad defense, or as bad as the stats might suggest. The Kings played well.

    Anyway, that’s just my 2 cents.

  • junierizzle

    Ill take a win any day of the week. THe kings did cut it to a 2 point deficit, right now we would be yelling to trade everybody if they blew this one.

    Sometimes you need a game against a weak team just to boost your confidence.
    RJ especially needed this one. He’s been getting looks like that all season, he finally knocked em down. I think he will be more aggressive from now on. RJ needed a game like this with TD in the line-up, best game with TD.
    As for their Defense, I think the SPURS are so amazed that they can put up all these points. When you put up a lot of points and it feels easy you get lazy on defense. Its natural. They tightend up when they needed to.

    Besides, IF this were a seven game series the SPURS Would lock up all those young guys by game 2.

  • Latin_D

    You have a knack for stripping a game down to its essentials, Tim. Kudos, as always.

    All in all, this was a step in the right direction. It’s true that you need to beat the best teams from time to time if you want to win the title - it’s just as true that you need to beat the mediocre teams consistently, too. We have one of those down pat.

  • rj

    i didn’t like the d last night, but nice to know we have a potent offesnse to pick up for lax defensive intestiy. of course, we can’t do this all year.

    hopefully, we will start getting rj going in transition early in the game. if he is involved from the get go, his confidence will be high throughout. i thought we played a little too slow in utah. we should use our transition attack early and often. with our offensive diversity, we should be able to control the pace if the game.

  • Dr. Theopolus

    This was the first game where it seemed obvious (at least to me) that Pop decided to get RJ involved from the beginning. The back screens for alley oops and the two man game with Tim were great, however they seemed like OBVIOUS moves we should have been doing about 15 games ago.

    Pop’s rigid structure was the foundation for our past success but it’s a two sided coin. That rigid structure also keeps him from adjusting. He needs to be a lot quicker to adapt now, especially when it’s something so glaringly obvious. Others may say RJ had his previous chances during the season, and while that’s true to an extent, I never got a sense Pop wanted to adapt the team to RJ. Instead, RJ was having to fit into a super-sized Bowen role - which explains all the talk about fitting in. Fans attacked RJ for being passive, but I took it as a statement that he didn’t have a role that he could embrace. Yes, he should play better D but there’s no reason to clip his wings.

    RJ is durable and an athlete. We need to ride him through the regular season to keep Manu rested(and Tony as well, sad to say). This should have been our approach when we got RJ. Instead Pop was trying to make him into Bowen.

    Pop, please, get out of the past. It’s like the die was cast in 2005 and everything since then has been about replacing those pieces.

    Everyone’s expectations has been that the team needs months to get the system and finally crack the rock. This is not to say we should begin taking shortcuts but old ways need to be dropped.

    The Spurs became elite when Tony and Manu were allowed to play like themselves. Maybe RJ should also be allowed to play his normal game? If he does, I have a good suspicion his defense will follow, but I’m fairly positive that trying to make him into an elite defender will not increase his offensive production.

    Hopefully, last night was the beginning of a new direction and not an abnomaly.

  • ThatBigGuy

    After RJ’s alley-oop, my brother looked at me and asked, “I thought the Spurs were playing the Kings tonight…”

    This was a nice game all the way around. It was good for a confidence boost for nearly everyone. Sure the defense wasn’t wonderful as the score would attest, but all we need are baby steps.

    Is it just me, or does Blair have some of the best basketball instincts in the league? He always makes at least 2 plays a game (by pass, rebound, or bucket) that make me do a double take. If Blake Griffin has the same amount of “Basketball IQ,” then he’s headed for the Hall of Fame.