San Antonio Spurs 96, Phoenix Suns 110: A Dragic death from 15 feet
AT&T CENTER-The night belonged to Goran Dragic, but the story of his momentous fourth quarter started long before he hit his first three-pointer. It began in the first half when working with an 18-point lead, the San Antonio Spurs needed only 15 feet of rope to hang themselves.
Mirroring Game 2, the San Antonio Spurs gave a dominant first quarter performance that they failed to sustain. The moment Manu Ginobili’s step back jumper ended the first half to give the Spurs a fragile six-point lead instead of the large double-digit advantage they once held, the game was over.
From that point on, there were any number of inevitable story lines the Phoenix Suns could have written in taking a commanding 3-0 lead in the series, Dragic was merely the vessel through which they were carried out.
But honestly, it could have been any number of Phoenix Suns players. Unfortunately for the San Antonio Spurs there is no forthcoming regression to the mean this series. Because when you allow a team to hang around long enough in a game in which they had been thoroughly dominated, these are exactly the kind of performances you enable from fringe players.
“I just kept telling our guys that we needed to hang around because I think we’re good enough offensively that somewhere along the line we’ll get to run and score some baskets,” Phoenix Suns head coach Alvin Gentry said. “As long as we’re close enough, I told them we couldn’t let them get enough separation that we had to work so hard to get even that we can’t get over the hump.”
As he has been for almost the entirety of these playoffs during his Godfather-like rise up the coaching ranks, Alvin Gentry was absolutely right.
The San Antonio Spurs did everything conceivable to set the tone early. Gregg Popovich reinserted Tony Parker as the starting point guard to generate offense from the outset. And the defense appeared to be locked in from the first possession when Amare Stoudemire, driving baseline, was smothered by the long arms of the Tim Duncan.
Between Duncan’s defense and either of his front court partners peppering the Phoenix Suns with jump shots (Antonio McDyess 3-4, six points, Matt Bonner 2-2, six points) on feeds from the new starting backcourt (Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker combined for six assists in the first quarter) the San Antonio Spurs built a 28-19 lead.
With the change of venue to the AT&T Center came an early change of mindset for the reserves. Matt Bonner regained his steady jump shot, scoring 11 points on six shots, while each of Channing Frye’s three-pointers appeared rushed.
Jared Dudley was nowhere to be found while DeJuan Blair, on a pair of post moves to start the second quarter, ignited the home crowd into a frenzy. And when Tony Parker followed those with a nifty baseline spin for a 39-21 lead, the San Antonio Spurs appeared to be in control for quite possibly the last time this series.
After a missed free throw on an and-one opportunity from Leandro Barbosa, Tony Parker was undercut by Amare Stoudemire in an odd sequence in which Parker jumped off two feet as if to meet Stoudemire at the rim, as opposed to any number of his usual bag of tricks. Parker landed hard on his right shoulder, resulting in an injury that will require an MRI today, and was never the same.
Parker missed both free throws (in what was, other than Dragic, the theme of the night) and the San Antonio scored a total of three points on their next 10 possessions. On the night the Spurs missed 12 free throws, dying a slow death, 15 feet at a time.
“Well, missing seven free-throws in a row is not a good thing. We were playing very well defensively and offensively, but we gave up a great opportunity by leaving nine points at the free-throw line in the first half,” San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich said. “I thought we lost a little bit of aggressiveness with that. We made a couple of defensive errors and they got back in the ball game.”
Many of those defensive errors included leaving Jason Richardson open behind the three-point line. Richardson (21 points) continued his scorching hot playoff run, keeping the Phoenix Suns within reach by hitting 5-7 from three.
“They’re the best three-point shooting team in the history of the league, that has a lot to do with it,” Popovich said. “We did have some breakdowns and we made some mistakes, we had too many people that didn’t have good games.”
Again, that last statement can probably pointed at Richard Jefferson, who struggled through a 1-9 shooting night-even blowing an open dunk.
Throughout the season much has been made of Gregg Popovich’s predilection for small ball lineups, but the problem has not been with the theories of small ball itself-as the Phoenix Suns have shown so far-but the fact that the San Antonio Spurs small ball options are simply terrible.
It starts with Jefferson. Theoretically the lineup allows the Spurs to space the floor for Tim Duncan. But Jefferson as a shooter has regressed so much that he no longer even attempts to spot up from the three-point line. Instead Jefferson now finds himself spotting up for inefficient 15-foot baseline jumpers, territory that the Spurs used to get away with way back with Avery Johnson because, you now, he would occasionally hit a few.
With the Spurs small forward eschewing the corner three in favor of the corner two, Tim Duncan no longer has the spacing needed to mitigate the Phoenix Suns small ball tactics.
“If you have success with something you’re going to stay with it so in that sense, it really didn’t surprise me,” Richard Jefferson said when asked if he was surprised the Suns went small for so long. “I couldn’t hit a shot, I needed to play better tonight in order to help the guys.
“I made some defensive mistakes that you can’t make against them, especially when you have a guy like Dragic, who along with Richarson, hit some really tough threes.”
Instead the Suns are finally using their smaller, quicker lineups to their advantage, using the pick-and-roll to repeatedly generate favorable matchups to attack Tim Duncan defensively.
“It was a very effective thing for them,” Tim Duncan said. “They used their pick-and-rolls to get the match-up they wanted and I tried to do my best to contest the shots, they just didn’t miss any.”
Which brings us back to Goran Dragic. All these events helped set the stage for a moment Dragic should have never had, but given the opportunity he played out of his mind.
There were the five three-pointers, both spotting up and off the dribble. The midrange jumpers with Duncan covering. And even without these shots he will not likely be repeating ever again (at least not in such volume), there were the dream shake layups which are certainly reproducible.
“When we put him in the game we told him he had to be aggressive, even at the risk of making some mistakes,” Alvin Gentry said. “I think everyone forgets what a great athlete he is, he’s as fast with the ball as anyone on our team. When he’s playing with confidence, he’s got a lot of little tricks and he shoots the ball exceptionally well.”
So when Dragic lined up his final three-pointer, it fittingly found the bottom of the net. The night, deservedly, was Dragic’s. The spotlight was provided by the San Antonio Spurs.
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