Ugly Trend Rears Its Head in Game 4 Loss
For a stretch of about 36 hours, things seemed normal again for the Spurs. Their Game 3 performance had wrestled control of the series away from the Clippers in vicious fashion, and that juggernaut that rumbled through the 2014 postseason and the final month of the regular season had returned with Kawhi Leonard at the helm.
But on Sunday, following one of those pesky afternoon start times, San Antonio issued a reminder of a problem that’s plagued this team all season: Whenever things have appeared to stabilize for the Spurs at any point during their title defense, they’ve tripped. Even their most impressive run of the year — an 11-game winning streak that had San Antonio surging into the conversation of favorites — bottomed out with a loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on the final night of the season, a costly one that sent the Spurs from second to sixth in the standings in the blink of an eye.
The team’s Game 4 blunder, a 114-105 loss in San Antonio, was only its most recent. And much like fans of the team and media that covers it, perhaps the Spurs bought in too wholly to the 100-73 romp the Friday prior. Perhaps the Spurs felt control of the series was theirs. Instead, they head back to Los Angeles with home-court advantage no longer in the back pocket.
Shooting was awful for the second time in the series. San Antonio missed 19 3-pointers and 10 free throws, contributing to a 44-percent mark from the floor. The Clippers shot 53.6 percent. And as Chris Paul said at the podium following the game, Los Angeles was able to “play downhill” all day, killing the Spurs in semi-transition. When you miss shots and allow the Clippers to play fast, you’re looking for trouble.
And Paul was brilliant. The L.A. point guard ran Spurs defenders through screen after screen and, as San Antonio continued to switch on the perimeter, killed them with his lethal mid-range jumper.
“I just try to play the right way. When the shot is there, I try to take it. I try not to force things. I try to make the right pass,” Paul said. “I watched film yesterday and saw a few times that I could have been able to shoot it in Game 3, but tonight it was just the ball movement. We just played at the right pace and the right tempo and that is how we got shots.”
Whether it was the speed of the Clippers’ offense or confusion within the game plan, San Antonio’s perimeter defense got ripped to shreds. Paul went 9-of-12 from the field on shots in the paint (non-restricted area) and from mid-range, oftentimes dancing with Spurs bigs until he could drop them off with a step-back or scoot by them into that floater range. And when CP3 wasn’t carving it up on his way to 34 points, J.J. Redick was finding a lot of space in his best game of the series.
Per NBA SportVu data, nine of Redick’s 12 attempts were uncontested, leaving Gregg Popovich miffed at the way his team left Los Angeles’ best shooter with so much room to work.
“No matter who we had on him, both Kawhi (Leonard) and Danny (Green) didn’t do a very good job of playing him the way he needs to be played,” he said. “He had the better of them throughout the whole evening for sure.”
For whatever reason, San Antonio was unable to maintain its focus. The tandem of Green and Leonard has fast become one of the best two-man perimeter-defense units in the game, but the Spurs were overwhelmed by not only Paul and Redick, but Austin bleeping Rivers as well.
“We made too many mistakes. We were right in the game, we missed a layup, a wide-open shot, we fouled twice, they (Clippers) went up five and then started to feel better,” Manu Ginobili said. “I think the bottom line is that all the mistakes we made, they made us pay. In the game before, we did much better. We didn’t make as many mistakes, but few times that we did they missed shots. Today, they were inspired.
“Chris Paul was really sharp and made a lot of shots. (J.J.) Redick, (Jamaal) Crawford, everybody played a good game and we were not as inspired.”
Ginobili alluded to it: The Spurs still had a chance despite the mistakes.
San Antonio chipped away at the Clippers’ lead in the third, cranking up for the inevitable second-half run in front of a home crowd that wanted badly to lose its Fiesta-addled mind. The Spurs jumped on top with a pair of Mills free throws, only to give it right back. The two teams went back and forth for a few possessions before Pop pulled his old trusty trump card.
Except, Hack-a-Jordan didn’t exactly work the way he’d hoped.
Initially, the response was ideal. Doc Rivers pulled DeAndre Jordan after two consecutive trips— the first foul shooting foul was unintentional, however — resulted in his big man hoisting basketballs in all different directions but through the net, which is a win for Pop. Had he not been taken out, it’s likely the Spurs would’ve continued to lovingly bear-hug him away from the ball. The problem was, those two fouls put the Spurs over the limit, and the Clippers were in the bonus for the final three minutes of the period.
That’s not all that bad in itself, as San Antonio is typically very good at not fouling. Not on Sunday, apparently.
Up one with 2:15 left in the third, Tiago Splitter fouled Paul while aggressively chasing an offensive rebound he didn’t have much of a chance to grab. That set off a sequence of events that changed the course of the game. San Antonio would foul Paul three times in a 32-second span, sending him to the line for six free throws. He got them all.
The Clippers lead drifted to seven points over the next 1:35, and the Spurs never got closer than five points the rest of the way.
I still don’t quite know whether the Hack-a-Jordan approach works or not, though I tend to lean toward the former. Pop only elected to employ it once his team was over the limit; and given the way his team was starting to score, he wanted to take the ball out of Paul’s hands and prevent that offense from taking off again.
The strategy indirectly backfired, as those three quick fouls on Paul and the missed opportunities that surrounded them all but eliminated any momentum San Antonio seemed to have picked up as the third quarter neared its end. If you’re going to intentionally hack Jordan, you’d better be extra disciplined and judicious with your other fouls.
This wasn’t where the game was won or lost, though. It was a pivotal stretch of time, as the Spurs had just jumped back in front and recovered from a halftime deficit, only to give it back by the end of the period. But when you’re not hitting shots, and when you’re not converting free throws, mistakes are compounded.
We’ve seen San Antonio play sloppy games in the past, only to have timely shooting bail them out. That can’t happen against a team like the Clippers during this time of year. The Spurs’ energy and focus will bounce back for Game 5 — it always does — but they can no longer afford these clunkers.
Predicting what this team will do next has become something of a crapshoot, and that’s not something to which we’re accustomed. Just when you think the defending champs have rediscovered what makes them click, they botch the delivery and flub the landing. Two Spurs starters were held scoreless, including Green, whose 3-point shooting at home has been light years ahead of his numbers on the road. Those kinds of performances are sometimes excusable away from the AT&T Center, but not inside it. Not when home-court advantage is no longer something you can give away.
San Antonio will be better tomorrow. I’d put money on that. The thing is: I’m just guessing, and that’s an unfamiliar feeling.
