The Spurs? 15-game winning streak: A look inside the numbers (Ball Don't Lie) ...more ?
One night after the Oklahoma City Thunder convinced a lot of people that they were the team to beat in the Western Conference by walloping the Los Angeles Lakers , the San Antonio Spurs offered their retort: A measured, professional destruction of the Los Angeles Clippers.
In the 108-92 Game 1 win, the Spurs made perhaps the best point guard in the world look ordinary. They choked off Chris Paul's patented pick-and-roll game, eliminating his outlet options and forcing him to take contested shots, harassing him into a 3-for-13 showing, five turnovers and his lowest point total since Feb. 4 . Without its primary weapon, Vinny Del Negro's team became a half-dimensional one-on-one team, and the results ? 92 points, a 7-of-17 shooting performance by Blake Griffin, barely any offensive spark to speak of (save for the excellent bench play of Eric Bledsoe) ? spoke for themselves.
On the other end, San Antonio calmly got just about whatever it wanted, wherever it wanted. Of the Spurs' 80 field-goal attempts in Game 1, 65 came either in the paint or from 3-point range, according to NBA.com's shot location statistics , and they made 32 of them (52.3 percent), including a shattering 13-of-25 mark from beyond the arc. That pushes their postseason success rate on long balls to 43.4 percent; the next most accurate team from distance, the Thunder, has hit 38.6 percent . To do all that on a night where point guard Tony Parker ? who carved up the Utah Jazz in the opening round (21 points on 50 percent shooting and 6.5 assists in 32.8 minutes per game in the sweep) ? missed 8 of 9 shots, scored just seven points and turned it over nine times in 38 minutes? That's pretty impressive.
Also impressive: The win was San Antonio's 15th straight. (As BDL editor emeritus/TBJ co-host J.E. Skeets noted Tuesday night , it's also the Spurs' 28th in their last 30 games and 43rd in their last 50.) They haven't lost since a 14-point defeat at the hands of the Lakers on April 11 ? that was 35 days ago .
But it's not only that they've been winning; it's the way they've been winning. Just how good has Gregg Popovich's team been during its rampaging run? Let's take a look inside the numbers.
Jamaal Tinsley caps a nice career turnaround with a classy note on Twitter (Ball Don't Lie) ...more ?
Four years ago, at around this time, Jamaal Tinsley was coming off a season that saw him play fewer than half the games his lottery-bound Indiana Pacers participated in due to injury woes. He shot well under 40 percent for the second straight year, and his sluggish play inspired the team to send former All-Star center Jermaine O'Neal to Toronto for point guard T.J. Ford on draft night to replace Tinsley as a starter. A few months later, with the 2008-09 season about to begin, Tinsley was kindly asked by the Pacers to stay away from the team, while they figured out how to either trade or release him. Between that impasse and Tinsley's re-emergence with the Memphis Grizzlies, the one-time All-Rookie team member wouldn't play a second of NBA basketball for 21 1/2 months.
Fast forward to May of 2012, and Tinsley ? well, he's still shooting way under 40 percent, in the playoffs at least. He's 34 now, and his Utah Jazz were just swept from the playoffs, and it's possible he's played his last NBA game. Still ? he's going out as a professional this time around, as evidenced by the tweet he sent out on Monday night following his team's elimination :
Gregg Popovich hates all this winning, ?scared to death? as Spurs advance (Ball Don't Lie) ...more ?
The San Antonio Spurs eliminated the Utah Jazz on Monday night, finishing off a four-game sweep that pushed them one step closer to making Al Jefferson look like a prophet . As Kelly Dwyer wrote after the game, the Spurs are on a hellacious run right now, having won 14 straight games stretching back to April 12 , and 25 of their last 27 going back to March 21 , with 17 of those wins coming by double figures. It actually goes even deeper, as SB Nation's Mike Prada wrote Tuesday morning ? they're 28-4 since March 9 and a whopping 30-5 since March 1.
It's not like they've just been knocking over tomato cans, either; while all five San Antonio losses in the last two-plus months have come against playoff teams (one each to the Jazz, Nuggets, Clippers, Mavericks and Lakers), so have 15 of the wins (one each on the Knicks, Magic, Thunder, Mavs, 76ers, Pacers, Celtics and Grizzlies, two over the Lakers and, of course, five against the Jazz). That run of form, plus the go-go offensive system and 10-deep crew that have fueled it, have some thinking that the steady-as-she-goes Spurs are the team to beat in this chaotic postseason. And that idea really, really bothers Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, as you can see in his response to the final question of his postgame press conference in the clip above.
"How confident are you going into the next round and, potentially, winning a championship?" the reporter asked.
"As usual, scared to death," Popovich replied.