^ 2nd'ed. I also thought Duncan was whining like crazy through most of the game. And it wasn't like he was even getting bad calls from the refs, the Raps just pressured the hell out of him. What a nice surprise. This game reminded me a lot of the Clippers one. Our offense wasn't always great, but we played some of our best defense to grind out), but a win. This one's a lot more satisfying obviously, because it comes against the defending champs. I was glad to see Bargnani out there playing a crucial role during most of our runs. He didn't necessarily light it up on the scoreboard (none of our players really did), but he was tipping balls out, making some beautiful passes, and using his length on defense (3 blocks). Kris Humphries was the player of the game, IMO. He's such a strong rebounder and even though I hate those jumpers he takes, he made up for it with some great hustle baskets. After the Phoenix game, its good to see the Raps squeeze out a W with Bosh on the bench.
I'm not sure what Juan Dixon's strategy was, either forcing up a shot or giving it to Humphries with six seconds left on the shot clock, but it never caught up with us and we got a major win. Beating Santy Anny at the Alamo is as good as it gets. Hopefully this is our slump buster and we can polish off this road trip in style.
Lol at Gregg for coming back then getting kicked out again. It was a very good game for us in a sense where we can take away that we shut down Duncan and Parker and we hit our shots when we had too. Sam Mitchell coached this game very well, IMO, by leaving Bosh on the bench and playing his hot hands till the end. Delfino and Kapono were great and Hump just continues to show he belongs on our team. Tonight we should see a well rested Bosh come in and play a great game. No McGrady so if we can defend Yao like we did Duncan, we should win this game.
One thing that bothered me was that we still gave up way too many open 3 pt. looks. Don't get me wrong, I still thought the Raps did an excellent job of pressuring Duncan and forcing Parker into turning the ball over, but we also benefited from an uncharacteristically bad shooting night by the Spurs. I wish we wouldn't double so hard, even when we're facing a player of Duncan's calibre. Also, Calderon got absolutely abused defensively.
Parker took it to Calderon every time. But, Calderon kept answering back on the offensive end. The doubles almost every play were a bit hard, but we did get lucky with Finley and others missing their shots.
