Last night's game was very special. More so than we may know. Consider: The Spurs were, literally, dissecting us early on and we were on the ropes. Nate changed the defense to a 2-3 and we crawled back into it. Then, in the 4th we had the momentum our way and it was killed by a call so bad that I cannot ever reconcile it as a blown call. I think it was something more. We lost all our momentum, the Spurs went on a referee run and the game was over. OVER. But against great odds, we played both hard and a bit risky and placed ourselves in a position for overtime. That, in & of itself was a truly great accomplishment. But Manu's inability to jump gave us a near miracle shot at it and Nate drew up the play and Miller laid a perfect pass for Batum for an improbable win. We deserved it. We earned it. We overcame all obstacles for it. It was a great, great win and may help us remember to not give up despite all that can be thrown against us.
I agree with your post except for the word "improbable." It contradicts "deserving." The national media described us as lucky undeserving clowns. But the Spurs lacked Duncan, and it was on our court. They're .800 and we're close to .600. Our winning was probable, well maybe only 55%, but not a surprise.
I hate Popovich. They bitch and cry for 3 qrt. every timeout every break in the action. After an hour of crying they get every call or they can grab, lock arms or push on defense. I hate NBA officiating. So inconsistent and bias. Parker travels every time down the court. They double and triple teamed La every time. Defensive 3 second on every position. Nate need to be quicker with his adjustments. They killed us on pick and rolls. Why does he switch every time? Rudy needs to work on his shots. I see some improvement in his over all game this year but he is horrible with his jump shots right now. We got lucky with 2 steals and a dumb turnover otherwise the refs would have taken this game for us. We needed this win bad so I will not complain, my only question...How come we didn't keep Blakey??? I can not believe some folks favored Blake over Miller. Can wait for our next home game.
Nic is so laid back and chill, today on the plane he was acting like it was no big deal as everybody was on his jock!
Defending the pick and roll against Parker is extremely difficult. He's gonna blow by any big man that switches, drive for an easy lay-in/hand-off or kick out for 3. If you don't switch, hes still gonna do the exact same thing, although a little more difficult for him. So really, I think the only option is to switch and force him to shoot 20 footers. We failed pretty badly to do this. It's how the Spurs went on that huge run at the end.
I thought that you had assumed the new MIXUM role, with the Batum graphic post and the other silly thing you posted that escapes my mind right now.
Anybody got the last 2 minutes of the game on Youtube or something? I can only find vids of the game winner.
In the broadcast they said the Spurs were either unbeaten or lost just 1 game (can't remember) when shooting a higher precentage than their opponents and also that the Blazers are 2nd only to them in this category. I think the Blazers were shown to be 29-1 when shooting better and the Spurs were 41-0, I'm not 100% sure but that's what I recall. The point is, we eventualy won, even though they shot a (much) higher FG%! Another thing I wanted to note even though it has probably been said many times: the way Nate designed that last play to Batum was beautiful
For FG% 29-1 is correct for us, but it's now 47-1 for Spurs. Hoopstats says we are 23-2 when we have more defensive rebounds than the opponent (Spurs are 40-2). Our streaks are 7 straight games with fewer fouls than opponent, 5 straight with more 3FGA, and 4 straight with more FTA. We have 6 straight home wins.
