Kent_in_Atlanta
11-23-2010, 02:19 PM
http://www.foxsportssouthwest.com/11/23/10/Fast-and-Furious-The-new-look-Spurs-demo/landing.html?blockID=358898&feedID=4519
By Mike Piellucci
FOXSportsSouthwest.com
For three quarters of Monday’s 106-97 win over the Orlando Magic, the San Antonio Spurs looked an awful lot like the 2009-10 edition.
The Big Three of Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan led them in scoring and provided the vast majority of their offense. Richard Jefferson looked every bit the player that led NBA observers to label him washed up at 29. The unsung heroes of the Spurs resurgence – Matt Bonner, Gary Neal, and Tiago Splitter – were nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, their peanut butter-and-jelly style of play, predicated on isolations when they have ball and grinding out stops when they don’t, was in full effect. Like the length of John Stockton’s shorts, you could have substituted it in for any game in the Duncan era and it wouldn’t have looked an inch out of place.
Except for one little detail; heading into the fourth quarter, the mighty Spurs were losing.
Then the fun started and by game’s end, the new go-go Spurs had notched their eleventh straight win in their newly atypical style built around dizzying ball movement and long-range bombing. The league’s most consistent team of the past decade extended its franchise-best start to 12-1, and did it in a manner completely antithetical to how they built four title-winning teams.
How, and why, has this happened?
It starts with one unassailable truth: after years of being the ageless wonder, Duncan is finally running out of gas. At 34, the old warhorse is averaging career lows in points, rebounds, field goal percentage and minutes, with the latter dipping under the 30-minute mark for the first time in his career. As a result, while interior defense is still among the league’s elite, his erosion on offense and his worn-down body have forced him into a peripheral role in San Antonio’s game plan.
Case in point, Duncan has five single-digit point games in thirteen contests this year; last season, it took until March to reach that mark.
Like many great inventions, then, the Spurs' new look has been borne out of necessity as much as anything.
The offense now fully runs through Parker, who amidst personal turmoil is enjoying arguably the finest season of his career, averaging 19.1 points per game on 54 percent shooting as well as dishing out a career-high 7.7 assists per game. Granted, he put up equally gaudy numbers in 2008-09, the first season Duncan began the gradual process of passing the baton to the flashy point guard, but the 28-year-old has been given liberty to influence the team’s style of play with his fast, frenetic game rather trying to weave his magic within the more structured attack that ran through Duncan.
And influence he has. Heading into Monday, San Antonio’s mark of 107.8 points per game ranks second in the league and a full half-dozen points more than last year’s mark of 101.4. No one has benefited more than the newly resurrected Jefferson, who averages 16.3 points per game to place third on the team in scoring, primarily due to his timely cuts to the rim being rewarded by savvier, and more frequent, distribution.
Meanwhile, the three-pointer, previously a supplementary weapon in the Spurs’ arsenal, now takes center stage. The Spurs are fourth in three-point attempts with 8.7 per game and rank second three-point shooting percentage at 43 percent; by comparison, no Spurs team in the past decade has ranked higher than sixth in attempts.
Certainly, the bulk of the credit goes to Bonner, who leads the league in three-point field goal percentage, but Neal has proven to be yet another find unearthed by the Spurs' front office. Between the two, as well as the typically proficient Ginobili, San Antonio has shored up the weakness that was their primary downfall in the five-game drubbing by Phoenix in the second round of last season’s playoffs.
Monday’s fourth quarter proved to be a microcosm of how that reconfigured style has devastated opponents in the campaign’s early going.
Trailing 77-74 entering the period, Ginobili sparked a 7-2 run that put the Spurs back on top with a slashing layup before assisting on the next two Spurs buckets. This is the type of run that has characterized San Antonio in the early going: quick, efficient and more likely to result in a net gain of six points than 16, but also much easier to replicate several times throughout a game.
Minutes later, they used a similar spurt to ice the ball game. After Bonner, Jefferson and Parker combined for the next 16 Spurs points, 12 of which come on three pointers, Parker set up a cutting Duncan for the go-ahead layup that doubled as the first points of a 7-0, two-minute long run that put the game out of reach for Orlando, and an 11-3 streak to end the game.
Given that the Magic led 95-94 as late as two minutes, thirty seconds remaining in the game, the final run was nothing short of dominant and, after an early part of the schedule that raised questions about whether the aging Spurs core could still hang with the NBA’s elite, should serve notice that the hot start is far from a mirage.
Ultimately, Monday’s win was a paradox for Spurs fans. It didn’t look like a traditional Spurs game, nor did it feel like one. But the result, and the Spurs’ perch atop the Western Conference, is all too familiar.
Whatever the case, their identity has changed. If they plan on adding to their gaudy win total, they'll have to keep it that way.
By Mike Piellucci
FOXSportsSouthwest.com
For three quarters of Monday’s 106-97 win over the Orlando Magic, the San Antonio Spurs looked an awful lot like the 2009-10 edition.
The Big Three of Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili and Tim Duncan led them in scoring and provided the vast majority of their offense. Richard Jefferson looked every bit the player that led NBA observers to label him washed up at 29. The unsung heroes of the Spurs resurgence – Matt Bonner, Gary Neal, and Tiago Splitter – were nowhere to be found.
Meanwhile, their peanut butter-and-jelly style of play, predicated on isolations when they have ball and grinding out stops when they don’t, was in full effect. Like the length of John Stockton’s shorts, you could have substituted it in for any game in the Duncan era and it wouldn’t have looked an inch out of place.
Except for one little detail; heading into the fourth quarter, the mighty Spurs were losing.
Then the fun started and by game’s end, the new go-go Spurs had notched their eleventh straight win in their newly atypical style built around dizzying ball movement and long-range bombing. The league’s most consistent team of the past decade extended its franchise-best start to 12-1, and did it in a manner completely antithetical to how they built four title-winning teams.
How, and why, has this happened?
It starts with one unassailable truth: after years of being the ageless wonder, Duncan is finally running out of gas. At 34, the old warhorse is averaging career lows in points, rebounds, field goal percentage and minutes, with the latter dipping under the 30-minute mark for the first time in his career. As a result, while interior defense is still among the league’s elite, his erosion on offense and his worn-down body have forced him into a peripheral role in San Antonio’s game plan.
Case in point, Duncan has five single-digit point games in thirteen contests this year; last season, it took until March to reach that mark.
Like many great inventions, then, the Spurs' new look has been borne out of necessity as much as anything.
The offense now fully runs through Parker, who amidst personal turmoil is enjoying arguably the finest season of his career, averaging 19.1 points per game on 54 percent shooting as well as dishing out a career-high 7.7 assists per game. Granted, he put up equally gaudy numbers in 2008-09, the first season Duncan began the gradual process of passing the baton to the flashy point guard, but the 28-year-old has been given liberty to influence the team’s style of play with his fast, frenetic game rather trying to weave his magic within the more structured attack that ran through Duncan.
And influence he has. Heading into Monday, San Antonio’s mark of 107.8 points per game ranks second in the league and a full half-dozen points more than last year’s mark of 101.4. No one has benefited more than the newly resurrected Jefferson, who averages 16.3 points per game to place third on the team in scoring, primarily due to his timely cuts to the rim being rewarded by savvier, and more frequent, distribution.
Meanwhile, the three-pointer, previously a supplementary weapon in the Spurs’ arsenal, now takes center stage. The Spurs are fourth in three-point attempts with 8.7 per game and rank second three-point shooting percentage at 43 percent; by comparison, no Spurs team in the past decade has ranked higher than sixth in attempts.
Certainly, the bulk of the credit goes to Bonner, who leads the league in three-point field goal percentage, but Neal has proven to be yet another find unearthed by the Spurs' front office. Between the two, as well as the typically proficient Ginobili, San Antonio has shored up the weakness that was their primary downfall in the five-game drubbing by Phoenix in the second round of last season’s playoffs.
Monday’s fourth quarter proved to be a microcosm of how that reconfigured style has devastated opponents in the campaign’s early going.
Trailing 77-74 entering the period, Ginobili sparked a 7-2 run that put the Spurs back on top with a slashing layup before assisting on the next two Spurs buckets. This is the type of run that has characterized San Antonio in the early going: quick, efficient and more likely to result in a net gain of six points than 16, but also much easier to replicate several times throughout a game.
Minutes later, they used a similar spurt to ice the ball game. After Bonner, Jefferson and Parker combined for the next 16 Spurs points, 12 of which come on three pointers, Parker set up a cutting Duncan for the go-ahead layup that doubled as the first points of a 7-0, two-minute long run that put the game out of reach for Orlando, and an 11-3 streak to end the game.
Given that the Magic led 95-94 as late as two minutes, thirty seconds remaining in the game, the final run was nothing short of dominant and, after an early part of the schedule that raised questions about whether the aging Spurs core could still hang with the NBA’s elite, should serve notice that the hot start is far from a mirage.
Ultimately, Monday’s win was a paradox for Spurs fans. It didn’t look like a traditional Spurs game, nor did it feel like one. But the result, and the Spurs’ perch atop the Western Conference, is all too familiar.
Whatever the case, their identity has changed. If they plan on adding to their gaudy win total, they'll have to keep it that way.