Spurs defense shows improvement against Mavs
By Jeff McDonald - Express-News
Over the past two games, the Spurs have demonstrated two vastly different ways in which to win a basketball game.
They beat Toronto in a shootout on Monday, winning 131-124 in the team's highest-scoring regulation game since 1993, then followed with a suffocating 92-83 win over Dallas on Wednesday.
If given his druthers, there's no doubt which way coach Gregg Popovich would rather win games. Hint: It's not the score-happy way his team beat the Raptors.
“I don't think we can sustain that,” Popovich said. “We'd be a of a team if that's the case.”
Throughout the preseason, Popovich spoke openly and often of wanting to return his team to the ranks of the defensive elite. Before Wednesday's game, he sardonically described the Spurs' defense as “not yet remarkable in any sense.”
It's only one game, but the Spurs finally showed flashes of being remarkable against the Mavericks.
The Spurs held Dallas to 35.4 percent shooting, the lowest for an opponent this season. Antonio McDyess locked onto Dallas star Dirk Nowitzki, helping to hold him to a 3-of-13 start and 9-of-27 finish. Jason Terry, Josh Howard, Jason Kidd and J.J. Barea combined to go 12 of 39.
Even after Wednesday's clamp-fest, the Spurs are still allowing 99.7 points per game. Opponents are shooting 46.7 percent. Both figures rank in the bottom half of the league.
Still, for the first time this season, the Spurs' defensive arrow appears to be pointing up.
“We had a chip on our shoulder,” guard George Hill said. “We really wanted to get better and take a step forward on defense.”
Jefferson steps up: If given the choice, Richard Jefferson would rather play with Tony Parker and Tim Duncan than without them. Still, if there's a silver lining to missing a pair of All-Stars, it's that Jefferson appears to have found his offensive footing in their absence.
In two victories without Parker and Duncan, Jefferson totaled 53 points on 20-of-39 shooting. He scored a season-high 24 against Toronto, then eclipsed that with 29 two nights later against Dallas.
Jefferson enters Saturday's game against Oklahoma City as the Spurs' leading scorer at 17.3 points per game.
“I think it worked out for a lot of people,” Jefferson said, noting increased contributions from Keith Bogans, McDyess and Hill. “It's always helpful to get a couple extra minutes, a couple extra shots and kind of get your groove.”
Fun with numbers: Through seven games, the Spurs rank ninth in the NBA in scoring at 102.4 points per game, yet have no individual scorer ranked in the top 30. Jefferson, the Spurs' top scorer, is tied with New York's David Lee for 35th.
Just like last year, the early season injuries have truly been a blessing in disguise.
It was McDyess who stepped up on defense.
I'm encouraged by the outing they had defensively but I'm not willing to make wholesale judgments because of a nice win against a hated rival: The Spurs were playing without their two best players, Josh Howard was clearly hobbled early, and the Mavs were on the second of a back-to-back.
Now, why does that matter?
The Spurs playing without their two best players completely changes the dynamic on the court and psychologically.
On the court, the Spurs' defensive tactics have to be tweaked, Parker's absence net's a better defender in Hill playing the majority of the minutes at the point of attack, and the overall intensity is amped up when a good team is undermanned; short-term it often nets good results but it isn't something that's sustainable for the long-haul. You need your big guns.
Psychologically, it has an effect on both teams.
I mentioned the intensity a good undermanned team gets when they're playing shorthanded but it's also about focus; for both teams. The Spurs were aware of the type of focus and attention to detail they had to have to have a chance at stealing a win, and the Mavs no doubt heard the obligatory 'respect the opponent' speech from Carlisle prior to the game; , I'm sure they were made aware of what happened just a year ago against the Spurs. But knowing and applying are two different deals; it's easy to apply when you have no other choice, and much harder when desperation doesn't enter into the equation.
The fact that Howard was hobbled also doesn't help in making an accurate assessment. I thought Bogans' foot-speed and strength combined to give the Spurs a formidable option against Howard but I'm not completely sure given the cir stance. I liked enough of what I saw from Bogans on the others he switched off on, (I was actually quite impressed with how he played the smaller, quicker guy's) so it's not like I think his performance on the whole deserves some kind of asterisk. But it'd be premature to say the Spurs have found their answer for the bigger, better wings in the league.
Bogans has definitely given the Spurs some hope that he could become that needed perimeter stopper, but it's only hope until we get a better sample size.
And as for it being a back-to-back, you have to wonder if it had any affect on those 50-50 balls and hustle points the Spurs won.
One of the most maddening things over the last few year's the Spurs have incurred while playing the Mavs, is those loose 50-50 balls and long rebounds. It just seemed the most inopportune bounces would always doom the Spurs at crucial times every time they played. Of course this is mostly the perception a fan feels whenever there's a tightly contested game or series, but there was something more to it.
What seemed like bad luck and inopportune bounces at the time, were actually, for the most part, an acknowledgment of the lack of athleticism and energy/hustle-type play the Spurs had. They'd become a bunch of specialist, older, skill-players that weren't all that quick to the punch. As a fan, I know I became conditioned to expect that if there wasn't a great box-out, a stellar rotation, or a ball out of the player's general vicinity, the odds of the Spurs coming up with it weren't all that great; if I didn't see Manu in the scrum, and maybe Udoka, (if he was in the right place at-the-right-time) I felt pretty confident the opposition would come up with the ball.
Now, to the thing that stood out to me the most, and what was actually the most encouraging: the Spurs have made significant strides in those hustle areas; the Mavs may have been on the second night of a back-to-back, something that often explains the lack of success in those 50-50 plays, but I don't think that was the case. They're a damn good back-to-back team and they were playing one of the easier ones you could ask for.
The Spurs now have Hill, RJ, Bogans, Blair and a to a lesser (but upgrade) extent McDyess that are all capable of deflections, pursuing out of their area, and just flat-out beating their man physically even when they're not in perfect position. Long rebounds are more obtainable, loose balls are more capable of being tracked down, and broken plays have a better probability of being successful plays with livelier, more athletic legs.
If there's one thing I'm going to take from that game, it's that.
The match-up's the Spurs have against the Mavs have definitely improved, but next Wednesday will be a lot more telling.
-- Somebody throw me a towel --
Dirk was restricted to a woeful shooting percentage. That did it
It was the rotation change, or to put it more clearly: benching Finley and Bonner.
I hope that when Parker and Duncan return the line-up looks like:
Tony-Bogans-RJ-McDyess-Duncan
That would be the perfect mix between offense and defense.
Great post BLACKJACK21
Dude, great post.
Nice read Blackjack
Awesome read, Blackjack!
Nice post BlackJack!
Spot on assessment IMO. Long delivery but easy to read. Great Job.
The Spurs are going to be tough to beat come February.
I love Timmy, but I think he's lazy. I'm thinking he's gonna hurt the defense unless Pop lights a fire in his ass. Enough of the excuses about his knees. He gets outworked alot because he just doesn't look hungry, he looks lazy.
Our defense would frickin be unbelievable if he comes back and blocks shots like I know he can. If he does that, and the rest of the team plays D all season like we did against Dallas, I like our chances of winning it all.
But Tim needs to get hungry.
I remember watching as the Pistons back when Ben Wallace was Ben Wallace. When he turned up the defensive intensity, the entire team stepped up. I think the same will apply to Tim. When everyone around him is hustling and playing tough D, I think Tim will get excited about it and be the defensive player everyone knows he's capable of being.
I don't question his hunger, I question his ability to perform due to health issues.
our D was better but it was more like Dallas had a terrible shooting night.
our D in the 1st quarter was bad, and still dallas shot horribly. they just had one of those nights
They're still crying about this in Dallas.
"Oh man, if only J-ho was used more in the 2nd half..." Okay, we're missing our two best players and you tell me all you needed was Josh to beat us?
No doubt about it. This will be temendous for George.
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