48MoH: Minnesota Timberwolves 99, San Antonio Spurs 117

[Blackjack]

Minnesota Timberwolves 99, San Antonio Spurs 117
by Graydon Gordian

The storylines that defined tonight’s victory over the Timberwolves are self-evident. Manu Ginobili’s craftiness and intensity poured forth in torrential proportions. Richard Jefferson played with a swagger and physicality which, were this not the present, would appear anachronistic to the Duncan era. And, if Roger Mason had not already driven the final nail into the coffin of his early season shooting slump, tonight he firmly patted down the soft dirt atop its freshly dug grave.

But, as has become custom around here, I’m going to focus my recap on some minute element that a critical mass of our readers will find irrelevant at best, misleading at worst.

After the game, I asked Gregg Popovich about the pace at which the game was played. More specifically I said, “sometimes when you play a little bit more uptempo teams, you’ll try to slow it down it, work it inside. Tonight it seemed like y’all were a little bit more willing to play to their tempo. It worked out. Why did y’all choose to shoot a little earlier in the shot clock?”

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[Spurs Brazil]

Don't Sleep On The Spurs
By Timothy Varner
TrueHoop Network

DuncanThe story of the Spurs' season runs neatly along two easily identifiable arcs. The first is the stellar play of Tim Duncan. Duncan is quietly having the most efficient season of his career. On a per minute basis, he has rarely played better basketball. It's not surprising to learn that his current PER leads all players not named LeBron James. But while Duncan continues to exceed expectations, his teammates have underperformed, which leads us to that second story arc.

The 2009-10 Spurs have a habit of losing to good teams and beating up the bad ones. The only high quality win of their season came against Dallas on November 11. San Antonio's 18 wins owe more to collecting Ws against the Warriors, Clippers and Knicks than from beating playoff-caliber compe ion. Still, last night's 117-99 victory over Minnesota hinted at greater things to come.

Duncan's underperforming teammates are starting to regain their swagger. Manu Ginobili, as one example, played brilliantly against the Wolves, contributing 14 points, 10 assists, 9 rebounds and 3 steals in a mere 28 minutes of action. Or consider that Roger Mason's 3-point percentage began the year at .273 and is only recently rounding into form -- he's connected on .375 of his attempts this month, not far beneath his career average of .391. He made 4 of 7 3-pointers against Minnesota.

For the first time this season, the Spurs are seeing significant same-game production from their core of Duncan-Ginobili-[Richard] Jefferson-[Tony] Parker, as well as valuable contributions from DeJuan Blair, Antonio McDyess and Mason. Consider this: last night's victory marked only the fifth game this season wherein each member of San Antonio's Big 4 scored in double-digits. Three of those games were played this month.

The story on San Antonio is far from finished.

To read more, check out Varner's TrueHoop Network blog, 48 Minutes of .

http://espn.go.com/nba/dailydime/_/p...229/daily-dime

[TJastal]

If Blair had made all the easy shots he got in the paint from Manu's passes, spurs would have scored 130

[VBM]

Looking at the sched, we SHOULD win the next four games before a showdown with Dallas. It's great to see them do what they SHOULD do, which is perform well against bottom-feeders. I know people hate the measuring stick term (there was quite the argument about it surrounding the 12/3 game against Boston), but that Dallas game on 1/8 will present an opportunity to show that Ginobili can be GINOBILI!!! and Jefferson can be worth $15 mil against a solid team.

Again, next 4 games

vs. Miami - at home with a day off before...we have to win this
@ Washington - day off before this road game...we have to win this
@Toronto - a team we should beat, but back2back and an early game, I could see us losing this one, even though we are a better team
Detroit - at home with 2 days off before...we SHOULD smoke them...

A 7 game winning streak going into the Dallas game would be lovely...