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Congrats on the autograph! I'll never forget watching Duncan go through his pregame warm up, it's one of the most incredible things that's ever happened to me. Glad you got to see it.
Thanks for sharing the first hand experience.
This was my first ever playoff game and WOW what an experience. The atmostphere at AT&T was amazing. I've been to 4 regular season games before, but there's just no comparison.
Pregame I've never been able to see Tim in warmups in any of the previous games I went to (since he normally warms up so early), but for whatever reason he was out there about an hour and a half before tip off. When I saw him warming up I spazzed out, ran to the fan shop, bought a picture of him, then ran down to see if I could get an autograph. Tim made sure to sign for just about everyone who was there, but he was very quiet and focused. Btw that dude is straight up gigantic up close. Anyway long story short I got Tim's autograph!
Okay anyway here we go:
The game was EXTREMELY physical. Anytime someone went into the paint there would generally be contact and I think this is the biggest difference between true playoff basketball and regular season ball.
Dampier is incapable of playing Tim without fouling. It's kind of sad, but true. After watching the games and then reading his comments I had to laugh. The guy was straight up mugging Tim in the post. Haywood's defense on Tim was much better and I have NO idea why Carlisle doesn't start him instead.
Tim played a great offensive game, but he seemed a step slow in the second half and was way to fidgety while guarding Dirk. I got a little worried when Tim had Dirk on him, tried some slow dribble move, then just passed it out. That should never happen. Going forward I'd like to see more of him on the right block utilizing that lefty hook and I'd like ot see him hesitate less on the jumpers (he kills the flow of the offense when he does that) and use that bank shot to open up his face-up drives.
Dice and Tim need to learn to stay on their feet when guarding him.
Manu is a straight-up warrior. He was all over the place in the first half and although he didn't score much he played incredible defense and left it all out on the floor. That fourth quarter of his was also a thing of beauty. Tim was gassed and Manu basically took the reigns of the offense and made things happen despite the broken nose.
Tony is back. He's got his explosiveness back, his jumper is back, and he's as deadly as ever with the floater. I was also really impressed with his defense.
George Hill had a terrible night shooting the ball, but did just about everything else well and still ended up with over 15 points. His defense was amazing, which is a welcome sign given how badly he played on that end in games 1 and 2.
RJ was a ghost, but he hit a big basket to get us back after Dallas made its run.
As a team the defense was as good as it's been all year and our guys showed a lot of poise and confidence weathering that Dallas run and executing at the end of the game. They really looked like the Spurs of old and were a joy to watch.
Overall this was the best sporting experience of my life and I'd encourage everyone to go to a playoff game if you can. My ticket was only 11 bucks!
Congrats on the autograph! I'll never forget watching Duncan go through his pregame warm up, it's one of the most incredible things that's ever happened to me. Glad you got to see it.
Thanks for sharing the first hand experience.
Congrats! I wish I've been there.
Manu's drive is possibly one of the best go-to moves in the NBA, its unstoppable, the only one who can stop it is if Manu misses it, but its such a high-percentage shot that that rarely happens.
Its crazy. The fact that no one has been able to duplicate that in this league is crazy as well.
Well, the trick with Ginobili is the way he cups the ball as he drives to the rim. He positions the ball in such a way that if a defender ever tries to go for the ball, Ginobili can lift his arm up and draw virtually inevitable contact and go to the line.
So, that's obviously nothing new, we've known about that for years now.
I did, however, find it interesting that RJ attempted to drive to the hole in a similar way during game 2. I wouldn't be surprised if he's been getting tips from ginobili on ways to carry the ball when attacking the rim.
I've seen players try it with some limited success, but nobody does it better than Manu, or even as good.
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