Spurs of the Moment

So it’s come to this, has it? The Spurs are down 0-2 to the Phoenix Suns after last night’s 110-102 loss. That’s about the same score as Game One. The Spurs started out strong in the first quarter and even had an 11-point lead at one point, but they ran out of gas pretty quickly, went into halftime tied, and were outscored in each of the final three quarters. Personally, I think karma was on the Suns’ side after they opted to go with the “Los Suns” jerseys. It would have been cool had the Spurs worn their Los Spurs jerseys too.

The Spurs were led by Tim Duncan’s 29 points and 10 boards. Duncan also was named to the All-Defense second team yesterday. Tony Parker had a great game off the bench with 20 points and seven assists. Even RJ (18 points and 10 rebounds) and Hill (14 points) joined the fight. Unfortunately, Manu Ginobili was not up to his usual antics of dropping 20-30 something points. Instead he was held to 11 on 2-of-8 shooting. He did have 11 assists, so he wasn’t useless. The Suns had six players in double figures

The Spurs were actually pretty good last night, shooting 50.6% from the field. The Spurs got beat on the boards though, 49-37 – and that was the difference in this game. They were killed on offensive rebounds 18-7. Antonio McDyess was particularly useless here with only three rebounds and none of  them being offensive boards. I think it’s time to unleash DeJuan Blair on the Suns. They wanna run and play a fast paced game and grab a ton of rebounds – fine, but let them compete with Blair and see how that plays out. For Blair’s part, he has to stay out of foul trouble. He played just less than nine minutes in Game Two and had three fouls. That will never do.

Another huge discrepency came at the free-throw line where the Suns shot 37 freebies to the Spurs’ 22 attempts. I would blame Joey Crawford, but I have nothing to back that up – I just don’t like him. So we’ll say that getting killed on the glass and reacting by fouling basically doomed the Spurs last night. The good news is that these are things that can be overcome. As the series now shifts to San Antonio, it’s imperative that they learn to address their rebounding woes and win the next two games. The Spurs can absolutely win a game in Phoenix, but they have to protect their home court to have any shot at winning this series.