Finally, Under a Century

For the first time in almost a week, the Spurs finally played some defense. Sure, it took them about 35 minutes to get going, but it all worked out in the end.

After allowing both the Sonics and Kings to shoot significantly over 50% while scoring over 100 points, the Spurs, ranked 5th in scoring defense coming into the game, finally put the clamps down. They held the young T-wolves to just under 46%, while completely dominating them in the 4th quarter, 32-11.

Granted, this isn’t something to jump up and down about. The Wolves are terrible, and they were missing their starting PG (Marko Jaric) and starting SG (Rashad McCants), in addition to Randy Foye. And, for three quarters, anyone new to basketball would’ve thought Minnesota was the defending champs, not the Spurs.

Maybe that “we’ll wait til the 4th quarter” mentality will catch up to the Spurs at some point, though it hasn’t really burned them yet. They turned it up against, Seattle, beat them. Here again in Minnesota, after a lackluster three quarters of play, the Spurs went on a 14-0 run to close the 3rd and start the 4th. They never looked back.

Silver Spur:
Manu Ginobili
31 PTS in 35 minutes
7/9 3PT

The Dud:
Michael Finley
1/11 FG, just 2 PTs.
Continues to play inconsistently.