Two To Go

Boxscore

Last night in San Antonio, the Spurs took care of home court advantage, beating the Suns with a decisive third quarter. For the second game in a row, Phoenix lost a double digit lead inside of the AT&T Center and felt stymied by the Spurs defense in the second half.

Here are some highlights and post game reaction.

After allowing a monstrous 61 points in the first half, the Spurs put the clamps on. 11 points in the third quarter, 24 in the fourth, and 5 of those 11 came from Shaq free throws. Add to the mix that after going for 25 in the first half, Amare Stoudemire starts the second half 1-9 from the floor and finishes with only 8 points in the second session.

The Spurs were led by the guard that began the night as the second fiddle to the 6th Man of the Year. Tony Parker lit up the Suns pathetic defense for 32 points, all of which seemed to come from that painted rectangle they have set up in the middle of the floor. No one, and I mean no one, wearing orange could stop either Tony or Manu last night. In fact, it was the same the game before.

Foul trouble didn’t much plague the Suns big men this game, though Nash, O’Neal and Stoudemire had huge games, the rest of the Suns team combined for only 21 points out of the 96. Not a recipe for success.

Big Shot Bob Robert Horry made his first basketball appearance in over a month last night, registering just a tad over 3 minutes of action. Nothing to exciting to write about here, just glad to see Bobby back in action, and here’s to hoping for more.

Manu Goes Off After taking two overtimes to reach 26 points in game one, Manu decided to eclipse that total in about a quarter less of action. Ginobili went nuts, as did his running mate Tony Parker, driving to the lane with ease, delivering a no-look tight-rope pass to a cutting (and then dunking) Tim Duncan, and even finding time to drop a few treys in there. Manu finishes with three three’s, but more importantly hits eight of his nine free throws.