Spurctacular Start: San Antonio Takes Game 1 In Comeback Win

The San Antonio Spurs were lauded as being a rather boring team for the majority of their dynasty seasons, but that isn’t the case anymore. The team is aging, certainly, but they’re also getting more exciting.

The “no longer boring” label doesn’t only apply to the innovative offense and on-court product, however -- even the team’s off-court incidents have become more entertaining. The latest example came Sunday night, via Stephen Jackson, following the now-famous “nasty” speech from head coach Gregg Popovich.

Considering the Thunder seemed to be better with Ibaka on the court, it’s tough to say why he spent the majority of the game on the bench. The Oklahoman’s Darnell Mayberry stood up for Brooks’ decision in his column Monday morning, though, noting that Ibaka on the bench came out of necessity.

Mayberry is right that Ibaka’s presence likely would not have changed the outcome on Sunday night, but he later pointed out that it definitely would have made sense to have him in the game.

For more on the Spurs, visit Pounding The Rock. For more on the Thunder, visit Welcome To Loud City.

The good thing about this is that the Thunder should be able to learn from Sunday night’s loss and change things around. The bad thing is that the Spurs have so many different options that it’s difficult to gameplan against them when they could go a different route entirely in Game 2.

It’ll be a fun series to watch, regardless of the outcome, but the Thunder have to be kicking themselves after dropping the opening game of the series.

This is from the Twitter account @youbigdummy, by the way.

From the top:

And then it happened. The gears of the San Antonio offense began spinning in greased grooves in the fourth quarter, and suddenly the Thunder, long and athletic though they may be, had no answer. San Antonio opened the quarter on a 20-5 run to turn a nine-point deficit into a six-point lead and never trailed again. In the end, the Spurs scored 39 points in the final quarter, after scoring just 38 in the two middle periods combined.

During their unbeaten postseason that has now reached nine straight wins, the Spurs have consistently impressed. But in a way, it’s when they have faced adversity that they’ve seemed most invincible. When the Clippers put them in a 24-point hole in the second quarter of Game 3 of that series, San Antonio methodically, and in the end rather easily, wiped away the deficit and won the game. Likewise Sunday night against the Thunder, the Spurs made it look easy in the fourth quarter. With the game on the line, despite trailing by nine, San Antonio calmly ran their sets and put the game away, against a supremely talented opponent.

With Manu Ginobili orchestrating their offense on the other end of the floor, San Antonio won the fourth quarter 39-27.

For more on the Spurs, visit Pounding The Rock. For more on the Thunder, visit Welcome To Loud City.

There’s really no reason to hoist a three when your team is down significantly more than three points with the time about to run out. However, you might want to in order to make to look as if you’re trying to make the game closer, even if it’s practically impossible to actually make the game meaningful.

With the game played almost exclusively in the half-court, San Antonio’s half-court execution was the difference as they outscored Oklahoma City 39-27 in the fourth.

For more on the Spurs, visit Pounding The Rock. For more on the Thunder, visit Welcome To Loud City.

The Oklahoma City Thunder coach has left Serge Ibaka out of the game through most of this fourth quarter, which has killed his team’s offensive spacing. Understandably, Kendrick Perkins is a good defender, but his presence made it easy for Tim Duncan to load up on Kevin Durant as a help defender.

The easy solution would have been to sub out Perkins whenever possible on offense. Why Scott Brooks didn’t do that, I have no idea.

Seems pretty obvious to me which timeout speech is most inspiring. ARE YOU GUYS HAVING FUN YET?

Down the stretch, it’s been the veteran Stephen Jackson, and not rookie Kawhi Leonard, guarding Kevin Durant. Why? As gifted as Leonard is, he was allowing Durant to catch the ball too close to the basket. Jackson, meanwhile, has done an excellent job forcing Durant further away from the hoop. On one play, he forced Durant to waste 13 seconds trying to get open.

Durant is drawing fouls, but all in all, the Spurs will take it.

James Harden is seen by many as a younger version of Manu Ginobili. The resemblance really is uncanny, down to the flopping.

Incredible choreography.

For three quarters, the Oklahoma City Thunder executed its offense beautifully. In the fourth quarter, it has devolved back into the “my turn” offense that has been its downfall in previous playoff runs.

The Spurs are scoring a lot more too, but all wasted possessions offensively are the major reason the Thunder have lost their lead.

TNT really covering every angle tonight.

So, yeah, this happened:

Gotta appreciate the double-leg slap and sad face after the miss.

Edvard Munch would approve:

Back during those great playoff battles with the Phoenix Suns, the San Antonio Spurs were able to persevere specifically because they over-emphasized guarding the three-point line. San Antonio closed out so aggressively that they were willing to concede open mid-range jumpers.

Now, in 2012, the Oklahoma City Thunder have done the same to the Spurs. This is surprising, given how poorly the Thunder guarded the three-point line against the Spurs in the regular season.

Gary Neal just dribbled right up to the three-point line and took a horrible shot, a rare bad attempt by a Spurs player. Whenever that happens, Gregg Popovich does something like this.

I hope, for Neal’s sake, that he didn’t look over there.

The Thunder have done an incredible job on Tony Parker thus far, holding him completely out of the paint. The Spurs need to make an adjustment. Some ideas.

1. Start the pick and roll out higher on the court, giving Parker more room to get a head of steam.

During the three regular-season matchups between these two teams, the Spurs shot 54 percent from three-point range. They’re just 4-11 in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, including 0-3 in the third quarter.

The Thunder deserve a ton of credit for over-covering the shooters. It’s now time for Tony Parker to adjust and become more aggressive.

For large parts of the first half, the Thunder played extremely small line-ups with only one big man on the floor.

As a result the tempo of the game was sped up, which caused some trouble for the San Antonio offense, as the Spurs turned it over 13 times.

With his team now having committed 13 turnovers in the first half of Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich should be incensed. Instead, he obviously heard a very good joke and doesn’t want anyone to know that he’s smiling.

As noted in our series preview, James Harden has killed the Spurs during the regular season. He’s 1-9 with no free-throw attempts thus far in Game 1 of the Western Conference Finals.

We obviously know nothing.

In response to Manugasm, the Thunder are now playing the following lineup.

-Russell Westbrook

-Derek Fisher

-James Harden

-Thabo Sefolosha

-Nick Collison