Kleeman's Last Word

Second half scoring droughts sting Spurs

The New Orleans Hornets' players said before game 2 they expected the San Antonio Spurs to force them into defensive switches, but for the second straight half, the defending champions made sure their younger mirror-image didn't have to play much on the other end.

The caustic, abominable offensive lulls that doomed the Spurs in many late season games have shown up again. The Hornets' loose perimeter defense is begging any Spurs player to make an outside shot and the guys in black are telling them no thanks.

The Spurs face a tough task Thursday night, where they will try to use the home crowd and a more familiar court to dig themselves out of a 2-0 hole. The good news? There are easy fixes for the team's ailments. The bad news? This team is screwing up the easy stuff.

At many Spurs games, five companies sponsor a timeout contest where a fan selected at random tries to throw a ball in six different buckets, each one offering a different prize. Most of the participants miss badly and only manage to hit the one offering Whatatburger for an entire year. That about sums up the play of Manu Ginobili and most of the other Spurs.

The supposed "shooters" have been worse than the overweight, hapless fans who participate in those embarrassing on-court contests.

The Spurs are not scoring in this second round series, and against a great Hornets team, that is not good enough. That stifling Byron Scott-instilled Hornet defense? We'll talk about it when the Spurs force them to play some.

18 point and 17 point quarters against a team with the league's best point guard will not get it done. The Hornets three ball threats, mostly Peja Stojakovic and Morris Peterson, are stretching the Spur defense with long distance heaves. When the series shifts to San Antonio, maybe the Spurs can do the same.

The one-sided second half play in this series is not a statement about the age factor. The Hornets are the youngest team still in the Playoffs and have found little trouble outclassing a four time champion. The Spurs shooters would not be draining these wide open looks if they were 10 years younger. An open shot is an open shot.

Talk about the defense all you want and rant about the 36 points the Spurs allowed in the third quarter. If the Spurs made half of their open looks in that decisive period, they could have scored in the 30s, too.

MY DEFENSIVE TWO CENTS
Gregg Popovich should consider sic-ing defensive ace Bruce Bowen on the Hornets shooting extraordinaire Peja Stojakovic. In the Spurs last win over this team, Bowen suffocated Stojakovic and it damaged the Hornets' offensive flow. Down 0-2 and needing some luck to get back in this thing, Popovich cannot rule out any strategy as a possibility.

I say guard the outside shooters and role players like they stole something and let single coverage allow Chris Paul and David West to do their damage. Let the two All-Stars combine for 80 points but don't let any other Hornets player get a clean look. The Spurs attention on Paul and West in the first two games has opened up easy looks for the role players. Those too-easy-for-comfort baskets are killing the Spurs.
Though Popovich would never admit it, he has tested this against the Phoenix Suns in the 2005 and 2007 series. He let Amare Stoudemire get all he could eat at the rim but closed out on the role players and did not let them get off. It is worth a try in this sinking series.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Here's the bad news first:
-The last time a Tim Duncan-led team fell into a 0-2 hole, in 2001, the Los Angeles Lakers got out the broom and swept them off the court.
-The Hornets defense is cutting off Tim Duncan's post-up game and Tony Parker and Ginobili's drives to the basket. The Spurs can open things up for their Big Three by making some open perimeter shots. Unfortunately, second half stats suggest that's not happening anytime soon.
-David West scored 10 points (he did have 10 rebounds also), by far his worst output in the last two months, and the Hornets still slaughtered the Spurs.
-Ginobili will not admit he is still bothered by a sore left ankle. His God-awful play in game 2 makes it obvious he is. The Spurs need more from Manu, something like the 30-12 performance he turned out against this Hornets team in February. His three consecutive turnovers in the second quarter summed up his rough Monday night.
-No statistic or piece of logic suggests Paul or West will be any less brilliant on the road come Thursday night. The Hornets were a better road team than the Spurs this season. New Orleans lost game 3 decisively to the Dallas Mavericks then showed up two nights later to make the defeat look like a fluke.
-Here's one you knew was coming: The Spurs don't win championships in even-numbered years.

Here's the good news:
-Those open looks for Spurs shooters I keep referencing? They are WIDE open, as in no defender within 50 feet of the shooter OPEN. That's how open these guys are. Of course, if a defense is OK with allowing guys two days to line up a shot, it means they don't think you can shoot. So far the Spurs have not proven them wrong.
-In all four blowout losses to the Hornets this year (two in the regular season, two in the playoffs), the Spurs led at the half. You cannot lead at halftime in a basketball game without doing something right. The Spurs need to figure out what that something is and transfer it to the second half.
-The Hornets bench that was among the least productive during the regular season has remained that way in the playoffs. Energetic youngster Julian Wright is affecting the series with his hustle and a few big shots as is Janeero Pargo. Most of the shredding, though, has come courtesy of the Hornets starters. No numbers in this series suggest the Hornets have more physical talent or a longer bench than the Spurs, who remained in the top three all year in reserve scoring.
-The Spurs are going home, where they lost only seven of 41 games at the AT&T Center
-Popovich is the league's top coach in pressure situations. He will tell his players what he believes they must do to climb back into the series. It's up to them to execute the plan.

Where is the Spurs team that hammered the Utah Jazz 109-80 in a decisive and mega-important final game of the season? Where is the Spurs team that averaged more than 102 points against the high-scoring Phoenix Suns? Where is the team that was out-fastbreaking the best-in-the-business Suns?

Sometimes sports writers overanalyze a playoff series, overlooking the role of intangibles in favor of Xs and Os. The Hornets are playing like a pack of hungry wolves eager to feast on their latest kill en route to the big prize. The Spurs are playing without any heart or passion and look like easy prey offering the wolves no fight.
They'd better find some if they want to play more basketball games next week.

posted by Robert Kleeman @ 7:06 AM