Remember when the Spurs tried to turn Patty Mills into the New Tony Parker? That didn’t work and then they put him back at the sixth man role.
As he was pulling up in transition for a three in the fourth quarter run that put the Spurs up 15 points (again), I was thinking that this is the perfect era and the perfect time for Patty go be the aggressive version of himself. He is putting up career numbers just about across the board (as of this writing). In this era where you cannot guard little guys, Patty is free to be the guy he is on the Australian team. That is to say, he can be a chucker.
Tonight, nearly everyone was on for a while and Patty was killing it. If you are just box-score checking, just know the Spurs had a 20-point lead in the first half, let the Clips back in this thing, and then pushed it out to 15 again before having to defend a Kawhi three to tie it at the buzzer.
Things I liked:
Patty chucking — He was cooking Reggie Jackson and drew a foul on him that bought him a sub for noted talked Pat Beverly. Patty proceeded to get a three-pointer on the sideline out-of-bounds play.
Dejounte Murray cooking Kawhi and Pat Beverly during this game. Remember when Bev just roughed up DJ back in his rookie year?
Poeltl doing this:
Things I didn’t like:
Right at the end of the first half the Spurs started getting lost and the possessions stalled. That carried over into the second half.
Spurs had no answer for Kawhi there.
The Spurs allowed a wide-open look to potentially lose the lead. Luke Kennard, rich person, just missed. It all came down to a rebound.
We know Derrick White is out. Right after I wrote about how much I was looking forward to him being back out there given how much he brings to the team. It was great to see LaMarcus Aldridge back. He looked a little rusty but he, along with the rest of the squad, were confidently chucking up threes. Well, really any shot was taken with confidence.
Some of that is just what happens when everything is going in. There isa mindset about being confident in the work you did in practice that these shots should go in more than they don’t.
Still, one reason the Spurs gave the lead (among many other reasons) was the when they tried a slow-it-down-and-execute offense it meant they had to do some things that hadn’t gotten them the lead to that point. Patty chucking in transition or Rudy Gay walking into a three is great when you are building the lead but not when the clock needs to be milked.
That is the perfect time for a skilled point guard to run the offense and get a good to great shot. The standby at this current moment is an iso with Kawhi or maybe a post-look to Aldridge. This particular Clippers team is perfectly set up to defend that — Kawhi nearly got his patented steal-and-score thing in this one as the Clips were making one of their runs. I mean Nicolas Batum had one.
Pop was not happy in the post-game interview session (what is new?) and as we wrote previously, this kind of thing is just going to take time. The Lakers are still better than the Spurs and there will not be a Derrick like last time (when the Spurs made it interesting and had that 103-100 lead late) but they will have Aldridge.
Parting thought:
Give me more Keldon/Lonne/DJ flying in, scoring, and dancing on our (sports) enemies.
Also more Jacob Poeltl: Point Center.
Dunk of the night: