Lakers 109-103 Spurs
Jazz 130-109 Spurs
It’s easy to dismiss the Jazz win with a wave at the 3-point stats. The truth was that this had all the makings of a high-scoring game but for the fact that the 200-million dollar man was making things difficult.
One thing that Derrick White brought to the team was the playmaker aspect. Even though the stat line was modest — he moved quicker and with more aggression and that made the offense look a bit better vs the Lakers.
The worrying things that showed up vs the Lakers — Bron stepping into a wide open three, some finishing around the rim, and mental mistakes — showed up very big against the Jazz. Utah was ready to put up shots (41 threes!) and the Spurs couldn’t hit theirs at the same clip. That is fine, if you are at least getting buckets at the rim. They did not.
Every once in a while you see a team play its ideal game. This was the new Utah, with a renewed focus on threes, and chasing the opposition off the line and into Rudy Gobert. So it went.
So back to Derrick White. He brought a little extra to the Spurs that was missing vs the Jazz. It is not immediately obvious, but smart, amazing plays are not obvious to regular people. Whereas a good player sees a good pass, or a good shot and chooses from among those options, a great player sees more, a better pass, a better shot, or something.
Derrick took some ordinary passes and attacked when others were not doing that. Lonnie Walker, who is developing nicely, has in two games messed up the fast break. In the Jazz game, he earned a trip to the line, but against he Lakers he bungled it — DeMar DeRozan was frustrated.
That is the kind of mental error that can cost you long term. It is a point wasted, an opportunity foregone.
There are too many of those things happening in this little 4-game losing streak for the Spurs to have any realistic shot of shocking anyone’s world right now. One one had, the guys need the game time to learn that stuff. On the other, it is beneficial to have players out there that will not make those mistakes so winning can happen. There is value in playing meaningful games down the stretch. The bubble was great for this squad partly because there was playoff-like pressure.
Assorted Observations
Jacob Poeltl was dominated by AD in the second game. He had zero points in 23 minutes. In fact the Spurs in both Lakers/Jazz contests were just outplayed all over. This is where LaMarcus Aldridge shines. Whereas he may not dominate those matchups like maybe a Tim Duncan would (in our minds), he closes the gap much more than Jacob did.
AD and Gasol were able to do a lot of things and get easy buckets for the Lakers that the Spurs simply were not. That was one big difference down the stretch. AD got a tip-in, and the Spurs had a ton of trouble fighting off the bigs.
Against the Jazz it would have been nice to dump it down to Aldridge and let him battle him a bit, and cause some foul trouble there as we have seen him do in the past.
Keldon Johnson is a monster — back-to-back 20-point games? He shoots with confidence and flies in for monster dunks and guard the best player on the court? Well I think he is on his way. Long term, you want him to be able to create his own shot but he is attacking the rim with even more authority that I remember Kawhi doing in his second year. That was a different team and a different situation (Tim, Manu, and Tony were all there to defer to) but I like it.