The Spurs are relentless, and the Blake-less Clips just can’t hang
All season long, the San Antonio Spurs have overwhelmed opponents behind All-NBA two-way play from star Kawhi Leonard, the mismatch-creating scoring of power forward LaMarcus Aldridge and a suffocating defense that allows fewer points per possession than any team in the league. What has often separated San Antonio from its foes, though, is a second unit packed with experience, energy, skill and scoring. That talented reserve corps made its presence felt on Tuesday, giving the Spurs the burst they needed to leave the visiting Los Angeles Clippers in the dust.
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San Antonio’s bench scored 27 of the Spurs’ 37 fourth-quarter points on Tuesday, turning what had been a one-point lead after three quarters into a double-digit advantage just three minutes into the frame. Time and again, backups David West and Patty Mills made big plays to grind down the Clippers in the final stanza, keying a 26-9 quarter-opening run that allowed San Antonio to breeze to a 108-87 win. The Spurs now sit at 57-10 on the season and a perfect 33-0 at home, extending their winning streak at AT&T Center over the last two seasons to 42 games, the third-longest run in NBA history.
West, the 35-year-old bruiser who famously left $11 million on the table to join the Spurs this summer in pursuit of a championship, scored all eight of his points and grabbed four of his six rebounds in the early stages of the fourth quarter, dominating on the offensive glass to create extra possessions and protecting the paint.
Mills, the Australian spark plug who played such a big role in the Spurs’ run to the 2014 championship before struggling for most of last season following shoulder surgery, did his part by scoring seven of his 15 in the fourth. He set up a pair of jumpers that helped San Antonio build its lead early in the period before drilling a big catch-and-shoot 3-pointer to put the Spurs up 13 just before the six-minute mark; a minute later, he’d lose J.J. Redick with a sharp cut off the ball to get open for a high-low feed by Aldridge that led to an alley-oop layup that put San Antonio up 15:
While San Antonio’s second unit continued to contribute — every Spurs backup posted a positive plus-minus — their Clippers counterparts just couldn’t get anything going. Jamal Crawford, Wesley Johnson and Austin Rivers combined for 10 points on 2-for-16 shooting, with the most ignominious miss coming on a drive just before the end of the third quarter that ended when Austin met an unforgiving rim:
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The inability of the Clippers’ reserves to provide any scoring punch or playmaking spark meant L.A. was ostensibly drawing dead whenever Chris Paul left the floor. The All-Star point guard was brilliant for much of Tuesday’s game, seizing control of the pace of the proceedings early with probing dribbles in the pick-and-roll that created easy buckets for teammates like rim-rocking monster DeAndre Jordan:
Paul had the ball on a string, punishing Mills for losing a shoe in the run of play by attacking him with a killer crossover …
… and later condemning the adequately shod Leonard to the same fate before kicking it out to Jeff Green for an open 3:
Paul made nine of his first 12 shots on Tuesday, but quieted considerably after the early minutes of the second half. In a related story, Gregg Popovich largely took the CP3 assignment away from Mills and Tony Parker after intermission and handed it to reigning Defensive Player of the Year Leonard; Paul took just four shots in his final 10 1/2 minutes of floor time, missing them all to finish with 22 points, eight assists, four rebounds and three steals.
With Paul dampened and coach Doc Rivers lacking a capable secondary creator, the Clips were all but cooked. Paul was the lone Clipper to finish with a positive plus-minus on Tuesday, with L.A. outscoring San Antonio by two points in his 33 minutes and 15 seconds of playing time. That means that during the 14 minutes and 45 seconds in which he sat, the Spurs outscored the Clips by 24 points. That’s what you might call a real yikes festival.
It also supplants the Clippers’ Sunday whitewashing by the Cleveland Cavaliers as the latest evidence that, while Doc Rivers’ crew has done a better job than anyone expected of weathering Blake Griffin’s months-long absence, the Clippers really need their All-Star power forward — who, lest we forget, played a huge role as the Clips knocked off San Antonio last postseason — against elite opposition.
With Griffin still working his way back from both a partially torn quadriceps tendon and a broken right hand suffered in a fistfight with Clippers assistant athletic trainer Matias Testi, the Clippers have no other reliable source to turn to for help in lightening CP3’s creative load, producing good looks for the teammates who can’t do it for themselves and generating mismatches all over the court. As Dan Woike of the Orange County Register wrote Tuesday, “There just isn’t enough there” on the Clipper bench right now for games like this against teams this good.
San Antonio, on the other hand, always seems to have more. Whether it comes from All-Stars Leonard (20 points, five rebounds, four assists, three steals) and Aldridge (17 points, six rebounds, two assists, two blocks), legends Tim Duncan (six points to pass John Havlicek and move into 14th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list, plus seven rebounds and two assists) and Manu Ginobili (13 points on 5-for-8 shooting in 15 1/2 minutes) or contributors like West, Mills and Danny Green (12 points on 4-for-5 shooting from 3-point land), it just never stops coming, and neither do these Spurs. That’s the difference between Pop’s team and Doc’s team right now, and with the playoffs now just one month away, it’s a really big difference.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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