Spurs compensate for absence of Parker by playing as a team
Manu Ginobili tried to warn everyone.
For all the Spurs had been through, for all of the ways their playoff mettle had been forged by postseasons, nothing had prepared them for this.
“We have no precedent,” Ginobili said of carrying on without Tony Parker. They have one now. The Spurs proved something at Toyota Center on Friday night, not only to James Harden but also to themselves. For years, these had been the guys who had seen it all, who couldn’t be surprised, who knew what to expect.
But this was different. In their first playoff game without Parker in 16 years, they started a baby deer at point guard, knowing they would have to rely on a guy two years removed from the developmental league off the bench, and running their offense through a former All-Star who’d spent the last month looking like he might be washed up.
Yet somehow, Dejounte Murray did not crumble. Jonathon Simmons, against all odds, was a calming presence instead of a wild one. LaMarcus Aldridge asserted himself not only with jumpers, but youthful explosion.
And in the closing minutes of a 103-92 Spurs victory, as the flustered, agitated Rockets kept turning to each other and to the officials for some sort of explanation, even Gregg Popovich had to admit this turned out OK.
“Obviously, they responded well,” Popovich said.
Maybe we should have expected them to respond like this, but how could anyone know for sure? The Spurs were navigating their way through their first Tim Duncan-less postseason of the millennium. Taking Parker out of the mix, in a game with the potential to swing the West semifinals one way or the other, seemed like too much.
Popovich, often relaxed and at ease during morning shootarounds, was anything but Friday, and Ginobili explained why. Parker’s ruptured quadriceps tendon devastated the locker room, and Ginobili worried that feeling wasn’t going to go away.
“You feel bad,” he said, “and it lingers for a bit.”
But whatever the Spurs felt, it didn’t linger after tipoff. For Aldridge, especially, Game 3 proved to be a release, as he swished the game’s first basket and regained the rest of his old self-assured posture as the night went on, bit by bit.
Although the Spurs have not acknowledged any official injury for Aldridge, he has been banged up this postseason, but Friday he scored 26 points, grabbed seven rebounds and didn’t appear to be bothered by much of anything.
“He was loose, and it showed,” Popovich said.
Simmons, the undrafted swingman playing in his hometown, played with similar freedom, apparently unburdened by any more worries about returning to Popovich’s doghouse. For the second game in a row he played a pivotal role at the end of the third quarter, allowing Aldridge, Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green to close it out.
To get there, the Spurs needed someone to help them survive the first few minutes without Parker, and that is where Murray came in.
In terms of impact on Friday night’s game, the second-most significant injury of the season came March 9, when Murray hurt his left groin in the first half of a game against OKC.
It didn’t seem serious at the time, but it kept the rookie out of action for more than a month, during a time when he could have received valuable minutes as Popovich rested his starters.
“I was in a great groove,” Murray said of his steadily improving play before the injury. “But stuff happens.”
Instead, Murray only had a quick five-minute stint at Utah in the regular-season finale to get him in playoff shape, which meant there was no way he was going to be part of the postseason rotation unless something terrible happened.
Wednesday, in Game 2, it did. So Popovich threw him in front of Harden and Pat Beverley, whether he wanted to, and although Murray didn’t become a superstar, he didn’t kill the Spurs.
“It was a good initiation, a big game like this, to get out there and get some time, and he did the best he could,” Popovich said.