Now task is to avoid Warriors
SAN ANTONIO — As the crowd found its playoff legs Monday night, energized by the dramatic intensity of what unfolded below, the AT&T Center reached a familiar fever pitch, and the Spurs proved a few things.
They proved themselves capable of making the right defensive rotation, even against Kevin Durant, and even against Stephen Curry.
They proved themselves capable of hitting not only the biggest shot of the night, but also the secondand third-biggest. And above all, they proved themselves capable of, for one night at least, beating the best basketball team in the world.
Now their mission is to make sure they don’t have to do it again any time soon. After a game like the one the Spurs won 111-105 over the Warriors on Monday night, there is a temptation to say, “Boy, that sure would be an entertaining playoff series.”
But the truth is after the last few years, nobody wants to see that series again, especially not in the first round, and the Spurs have three weeks to do everything they can to avoid it. Monday’s victory, the Spurs’ ninth in a row, lifted them into a tie for the fifth seed in the Western Conference, but left them with little margin for error.
Precarious position
With the Thunder, Jazz and Clippers separated by a single game in the loss column, it wouldn’t take much of a slip-up for San Antonio to fall to eighth, and a potential third consecutive postseason matchup with Golden State.
Over the past 29 months, the Spurs and Warriors have played 19 times, including nine playoff games. There have been different iterations of those squads — Kawhi Leonard is gone, and so is Zaza Pachulia — but the two franchises know each other all too well, and when Gregg Popovich was asked Monday if he’d prefer not to see the Warriors for a while, he rolled his eyes and walked away.
“That’s a stupid question,” Popovich muttered, and no possible response could have more profoundly told the story.
Of course the Spurs don’t want to play the Warriors again. Of course they don’t want to play them in the first round, and of course they don’t want to play them in the second.
And while getting to face them in the conference finals would represent a pretty heady achievement for a team that hovered around .500 for much of the season, of course they would just as soon have somebody else knock off the Warriors beforehand.
Is this version of Golden State, with a few documented cases of in-game sniping on the bench and an exasperated coach providing fodder for lip readers, just a tad dysfunctional? Sure.
Could this version of Golden State, with one or two stars eyeing a move and fatigue from four consecutive Finals trips setting in, be more vulnerable than its predecessors? Maybe.
But the Spurs don’t want to find out.
As well as Popovich’s team performed Monday, with DeMar DeRozan seizing the moment, LaMarcus Aldridge showing his mettle and Derrick White continuing to prove he belongs, the Spurs also caught a few breaks.
Warriors a little off
The Warriors not only played without former NBA Finals Most Valuable Player Andre Iguodala, but also without DeMarcus Cousins.
And as doggedly as White hounded Curry and Klay Thompson, good defense probably wasn’t the only reason the “Splash Brothers” combined to miss 29 of 43 shots.
Their full crew will be overwhelming favorites against anybody the Warriors face this spring, and the Spurs would be wise to stay out of their way.
Complicating matters is the fact San Antonio’s most favorable first-round matchup is against the Nuggets, who ended Monday night tied with the Warriors for the top seed.
So to be safe, the Spurs had better shoot for No. 6 or higher.
With two three-city road trips ahead and 11 games remaining overall, they might need to win seven or eight to feel comfortable about staying away from the same superpower that has ended each of their last two seasons.
Monday sure helped, even if the Warriors weren’t exactly the best version of themselves.
“It just didn’t feel like us tonight, but they had something to do with that,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said. “And I give them all the credit.”
For one night, the Spurs gladly will take it.
They will take just a little bit of satisfaction from slowing Curry, and from frustrating Durant, and from coaxing Draymond Green into a big miss, and from beating an old nemesis. But a month from now, they would be just fine letting somebody else do the honors.