‘FIBA Patty’ steals the show
Mills makes a career-best eight 3s in win
Patty Mills came into his 12th NBA season determined to be the type of player few Americans have witnessed in person.
FIBA Patty, Australian national team Patty, Boomer Patty.
The youngest of the Spurs has heard Mills talk about this goal multiple times since the start of training camp.
“I’m a rookie,” Devin Vassell said. “I’m still trying to figure out what Patty is talking about with that.”
Instead of simply telling Tuesday night at Staples Center, Mills showed.
His 27 points — including a career-best eight 3-pointers — lifted the Spurs to a stirring 116-113 victory over Kawhi Leonard and the Los Angeles Clippers.
With it, the Spurs snapped a four-game losing streak and started off a five-game road trip in style.
“It was that competitive spirit we needed to start the road trip,” Mills said. “To go out there and set this standard for us was important.”
The Spurs did it foremost from the 3-point stripe, hitting 20 from 40 from 3-point range.
Those 20 successful 3-pointers matched a franchise record set in December 2020 against Dallas.
Dejounte Murray scored 21 points, Keldon Johnson had nine points and a team-best 10 rebounds, and Lamarcus Aldridge contributed 14 points in his return after a three-game stint on the injured list.
The Spurs’ explosion from 3-point range came a game after they went 6 of 19 in a 130-109 loss to Utah, while the Jazz’s 21 3pointers fell one shy of their own club record.
By the end of the first quarter
Tuesday, the Spurs already had made seven from beyond the arc.
Is there any explanation for the wild 3-point swing from one game to the next?
“Probably not,” Mills said. “That’s the game of basketball. Sometimes they go in and sometimes they don’t.”
For the Spurs, and for Mills in particular, the shots went in against the Clippers.
Mills scored 13 points in a 1:51 stretch to close the first quarter, going 4 for 4 from 3-point range.
A 26-3 run over the first 6:15 of the second quarter allowed the Spurs to open up a 24-point lead.
All told, the Spurs trailed for only 18 seconds of the first half.
“When we keep that competitive spirit up, it spreads throughout the group,” Mills said. “It’s contagious.”
Coach Gregg Popovich’s mood was perhaps as contagious.
He began the night grumbling to reporters in his pregame Zoom meeting. With the Spurs in Los Angeles for a pair of games, slated to return to the Staples Center to face the Lakers on Thursday, the reason for Popovich’s foul mood was obvious.
“Four days in your room in L.A.,” he said. “My gosh.”
It is part of a grueling stretch of games that have the Spurs facing a slew of Western Conference contenders to open the season, including three meetings with the defending champion Lakers in the first seven games.
“There is nothing we can do about that,” Popovich said. “You just fight through. A whole lot of people have it a whole lot worse than we do. So you just slap yourself and move forward.”
The Spurs instead wound up slapping the Clippers.
An old friend did not make it easy.
Leonard, who played his first seven seasons with the Spurs before forcing a trade to Toronto, was as good as ever Tuesday.
He finished with 30 points and 10 rebounds, and nearly willed the Clippers back into the contest.
Having brought the Clippers back from 19 points down at the half and 15 behind with 5:14 to play, Leonard’s last-ditch 3-point attempt — well-defended by Demar Derozan at the final horn — clanged off the rim.
With the final misfire, Leonard dropped to 3-2 against his former team since leaving San Antonio.
“Being able to play team defense like that just fuels the fire and the confidence for everybody,” Mills said. “I think the credit goes to how we played on the defensive end. It wasn’t perfect, but there were patches that fueled our offense.”
Meanwhile, FIBA Patty fueled the Spurs.
There were times Tuesday when Mills felt less like he was facing the Clippers at Staples Center and more like he was facing France or Croatia in the World Cup.
“That’s the mindset of what I’ve been talking about, being able to lock that feeling in,” Mills said. “Obviously it is a different style of play, but I take that responsibility on my own to be able to find my own identity.”
This much is for certain. If this version of Mills shows up in Tokyo for the Olympics this summer, the world better watch out.
Tuesday in Los Angeles, he was more than enough for the Clippers to handle.