Defense clicks in biggest rally of season to Popovich’s delight
Time and again the past couple of seasons, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has emphasized to his young team the importance of defense.
“Defense is what gets you through the season because you are going to have those nights where it just doesn’t go in the hole, but the defense can sustain you and give you an opportunity,” Popovich said.
What happened Wednesday night in Chicago was a perfect example.
Down by 23 points late in the first half after suffering through a miserable shooting performance that included missing 14 of 16 shots
from 3-point range, the Spurs rallied for a 106-99 win over the Bulls by outscoring Chicago 66-41 in the second half and 39-19 in the fourth quarter.
Before Wednesday, the last time the Spurs had won a fourth period by 20-plus points was 2018.
Fittingly, old hand Patty Mills did his part to drive home Popovich’s point about defense.
“We played two great defensive quarters in the second half, spurred on by Patty Mills’ aggressiveness, (which) seemed to infect everybody else,” Popovich said.
The Spurs, who are at Cleveland on Friday night, trailed 58-40 at halftime in Chicago after their lowest-scoring first half of the season. But they steadily raised their defensive intensity in the second half until it reached its apex in a fourth quarter that began with Mills, Johnson, Devin Vassell, Dejounte Murray and Jakob Poeltl executing a full-court press that disrupted
the Bulls’ offense rhythm.
“That group was playing their ass off, speeding them up, making them get out of their offense,” Derrick White said. “We got some steals, got our pressure up, got our intensity up. They really turned the game (around) for us.”
Said Poeltl, who equaled a career-high with 20 points and set one with 16 rebounds: “It’s not even about getting steals out of it. It’s more about getting us going on defense and maybe speeding them up, forcing them to take a bad shot or two. And that’s really what got us going, got us to play more physical on defense. As a result, we got better rhythm shots on offense, and they started falling.”
After hitting 49 percent of their shots from the field and committing six turnovers in the first half, Chicago shot 38.1 percent and
committed 11 turnovers that led to 11 points for the Spurs after halftime.
In the final 12 minutes, the Spurs hit 15 of 20 shots from the field (75 percent), including 4 of 5 from beyond the arc.
“Our defensive intensity picked up,” Johnson said. “We just kept playing together, and we clawed our way back into the game. We just kept chipping away, chipping away, one stop at a time.”
And the catalyst was Mills, who recorded two steals and scored 10 of his 14 points in the fourth quarter. His second steal led to a 7-foot Murray floater that gave the Spurs their first lead of the game at 90-89 with 5:19 left.
“(Mills) sticks his nose in,” Popovich said. “He’s physical, and everybody reacts to it.”
The longest-tenured current Spurs player also did what he has been doing for years from a verbal standpoint.
“He was like, ‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ and everybody just fed off that energy,”
said White, who scored nine of his 17 points in the final quarter. “GVO (good vibes only) is really a lifestyle for him.”
Johnson said he has never had a teammate as positive as the 32year-old Australian, who is in his 10th season with the Spurs.
“He is always smiling,” Johnson said. “You can’t do nothing but smile when you get around Patty, man. It’s contagious.”
The comeback was the Spurs’ biggest of the season and the fourth biggest in the NBA.
All-star Zach Lavine, who led the Bulls with 29 points after scoring 40 on Tuesday night in a win over Oklahoma City, seemed to agree with Popovich that it was all about the Spurs’ defense in the second half.
“You feel the momentum shift in the game, and sometimes you can’t do a lot about it,” he said.
Lavine, with three attempts, was the only Bulls starter to get to the free throw line. As a team, Chicago made just nine trips to the charity stripe, much to Lavine’s dismay.
“I guess San Antonio’s the best defensive team in the NBA,” he said. “I know that they don’t foul a lot. I know I was going to the hole, and I drive aggressively. I know Thad (Young) drives aggressively … Obviously, San Antonio was pretty perfect tonight.”
The Spurs (21-16) aren’t the best, but they do rank 10th out of 30 teams with a defensive rating (points per 100 possessions) of 110.2. The Bulls were the seventh opponent the Spurs have held below 100 points this season.
Last season, the Spurs finished 25th in the league in defensive rating at 113.5.
What’s the difference? The addition of the defensive-minded Vassell, who the Spurs drafted 11th overall out of Florida State in November, is a factor. But Popovich pointed out that it’s also the team’s “maturation” when it comes to realizing the importance of defense.
“We are all out there communicating and coming together as a team,” Johnson said. “We are all out their talking to each other. … It’s definitely one of our top priorities. We work on it every day.”