Spurs seek adjustments to frequent mismatches
Less than a minute and a half into the Spurs’ 113-92 Game 1 loss to Golden State on Saturday, Patty Mills found himself looking up at Kevin Durant.
The Spurs would have to consider this a suboptimal matchup.
The Warriors ran through their offense to get the Spurs’ 6-foot guard to defend Durant, a man conservatively listed at 6-9 who happens to be one of planet Earth’s most feared scoring machines.
“Obviously,” Mills said, “it’s not the ideal matchup.”
Durant netted an 8-footer over Mills. Twice more in the first quarter, Durant attacked Mills and scored again.
On other occasions, the Warriors found Mills matched against Klay Thompson, a 6-foot-7 scorer with similar results.
As the seventh-seeded Spurs return to Oracle Arena on Monday in hopes of evening the series before it comes to San Antonio, this much is obvious: They have a Patty problem.
Mills is a high-energy player whose encouragement is infectious and whose shooting and spacing is important to the Spurs’ offense. Against a Golden State team that started five players at least 6-foot-6 on Saturday, there is simply no place to hide an undersized shooting guard.
It didn’t matter what the original matchups were. The Warriors ran an offense designed to scramble them until they got what they wanted.
“They’re switching a lot of things, we’re switching a lot of things,” guard Danny Green said. “Usually, mismatches happen when there are switches. K.D. on the block with Patty guarding him is usually a mismatch. You make some adjustments. Klay has Patty on the block, you’ve got to make some adjustments.”
There is no one person responsible for the Spurs’ blowout loss in Game 1. There is no one fix that will reverse their fortunes in Game 2.
After Thompson scored 27 points in Game 1 and Durant netted 24, head coach Gregg Popovich noted the impossible task the Spurs’ defense faced, especially with two-time NBA Defensive Player of the Year Kawhi Leonard unavailable.
For the Spurs, this is an entire series of suboptimal matchups.
After the Spurs had pored over game video Sunday at their team hotel, answers seemed as fleeting.
“Hope he misses,” shrugged point guard Tony Parker, when asked what smaller defenders can do against Durant. “You put a big guy or a small guy on him, it’s not going to change anything. He’s maybe the best pure scorer in the world.”
There are limited options at Popovich’s disposal. His team could get more physical by getting bigger in the starting five, possibly by inserting 6-8 Rudy Gay.
Gay started the second half of Game 1 in place of forward Kyle Anderson. Mills remained in the lineup.
No matter who is on the floor, Mills said, the Spurs’ directive is clear.
“We can try to be a little more aggressive defensively so they can’t get in a rhythm,” said Mills, who accounted for only five points of his own. “We don’t want to just be following them around.”
The Warriors say they weren’t targeting Mills with their top scorers, but it certainly looked that way.
If he’s forced into the same unenviable spot in Game 2, Mills’ approach to guarding the unguardable will not change.
“Just try to be a pest,” Mills said. “I think what trumps any of that mismatch stuff is just being aggressive and getting them off their spots so they can’t catch it in their sweet spots.”
Sometime Monday, Mills is likely to find himself looking up at Durant again.
By that point, “hope he misses” might be as effective a strategy as any.