It’s time for rest after overtime wins
SAN ANTONIO — With 7-foot center Jakob Poeltl averaging 3.4 blocks over the past five games, guard Derrick White believes the Spurs might be due for a change in their approach to playing perimeter defense.
“We are just going to let them go by us and hope Jakob blocks it,” White said. “That’s going to be the new strategy.”
The good news for the Spurs: With no games scheduled until Thursday, coach Gregg Popovich and his staff will have time to come up with a better solution than the Poeltl Plan devised by White.
Popovich gave the Spurs the weekend off for some much-needed rest after grueling come-frombehind overtime wins over Houston and Sacramento last week that gave the club its first twogame winning streak since it started the season 3-0.
But on Monday, the Spurs will be back at their training facility, presumably determined to iron out the many kinks that contributed to a disappointing 9-14 start that has their NBA record-tying 22-year playoff streak in jeopardy.
“This is a good break,” Popovich said after the Spurs defeated the Kings 105-104 in OT just two days after they needed two extra sessions to rally from a 22-point deficit to down the Rockets 135133. “We can practice Monday and Tuesday and get some good work in and go from there.”
The players welcome the chance to hold a mini-training camp of sorts.
“Huge, for sure,” guard Patty Mills said of the rare in-season practice time. “We obviously haven’t had that opportunity to fine-tune a lot of stuff and work out wrinkles. It’s great to do some of that within a game, but we can knock it down a little more specifically speaking in practice.”
Said guard Dejounte Murray, “It will be big. Me and (assistant coach) Chip (Engelland) talk about it all the time. It will be a good time to get live reps for everybody, get individual work, go through things, just getting together.”
The Spurs entered their fiveday break feeling great about themselves after grinding out the wins over Houston and Sacramento. In doing so, they became the first NBA team in the past 20 years to win consecutive contests after trailing by eight or more points in the last two minutes of regulation.
The last time the Spurs had back-to-back overtime games was March 2017.
“This was two really hardfought wins,” forward Rudy Gay said. “We dug ourselves out of holes, and we just got it together. These were games we were losing (late), but we figured out a way to get it done. That’s pivotal for us in the (process of ) getting better.”
Said Mills: “It does a lot for the morale of the group.”
That’s important for a team that was given up for dead in some quarters after it dropped eight in a row last month.
“I never thought we were down and out,” Gay said. “We always had the winning mentality. This locker room has never changed. Getting these two wins proved we can win and that we can come back and beat some good teams.”
Now the trick is to keep it going. Fortunately for the Spurs, they return to action Thursday at home against Cleveland, which was 5-16 entering Saturday’s game with Philadelphia
“We need to manage to keep the momentum that we have now going,” said Poeltl, who has at least one block in each of the past nine games. “If we can do that … obviously, we know the level of talent and the type of players we have on this team.”
For now, though, it’s first things first for the Spurs. Rest is the No. 1 priority after they played every other day during a 34-day stretch that began Oct. 31 and ended Tuesday.
“(We need) not just physical rest but also mental rest,” Gay said. “It was a long stretch and we’ve had some tough losses, so now is a good time to reset our clocks, our minds, you can say whatever you want.”
Said Mills: “This whole month was a test of character, and I thought we hung in there. It doesn’t show in our record, but we have definitely grown and shown ourselves what we can do.”