The Spurs are a great team and we played very well tonight . The refs maybe favored the Spurs more than us . But you can't take away that the Spurs played well and deserved to win . We had so many chances to take this game over and make adjustments and dantoni couldn't do it . The Spurs as a team had to defend harden . We let Trevor pretend he was 5 years younger and go at kawhi 1 on 1 . Sure Trevor couldn't hold Kawhi's jock . But it's the COACH's fault if you just leave him out to get abused again and again . Meanwhile at certain points in the game , James , Dekker , and Gordon all did good jobs on Kawhi . A great scorer like that you have to throw multiple defenders on him and try to disrupt his rhythm. What were we thinking with some of our playcalling tonight ?? We had the big and James PnR all damn night . And we refused to abuse the Spurs on it . There is no excuse for the outcome besides lack of focus or lack of coaching . In fact lack of focus stems from lack of coaching. Pop is great , but Mike could have helped his players a bit more .
Watch the replay. Should have been an 8 second violation. Ball inbounded with 10.6 seconds on the clock. Aldridge catches ball in front court @2.2 seconds. Should have been rockets ball with 2.6 secs left.
There is no doubt the the Spurs played well. Kawhi was amazing at both ends of the floor. But when a player tries to intentionally foul another player right in front of you, you call it.
They did make two horrible decisions near the end. Ariza did NOT foul Kawhi on his three point attempt. And Nene was most definitely fouled on his putback attempt after Harden was swatted. But still, Kawhi outplayed Harden when it counted, and the Spurs beat us this game.
People tend to focus on the last few plays and ignore the fact that the refs missed calls on both ends tonight . They certainly fell for that Dekker flop . I'm not disputing that the calls may have been tilted towards SA's favor . But we are a good enough team to control our own destiny and we didn't play winning ball down the stretch . It was almost all downhill from the first quarter on . With James' brilliance keeping us afloat. Some guys had good games tonight and some guys had bad games . It's up to the coach to help guys out and put them in a position to succeed. If Lou Williams runs more PnR with Clint we probably score 10 more points . If James runs more PnR we score a few more points . We had a huge advantage on that play and we went away from it at times to try and get trev and Gordon and Ryan involved. If you keep running it , you keep scoring , if you keep scoring SA has to make adjustments to stop it . THEN you pass to those guys who are not set and open . We played right into pops hands tonight . He's great , but dantoni got out coached badly .
The Spurs broadcast never replayed the Kawhi foul on the 3 pt attempt. It didn't looked like he touched him.
Counterpoint: The loss is absolutely on the refs. In a close contest everything matters. Riverwalk home cooking can easily be deemed to have accounted for the 2 point differential.
And I know the refs missed calls . But they didn't stop us from winning . We could have won the game despite being on the unfavorable end . That's really why I'm most pissed . That first quarter harden had was just incredible. It was perhaps the best I've ever see him play . When your superstar comes out like that , you win the damn game . Harden didn't let up the entire game . He did so much for us and it stings that we beat ourselves in some ways.
