What is the story about?
The Spurs never looked like they were playing full speed tonight, unlike the second half of Game 4 where they obliterated the Trail Blazers for 24 minutes, but it was good enough to defeat an outclassed Portland team. It was a dominant early effort from the Silver and Black with Julian Champanie hitting shots and the Spurs led by as much as 28 in the second half, but the Rip City team made thing interesting late as they took advantage of the Silver and Black’s lack of edge to cut the lead to single
digits with 8 minutes left to play. De’Aaron Fox took control of the game late offensively with 13 timely points in the fourth, and Victor Wembanyama anchored the defense as the Spurs held off the Portland surge to win 114-95 to advance to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since 2017.
Observations
- ESPN always schedules NBA game broadcasts 2.5 hours apart. When you factor in that the tipoff is generally about 12 minutes after the start of the broadcast, that means that the first game has to be done in 2 hours and 18 minutes to not cut into the broadcast of the second game. Or 2.5 hours for viewers to not miss any of the game 2 action. It’s really less than that, because the network always does a commercial break after the first game, and usually an on-court interview. The Spurs had 45 games that lasted 2:18 or longer and 8 that lasted 2:30 or longer. So there’s a 50% chance that the pregame intro will be shortened or truncated, and roughly 10% chance that fans will miss the start of the second game. Would it kill ESPN to start the second broadcast at 2:45 past the first one? Or at least delay the start of the second game if the first game runs long? That would suck for the fans in the arena, so you’d have to put a limit on it. I dunno, but I really hate missing the start of the game because the networks are bad at planning. Tonight’s lead-in game (Sixers/Celtics) was over at 8:34, and didn’t cut into the start of the Spurs game, but that was at least partly because it wasn’t close at the end and neither team was interested in extending the game.
- Joel Embiid gave an unbelievable performance in the first to propel the Sixers to a victory over the Celtics, just a 19 days after having an emergency appendectomy when he was rush to the hospital before a road game in Houston. He’s played through injuries for almost his entire career, and he’s a true warrior.
- Unlike last game, the Spurs got off to a quick start, with Wemby shutting down the basket on the defensive end and Julian Champagnie taking open shots as the Spurs started out 12-2 in the first three minutes, causing Tiago to call a quick timeout. The onslaught from Champagnie continued as the Spurs led 30-17 before Splitter’s next time out 2/3rds through the quarter. The Spurs led 36-24 after one quarter, with Victor Wembanyama only playing about six minutes and scoring 2 points.
- I criticized Splitter for not calling timeouts last game during the Spurs surge in the second half, but in this game he could have had one hundred timeouts and it wouldn’t have made a difference. The Spurs just were just the better and more focused team to start the game.
- The Spurs got into the bonus with over 7 minutes left in the second quarter and were leading by 26. Tiago was burning timeouts like a Frenchman chain smoking gauloises. Could the game be over halfway through the second quarter? Not exactly, as the the Blazers went on a 9-0 surge to force a timeout from Mitch to refocus the team. The Spurs matched the Blazers minisurge and more as they dominated the rest of the quarter and led by as much by 28 before another 8-0 Portland surgelet and led 65-45 at the half. Victor only took 3 shots in the first half, but made them all count for 7 points.
- Castle picked up two quick fouls to start the third quarter, but quickly atoned by hitting a pair of triples to put the Spurs back in control. You have to give the Blazers some credit, despite the dominant play from the home team, they kept playing and taking advantage of Spurs mistakes, and kept the game from being a blowout for most of the third quarter, keeping the margin about 20. The Spurs led 86-65 after three quarters, outscoring Portland by one point in the quarter.
- There has been some ridiculous officiating in this series, but the Blazers being allowed to call a timeout and challenge a call after the ball had already been inbounded and advanced is a completely new one on me. It went from Spurs ball to a jump ball after the challenge, but it should have never been allowed.
- The Spurs got a little careless to start the fourth, and a little chippy as Advija took exception to a hard foul from Fox. Clingan finally started to hit a couple of three point shots and Sidy Cissoko injected the team with energy as the Blazers took advantage of the Spurs lack of focus to pull within 9 points with 8 minutes left. It was maybe a little too early to start throwing dirt on the grave of their playoff hopes.
- Castle had a bit of a down game tonight, fouling out on a bad foul with 4 minutes left and giving the Blazers extra shots to keep in the game. He’s been great all season, so maybe one bad game is OK.
- I’ve always been a Sidy Cissoko fan, but it was tough to see him break out against his former team.
- De’Aaron Fox scored 13 points in the fourth quarter as he singlehandedly countered the Portland comeback and kept the Spurs from allowing Rip City back into the game.
Up next
The Spurs will have to wait on the results of the Timberwolves/Nuggets series to find out their opponent, but the first game will be early next week in the Frost Bank Center.
