Inside this edition of the Roundup:
- When dunks go wrong!
- The D-League: a good decision!
- And Kevin Garnett attempts to eat Tim Duncan!
(No, really. It's all in here. Even proof of the Garnett-Duncan incident. Though "eat" is a bit of a strong word to use. It's more of "swallow whole" type of situation, if you ask me.)
But before I go any further:
You turned off the TV on Friday with the Spurs up 17 against the Bobcats, and I don't blame you.
By halftime, the Spurs were -- at least offensively -- putting together one of their finest performances of the year. Manu Ginobili had 20 points and was 4 of 4 from three-point range. Tim Duncan had 11 points, and Richard Jefferson had 7. Tony Parker had already notched seven assists.
From the field, the Spurs were shooting over 61 percent. From three-point range, the Spurs were even better: 7 of 9, or 77.8 percent.
At the half, the Spurs had scored more points, grabbed more rebounds, dished out more assists, stolen more passes and blocked more shots than the Bobcats. The Spurs looked unstoppable against a Bobcats team that had entered the game among the top five in the NBA in defensive efficiency.
So you turned off the TV, woke up in the morning and saw the final score: Spurs 104, Bobcats 85.
What you didn't see was the third and fourth quarters. And if you want to know why the Spurs are a title contender -- and why they aren't -- you got your answers in the second half.
The Third Quarter
Some two minutes into the third, Tim Duncan was called for his fourth foul. He came out of the game with the Spurs up 22 points.
That's when it all began to unravel. In his place, coach Gregg Popovich inserted Theo Ratliff, whose noticeable contribution to the game was an intentional foul.
Play grew uncharacteristically sloppy for such a veteran team. The Spurs committed a double dribble, and then a traveling call. They dribbled a few balls out of bounds, and threw a few passes into the wrong hands. In 12 minutes, the Spurs committed 10 turnovers, leading to 14 Bobcat points.
By the time Duncan returned to the game, the lead had been cut to 10.
But even Duncan couldn't stop the Bobcats' run. By quarter's end, the Spurs had lost a 22 point lead. Going into the fourth quarter, the Spurs were up by only a single point.
The Fourth Quarter
Then, just as it looked like an actual game had broken out at the AT&T Center, the Spurs quickly put the Bobcats away.
What changed? The Spurs cut down on turnovers, for one, and a stronger effort on the boards kept the Bobcats from second-chance points.
But mostly, the Spurs' stars took over. Duncan took the first five shots of the quarter en route to a six-point, four-assist fourth quarter. Tony Parker also stepped up his game, including one beautiful backdoor cut for a layup. One other plus: Popovich got easy points from Keith Bogans and George Hill on fast breaks.
Looking back at the numbers, it's tough to imagine a stranger half.
In the third quarter, the Spurs were outscored, 29-13.
In the fourth quarter, they outscored Charlotte 32-14.
Championship contenders don't have halves like that -- especially at home against a Bobcats team that's 1-10 on the road this season.
Basketball, Oversimplified.
Here's one fairly elementary measure of success for the Spurs: assists vs. turnovers. When the Spurs are at their best, they're allowing their guards -- particularly Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili -- to distribute the ball, and they're limiting fast break points by committing fewer turnovers. So The Roundup looked at how the Spurs are doing this month in that category. (Note: these stats do not include Wednesday's game versus the Suns.)
- vs. BOS: 18 turnovers, 20 assists
- vs. DEN: 19 TO, 16 AST
- at UTAH: 15 TO, 19 AST
- vs. SAC: 13 TO, 28 AST
- vs. CHA: 28 TO, 28 AST
- at LAC: 13 TO, 23 AST
A bit of math: that's 97 turnovers compared to 135 assists. Put another way: that's 1.39 assists for every 1 turnover. (For the year, the Spurs are averaging 1.50 assists per 1 turnover.)
But what's disheartening for Spurs fans: against tough competition this month -- Boston, Denver and Utah -- that ratio dropped to about 1 to 1. That's not the sign of a good offense.
But are the Spurs' statistics-to-date worthy of a title contender? To check, The Roundup measured the 2009 assist-to-turnover ratio against the same metric from the 2003, 2005, and 2007 NBA championship Spurs.
- 2009: 1.50 to 1 assist-to-turnover ratio
- 2007: 1.59 to 1
- 2005: 1.57 to 1
- 2003: 1.26 to 1
The lesson here is simple: to make a playoff run, the Spurs need to keep that ratio up, especially against tougher competition.
(ESPN.com's John Hollinger also posted some interesting numbers Wednesday morning on the Spurs' turnover problems. Worth a read.)
Around the Web
-Sports Illustrated's Ian Thomsen picked his best/worth of the decade. His best player of the decade: Tim Duncan. His best GM: the Spurs' Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford. I'll let Thomsen explain why.
-Top high school prospect Latavious Williams didn't qualify academically for college. He was offered $100,000 to play a year in China. He turned it down for $19,000 a year in the D-League. Yahoo!'s Marc J. Spears explains why it was a good move.
-An absolutely fantastic time waster: when dunking goes wrong.
-And, as promised, via the Sports Illustrated @si_vault Twitter feed, a 1998 photo of Kevin Garnett attempting to eat Tim Duncan.
This Week's YouTube Video of Noteworthiness
Corey Brewer goes up and over Derek Fisher. Wow.
(Sam Young, a former teammate of DeJuan Blair at Pitt, had a pretty nice dunk as well.)
Consider the Following
Underneath the main seating bowl in the AT&T Center, there is this little room that nobody ever really sees. It's the room where the media comes to feed before games. (And in case you're wondering: yes, I do mean "feed." There is no sight quite like a horde of media in front of a free buffet.)
I lingered there for a few moments on Friday before the game against the Bobcats, staring up at a few photos that I'd never bothered to notice before. One was of Manu Ginobili; the other of Tim Duncan.
What's strange about the photos is how young both players seem. In Ginobili's photo, he's being guarded by Jason Kidd -- then playing for the Nets -- and blowing past Kidd. There aren't any braces or bandages on his lower legs. Even his hair looks thicker.
Duncan, too, looks almost spry. It's tough to tell when the photo was taken -- it's from a game against the Kings, and Sacramento's jerseys appear to be ones from the last two or three seasons -- but he still looks younger. There's not a brace on his knee, either.
What I'm building toward is this quote that NBA.com's Fran Blinebury got from an unnamed Eastern Conference executive:
"Oh, I'm always reluctant to write [the Spurs] out of the picture so early. Because history says San Antonio will be there in the end, just you wait."
Watching the Spurs play the Bobcats on Friday, there were moments when Ginobili and Duncan looked like their counterparts of old. On a handful of occasions, Ginobili slipped into the lane, disappeared amongst the defenders and then reappeared on the other side, already at rim-level. Then there was Duncan, on one play controlling a chest pass and feathering it into the basket with a single swoop.
At points this season, with young guys like DeJuan Blair or George Hill, there are those slightly surreal moments when you think you're seeing young men grow up before your eyes.
But then there are other moments when, as good as Duncan and Ginobili and Parker have been this year, there's the equally surreal feeling that you're watching these Spurs greats grow old before your eyes.
We won't really know until the spring who'll show up in the end.
The Roundup is a weekly look at Spurs basketball and the NBA. Dan Oshinsky is a digital media producer at KENS 5. He can be reached at doshinsky@kens5.com.
