Game Recap 02/10: San Antonio Spurs @ Brooklyn Nets
After a tough loss in Detroit where their defense was atrocious, San Antonio allowed the Nets to score 35 points, while shooting 63% FG on the first quarter. Brook Lopez and Joe Johnson were crushing the Spurs's defense and like it had happened with Greg Monroe in Detroit, Lopez dominated the Spurs at the start of the game and ended it with 18 points and 8-13 FG. Brooklyn dominated the rebounding as well, which makes me think that the Spurs were missing badly Tim Duncan on this department. San Antonio's story on this game is resumed in one player: Tony Parker. He played 35 minutes, he had the ball on his hand for virtually every single Spurs's possession and he took the right decisions time after time. With Parker dominating the game, Brooklyn changed their defensive game plan and all the attention Parker started getting from the Nets's defense allowed the Spurs's shooters to take advantage of the space they suddenly got. San Antonio shot 63% 3pts during the game, while Tony Parker shot 12-21 FG and dished 11 assists!
On the other hand, Deron Williams had a poor game with just 15 points and a 3/3 A/TO ratio. After a poor start, the Spurs's defense was able to bounce back and completely shutdown the Nets's offense during the second half by allowing them to score just 29 second half points. After the game, both Kawhi Leonard and Stephen Jackson claimed they didn't make any strategic adjustments on defense, as it was just a question of intensity. But the truth is that Brooklyn's offense is just too stagnant to be effective for 48 minutes on a game right now.
Game Recap 02/10: Los Angeles Clippers @ New York Knicks
The key matchup on this game would be between Carmelo Anthony and Blake Griffin, who would face each other on both ends of the floor and it was indeed a nice battle. The Knicks explored well that edge with Carmelo having a monster game, however he did that damage mostly thanks to isolation plays. He was unstoppable with 13-24 FG and 38 points by the end of the third quarter, but thanks to that the Knicks had no offensive flow and they ended the game with just 11 assists, a season low!
The most interesting thing was to watch how the Clippers would play with their roster finally healthy. The good news was that the Clippers's second unit simply dominated the game! They looked as sharp as they were at the start of the season, with Eric Bledsoe and Jamal Crawford back in their familiar roles as the second unit's backcourt. That allowed the LA team to make a 13-0 run from the end of the first quarter through the start of the second quarter. If we look at the +/- team points, we see that Chris Paul ended the game with -6, Blake Griffin with -2, but their second unit players Eric Bledsoe had +20, Jamal Crawford +17, Lamar Odom +15 and Grant Hill +10!
As much as the Clippers had merit in that, they also had an easy matchup while facing Amare Stoudemire as the opposing center! The Clippers's second unit style is more to push the tempo and attack the rim and when the Knicks had Amare as their center to patrol the paint, good news won't happen on this kind of matchups to the NY team! For several moments, I saw Amare Stoudemire, Carmelo Anthony, JR Smith and Jason Kidd playing together and that's a very poor defensive lineup. So, it wasn't a surprise that Amare ended the game with a team's worst -19 on team +/- points, while Tyson Chandler had +9! Think about that: throughout the 31 minutes that Tyson Chandler was on the floor, the Knicks outscored the Clippers by 9 points!
Finally, a special word for Grant Hill, who played the entire fourth quarter and did a terrific defensive job on Carmelo Anthony! Melo ended the third quarter with 38 points scored, but he got held to just 4 points in the final quarter of the game!
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