thoughts on the Spurs

Spurs won tonight in Chicago, marking the ninth straight win in that series for the Spurs, but it took overtime to do so against a game Bulls squad. The Spurs came out smoking, hitting five of their first six three balls and enjoyed a 12 point lead after the first quarter. And then they were pretty much hanging on the rest of regulation. The lead was eight at half and just one after three as I recall.

Finley was horrible shooting again tonight, missing his first eleven shots before hitting some big shots late in the game. Parker seemed to penetrate at will and distributed well also. The Spurs missed a ton of open looks or his numbers could have been much more gaudy.

The key to the game in overtime was simply poise. The Bulls seemed to force their offense too much; the Spurs made a couple of shots early to get back into the lead. And then a couple of key mistakes by the Bulls opened the door for their demise. Pop stood up to tell Parker to take a time out, and Duhon froze for a moment assuming the timeout would be called, and Parker blew right past him for an uncontested layup. Ginobili stole the ball from a defensive rebounder who just didn't protect the ball. And then the game was out of reach.

I am beginning to agree with my SIL that the Van Exel signing may not have been so smart. The jury is way out on that of course. In some respects I guess it is a risk free signing. I don't think even Nick at his most outrageous can disrupt this locker room, and if he proves to be garbage as the backup point, those minutes can easily go to Barry. When partnered with Ginobili in particular, I have no concerns with that backcourt for 12 minutes per night. But he has been terrible thus far. His defense is simply not up to snuff for the Spurs. He shoots too quickly too often - not even Horry is that much a gunslinger. And he has shown stretches of being lazy with the ball. That simply won't do in this town.

All that being said, it is four games into the season. There is a lot of work to be done with this team. But that is the biggest question mark to this point.