Two schools of thought do not exist for every single topic under the sun, but most of what we pursue as human beings can certainly welcome opposing points of view. Such is the case with the enthralling Western Conference playoff series between the San Antonio Spurs and Los Angeles Clippers, the only one of the eight first-round encounters to be knotted at one game apiece heading to Game 3.
It is entirely reasonable to say that the Clippers, not the Spurs, needed Game 2 more, given San Antonio’s playoff prowess at home.
It is entirely reasonable to say that the Spurs — the defending champions, with a power forward who is defeating Father Time, and an aging backcourt trying to hold things together for one more run — are the more compelling team in this drama.
It is entirely reasonable to say that in a contentious best-of-seven series, the true pivot point is not Game 3 in a 1-1 series, but Game 4 of a series, the one which marks the difference between a 3-1 advantage or a 2-2 tie heading into Game 5.
All of the above points are valid, and anyone who stands by them is not wrong to hold such views.
In one person’s opinion, however, those statements don’t seem to match the moment. In this piece, I’ll attempt to explain why.
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It is so easy to say that the Spurs are… well… the Spurs, meaning that the champions deserve the benefit of the doubt in most cases. Any 50-50 arguments should tilt in their direction. “Nah, the Spurs didn’t need Game 2 more. The Clippers are the team that has to prove something.” That’s a perfectly fair statement and expectation, but the inconvenient truth of the matter is that the Spurs can’t really be seen as “the Spurs” in their present state.
In the slowdown days and the championships of 2003, 2005 and 2007, Tim Duncan was the centerpiece of the Spurs, the team’s most important player due to San Antonio’s defense-first focus. After the reinvention of the team in the earlier part of this decade, though, Duncan took on more of a supporting role and let Tony Parker take control of the team. Parker has acknowledged that he will soon hand the baton to Kawhi Leonard, but that’s future tense. In the present, it remains that San Antonio is never a more complete or imposing team than when Parker is making things happen on offense.
Kawhi’s defense — recognized with his Defensive Player of the Year Award on Thursday — is certainly one of the other core components of an elite Spurs performance, but numero uno is still Parker being lethal. That’s when this team cooks more than ever.
In the first two games of this series against the Clippers, Parker has an overall total of 11 points on four made field goals in 59 minutes. He scored one point in Game 2, and the Spurs needed every ounce of offense they could get from Patty Mills once Manu Ginobili fouled out. Mills answered the bell, and while Duncan was legendarily great Wednesday night, Mills became the player who saved San Antonio in the immediate moment. He tied the game late in regulation by running the floor, drawing a foul, and making two free throws. He provided instant offense in overtime and then sealed the game at the foul line.
The Spurs survived a night when Parker just couldn’t do much of anything.
If you think that “Primetime Patty” is here to stay, or that Duncan is going to light up the Clippers every night, be my guest… but don’t expect to be proven right in the coming days. The Spurs are still the team that will fight this series uphill as long as Parker is not physically up to par. If he can recover and make solid contributions, the dynamic of the series will change, but unless or until that happens, San Antonio will play this series at a deficit.
This is why the Spurs — as much as they rely on their identity to win games for them this time of year — are not the more compelling team in this series. The Los Angeles Clippers become the psychological portrait that’s far more interesting to assess at this stage of the proceedings.
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Recall this image a year ago:
It’s the image seared into the memories of the Clippers when they gacked away that late lead against the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 5 of the Western Conference semifinals. A win in that game would have given the Clippers a chance to play for the first trip to the conference finals in franchise history. A win in that game would have given the Clips a chance to chase away a lot of demons and announce that they had truly arrived — both as a team and as an organization ready to bury a snake-bitten and often ugly past.
Instead, the end of Game 5 only gave the Clippers more haunting memories to deal with. Chris Paul flinched in the heat of competition, and Oklahoma City stole the game which enabled the Thunder to overcome Scott Brooks’s coaching and advance to the conference finals.
All offseason, the Clippers lived with that memory far more than the reality of losing the subsequent Game 6 at home to the Thunder. It was in Game 5 when the hapless, luckless Los Angeles Clippers — shrouded in darkness throughout their history — endured a pain that was at once familiar and completely foreign. It was thoroughly Clipper-ish to endure such agony, but there was nothing normal about losing so close to the conference finals, the round the franchise has never reached.
This year, with Donald Sterling out of the picture and the scars of 2014 — on and off the court — offering the kinds of lessons championship athletes must learn in order to become great, the Clippers have arrived at their moment of truth. They let Game 2 slip away Wednesday night, with Tony Parker scoring one freakin’ point and Tiago Splitter still not being forceful enough to give the Spurs their best 2014-level arsenal.
For Los Angeles, the story of Game 2 was a story marked by the ghosts of Game 5 in Oklahoma City a year ago, but it was also a story of the homecourt losses that have dogged this franchise in the postseason.
The parallel to Game 5 in OKC — when Chris Paul committed a crucial late turnover that opened the door for the Thunder to win — was Blake Griffin’s butterfingered turnover in the final half-minute of the fourth quarter, which led to a runout by the Spurs and two tying foul shots by Mills. Griffin had been the second-best player on the court on Wednesday (behind Duncan), but all anyone will remember from an otherwise-resplendent performance was his late gaffe and his rough overtime period, with a number of misses close to the tin.
The parallel to past homecourt losses in the playoffs — think of Game 3 and Game 6 against the Thunder last year — was that the Clippers’ role players just didn’t knock down perimeter shots. It’s been a familiar tune for a team that, when you think about it, has only three players it can really count on every night: Paul, Griffin, and DeAndre Jordan.
Jamal Crawford in Game 2: 4 of 13, 1 of 7 from three-point range.
J.J. Redick was a solid 4-of-9 from three-point range, but with a 4-of-12 shooting line, that’s still not where the Clippers need him to be.
Last but certainly not least, the most valuable Clipper for the Spurs (and other past playoff opponents), Matt Barnes, hit just 1 of 10 field goals while also missing 3 of 4 foul shots. If Deron Williams’ present-day shortcomings were magnified last night in Atlanta, the diminishment of Barnes’s game was spotlighted as well… at great cost to his team. That 2007 Barnes-Deron West semifinal between Golden State and Utah feels as though it’s 88 years ago, not eight.
The Spurs are banged up at multiple positions, with Parker and Splitter topping the list. Yet, for all of San Antonio’s injuries, the Spurs’ bench still crushed the Clippers’ bench in the scoring column in Game 2, 48-17. Parker might not be able to win this series, but L.A.’s bench can certainly lose it.
This takes us back to the focus of this series: It’s really more about the Clippers right now. The outcome of the series is on their racquet, since San Antonio’s central hub — Parker — can’t generate any explosiveness on his jumper or any other component of his offensive game.
The presumption in any San Antonio playoff series is that the Spurs, given their reputation and pedigree, will find a way to play great. Yet, without Parker, this team isn’t very likely to be great… not on offense, at any rate. The Clippers are playing a great franchise, but they’re not playing a great iteration of the Spurs with Parker in such discomfort. Los Angeles faces the challenge of knowing that its best basketball is likely to win the series. That should comfort a group of athletes, but for the Clippers — who have never tasted what it’s like to be one of only four teams left standing in an NBA season — such a reality confers added pressure.
The Spurs handled the pressure of Game 2, winning the game they had to win in much the same way that the Miami Heat needed to win Game 2 of last year’s East Finals in Indianapolis against the Pacers. Once Miami cleared that hurdle, it played with an old and familiar champion’s confidence in the remaining four games.
That Miami team, though, didn’t have an injured LeBron James. San Antonio has an injured Parker and an injured Splitter to boot.
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The Spurs are now expected by most to win the series, but the Clippers now get their chance to be the team that responds to adversity. As mentioned at the beginning of this piece, it’s quite reasonable to say that Game 4 of a (2-1) best-of-seven series is the true pivot point, not Game 3. However, it is sometimes the case that Game 3’s events establish the tone and trajectory for the remainder of a series, much as they did in last year’s NBA Finals and, for that matter, the Indiana-Miami East Finals once the Heat returned to South Florida.
This is not an immutable scientific fact or any sort of airtight empirical observation, but it really does seem that Game 3 is the pivot point in Spurs-Clippers.
Either San Antonio, fresh from a Game 2 escape which didn’t seem very likely in the final minute of the fourth quarter, creates an avalanche of doubt in the Clippers’ minds, or something entirely different will happen: Yes, the Spurs could be the Spurs, but the other scenario is that this Los Angeles team — seared and scarred by the recent past — proves to itself that it can surmount two formidable opponents on one night: San Antonio, yes, but also self-doubt. If the Clippers can defeat both foes on Friday, it is going to be hard for the creaky Spurs to match the younger energy of Blake Griffin and CP3. More precisely, it will be hard for the Spurs to win three of the next four games with more physical limitations on their side of the ledger.
This series is about the Los Angeles Clippers’ ability to do what almost every NBA champion has to do at some point in springtime: Step into a roaring enemy lair, a place whose noise is exceeded only by the shouts of self-doubt that come from within, and deliver the goods.
We know the Spurs will compete honorably and doggedly. It’s the Clippers who remain the mystery, and therefore, the more compelling team in this West first-round series.
We’ll see if the more compelling team becomes the victorious one… or the one which has to shoulder another offseason filled with anger and the bitter taste of another playoff defeat.