The San Antonio Spurs scraped by the Memphis Grizzlies and once again made a faster-paced team play at their level. Naysayers can say what they want about the opponent, which was on a four-game skid, but the Spurs were down two starters (Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle), and their visitors played desperately. Backups commonly shine when given the extra opportunity on well-coached teams, and this time it was Keldon Johnson.<\/p>\n
The defense started off a step behind as the Grizzlies took an 8-0 lead in the first 89 seconds. That was all it took for coach Mitch Johnson to call a stoppage so their coverages would tighten up, and his counsel was followed, but their next problem was an offensive drought, making 30 percent of attempts. The Spurs got by, collapsing onto the paint like a falling stack of bricks and allowing just one more shot in the lane in the quarter. They also got a 15-point boost off the bench, which included Kelly Olynyk igniting them with two steals, as they went into the second frame down a point.<\/p>\n
The offense was still in the gutter until Zach Edey, Memphis\u2019 massive 7\u20194 center, took his rest. Then K. Johnson and Harrison Barnes started cooking from short and long. Four lead changes followed until intermission, with the Spurs up 49-47, but Memphis was hanging on because of their strong work on the offensive glass, resulting in 14 second-chance points.<\/p>\n
The third quarter was subsequently all gas and no brakes. Cedric Coward and Jaren Jackson Jr. did the most damage against San Antonio, yet De\u2019Aaron Fox never let them get into dangerous territory.<\/p>\n
The fourth quarter started with Memphis ahead by one following six ties and 12 lead changes. Another famine struck, this time affecting both sides. Johnson boldly gave Fox, the team\u2019s main source of offense, a brief rest, and it paid off as they took the lead without him. He returned in crunch time, but Harrison Barnes was their savior, taking over with baskets at short, middle and long range.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The San Antonio Spurs scraped by the Memphis Grizzlies and once again made a faster-paced team play at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":294157,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[574],"tags":[64,63,726,85,125283,168992],"class_list":{"0":"post-294156","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-spurs-game-recaps","13":"tag-spurs-scores"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294156","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=294156"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/294156\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/294157"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=294156"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=294156"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=294156"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}