Good Choices<\/a>\u2019 Geico commercial), and I could almost hear the faintest echo of Fred Herman Jones saying \u201cLet\u2019s split up gang!\u201d in the distance.<\/p>\nJeje Gomez: I\u2019d love to be less predictable here, but it was Fox\u2019s mistake. Even though the collapse started much earlier, the Spurs were still in the driver\u2019s seat for most of the last few minutes and it seemed like the Josh Hart miss was going to be the Knicks\u2019 version of the Wemby to Castle botched pass, an error that would determine the winner. I was optimistic until the end, and when Fox tapped the rebound to himself, I could taste the win. Then, the second he took the shot, and it got blocked, I thought a New York win was almost inevitable.<\/p>\n
True or false: The Spurs\u2019 lack of experience is the biggest reason for their struggles in the Finals. <\/p>\n
Dubinski: It\u2019s hard to say. It seemingly wasn\u2019t a problem against the defending champions last round, in which they didn\u2019t even have homecourt advantage, so why is it a problem now? There is zero doubt the Finals are an exponentially bigger stage than the conference finals, and going against a historical and charged-up franchise like the Knicks adds yet another level, so maybe this is just too much for a young team with little to no playoff experience before this year. Closing tight games has been an issue almost all season, and the Knicks are the polar opposite and the last team you want to falter against in the clutch against. I guess I\u2019ll go with true since they\u2019re playing a team of hardened, grizzled veterans with more experience to learn and build off of. (Although I think the Spurs win this series against any other Eastern Conference opponent.)<\/p>\n
Barrington: True. De\u2019Aaron Fox is supposed to be the playoff closer for the Spurs, but before this year, he had been in only 7 playoff games, and he had the most playoff experience of any starter. You could say that the 22 playoff games they\u2019ve played this season would be a lot of playoff experience, but I don\u2019t think players can absorb that quickly on the fly with only one or two days off between games. They\u2019ll handle these kinds of situations better next season, if they make it this far, but nothing is guaranteed. They\u2019ve had a lot of things go right for them in this year\u2019s playoff run to get to the finals, but their luck ran out Wednesday night in the Garden. You have to give the Knicks credit for continuing to fight even when down by a ton of points, but you also have to be a little mad at the Spurs for losing their focus and falling apart under pressure. It\u2019s a hard lesson, and thinking it would never happen to this team on a storied run from a 34-win season to the NBA Finals was a vain hope.<\/p>\n
Birdsong: Absolutely true. Lost in the hubbub about Fox is the very real failure as a team to recognize a need for a strategy change midway through the 3rd quarter. The Spurs should have been grinding out possessions instead of still trying to jump-shoot the Knicks out of the building. The inability to recognize that they no longer had the hot hand, as well as that they weren\u2019t effectively draining the clock + failing to create, take, and make easier shots, is largely what let the Knicks back in. Some of that was pure hubris (I\u2019ve written before about how these Spurs are sometimes not satisfied with just carrying a lead and prefer to embarrass the opposition), and some of it was execution. But both are symptoms of the same thing, inexperience. A Twitter\/X account last night tweeted out that if Chris Paul had still been on the team (even hardly playing) he would never have let them keep that up for the entire 2nd half, and I think that\u2019s right. Last night wasn\u2019t just the players\u2019 inexperience showing, but Mitch\u2019s too.<\/p>\n
Gomez: True-ish. There\u2019s no denying that some of the mistakes the Spurs have made are probably a reflection of not only their lack of experience in the biggest stages, but a lack of experience playing with one another. The Fox gaffe can be explained by the former, and the Wemby-to-Castle pass by the latter. Without those two massive blunders, the series could easily be 3-1 the other way. But there are other, arguably deeper problems. San Antonio doesn\u2019t have a bench or reliable size at the forward spots. They don\u2019t have an established half-court offense, which technically could be chalked up to Mitch Johnson\u2019s lack of experience, but it seems more to do with the coach\u2019s philosophy of giving his players freedom. Since the Spurs have so much talent, they have been able to hide those flaws at times and overcome them at others, but against a team that matches up so well against them, it\u2019s been harder to do. Youth is to blame for some of the issues, but focusing solely on it can distract from other weaknesses in the roster and the offense that are being exposed.<\/p>\n
How confident are you that the Spurs can get it to Game 7? <\/p>\n
Dubinski: Not at all, but maybe I should give them more than a 10% chance. One thing they have done well in these playoffs is bounce back, and they likely know just as well as we do that they could just as easily be up 3-1 (or even have already won 4-0) if they weren\u2019t shooting themselves in the foot in the final minute of games. They have what it takes, but they have to stop beating themselves and execute for three straight games. The question is, can they do it, considering consistency has not been their forte in these playoffs? (I will say, my only goal for them right now is to just get to Game 6, and not just for the obvious \u201cone game at a time\u201d reason, but also because the only thing we have never had to endure as a franchise is watch another team celebrate a championship on our home court, and I don\u2019t want that to change now.)<\/p>\n
Barrington: I\u2019m not confident, but I\u2019m hopeful. Game 5 is the key. This series isn\u2019t over yet. If they play like goldfish and don\u2019t internalize the failure of Game 4, they will be in good shape to take Game 6 in the Garden. If they do that, it\u2019s a matchup for the ages, as the league can see one of the most exciting back-and-forth series in history.<\/p>\n
The reason why I think that won\u2019t happen is that I remember the Spurs in the 2013 finals. After Ray Allen\u2019s miracle shot stole Game 6, the Spurs were mentally and physically spent and didn\u2019t put up that much of a fight in Game 7. I could see that happening again in Game 5 this year, but this team is younger and they could overcome the fatigue. The only good thing about remembering the 2013 Finals is that that wasn\u2019t the end of the story. There was a redemption arc, and who knows, that could happen again.<\/p>\n
This team is going to be good for a long time, and the mental hardening from the lessons of this season should make them tougher to take down in the future. That, and some roster improvements, as the bench was really exposed by the Knicks in this year\u2019s finals, and the lack of playable bigs led to an overdependence on Wembanyama, who can\u2019t play over 40 minutes in every game.<\/p>\n
Birdsong: I think it\u2019s all about Game 6. Supposing the Spurs win Game 5 (and I expect they will, if not purely out of sheer anger with themselves), they have a very tall order going back to the Garden down 2-3. That being said, they\u2019ve already pulled that off down 0-2. It\u2019ll be a different kind of pressure, though. The Knicks will do everything they can to not go back to San Antonio for Game 7, but if the Spurs pull it off, I can still see them winning it all. Right now, they need to focus on a reset in familiar surroundings and take every positive thing they can out of an extremely embarrassing and public lesson. They\u2019ve risen to the occasion before, so I think they can do it again. In fact, in spite of the loss, I\u2019m more confident in their ability to beat the Knicks; it\u2019s just going to come down to execution. The margin separating these two teams is razor-thin, and that bodes well for series extension. I give them 50\/50 to get to Game 7, but if they do, I\u2019m putting my money on them. At that point, they\u2019ll know they can overcome anything, and that\u2019s money in the bank(shot).<\/p>\n
Gomez: Can they bounce back and win Game 5? I\u2019m not confident about it. The loss was too painful, and while the Spurs have been surprisingly resilient in the face of adversity, at some point, they will break. If we use the stonecutter\u2019s credo<\/a> to describe the situation, they might be the rock, and the OG Anunoby game-winner, the final blow. If they somehow manage to once again respond well to a tough loss, I think anything is possible. I expect the Knicks to be confident in Game 5, but if they lose, they might get anxious about trying to finish it all at home since they don\u2019t exactly have much championship experience themselves. Is it likely we\u2019ll get a Game 7? Not really, but I won\u2019t call the series over until someone actually wins four.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Spurs melted down in the second half. What was the play that let you know the loss…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,354320,590,85,53291],"class_list":["post-732214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-in-the-bonus","tag-nba","tag-sports","tag-spurs-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732214","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=732214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}