After watching the first four games of this Denver Nuggets vs San Antonio Spurs series, I can definitely say that this series feels a lot like the first round series between the San Antonio vs Los Angeles Clippers in 2015 where the Spurs lost in a crucial heart breaker after Clippers point guard Chris Paul made a lucky running floater over both Tim Duncan and Danny Green.
Something tells me that Nuggets point guard Jamal Murray is going to break the Spurs and all of San Antonio’s hearts. I don’t know what it is but Murray has that killer mentality which always finds a way to beat the Spurs. Like Jokic will do his thing on center Jakob Poeltl but the key will be limiting Jokic just like we did with Clippers power forward Blake Griffin back in 2015. We have to try and avoid their role players from getting hot and beating us. I am already expecting Demar Derozan to be taking lots of dumb shots that will make me pull my hair out and possibly put me back in anger management. He will play the exact opposite way that point guard Tony Parker played against the Clippers, where with Parker I wanted him to shoot more.
I know it has only been four games but I already know it’s going to be a seven game series. My ideal situation was for it to be five games so that the Spurs could rest for the winner of the Portland Trail Blazers and Oklahoma City Thunder. The good thing right now is that no one on the Spurs is injured except that Patty Mills is playing with bad thumb that will require surgery this off-season but he has been playing with that all season and the bad is that we will be on the road if it does go to a game seven just like it was in 2015.
This past 2018-2019 season was indeed a success. Even after the way the year ended The San Antonio Spurs were a possession away from winning the game especially after a horrific offensive start and terrible play during the first three quarters. Still somehow they managed to make a remarkable comeback with so little time left on the clock. I loved seeing how they kept fighting it goes to show how much they believed in each other and how they desperately wanted to win.
This season the Spurs entered the season with so many new faces on the team. First former Spurs star small forward Kawhi Leonard got his wish and got traded to the Toronto Raptors along with longtime and fan favorite shooting guard Danny Green for shooting guard Demar Derozan, center Jakob Poeltl and a 2019 first round pick. Then on top of that long time Spurs shooting guard Manu Ginobili retired and point guard Tony Parker decided to shock the world and leave to go play for the Charlotte Hornets. Long time assistant James Borrego also went on to the Charlotte Hornets as he accepted a head coaching job with the team. Small forward Kyle Anderson left to the Memphis Grizzlies as the Spurs were not able to match his restricted free agent offer. Losing Kyle Anderson was huge because he was the Spurs leader the previous season.
During the season rising star and starting point guard Dejounte Murray was out for the season to a torn Achilles and power forward Pau Gasol was bought out by the team. The one of the highlights of this season besides the Manu Ginobili jersey retirement and making the playoffs was the fact that they were able to get back to winning fifty games.
Since the San Antonio Spurs recently lost in the first round of the NBA playoffs for the second year in a row but this time to the Denver Nuggets, the off-season starts once again and now fans and teams wonder where each free agent will sign this Summer. There will be lots of photo shopped jerseys on player and lots of false accounts. As always people will overreact to the free agent madness.
The Spurs have have seven players whose contracts expire after this season. Those players are Rudy Gay, Dante Cunningham, Quincy Pondexter, Chimezie Metu, Drew Eubanks, Ben Moore, and Donatas Motiejunas. The most notable player is Rudy Gay who was a key player to the Spurs season. He may have to look at taking a pay-cut if he wants to remain in San Antonio. Keep in mind that Gay won more in one season with the Spurs then he did his entire career. Personally I would like the Spurs to make a splash with landing a free agent no one expects to come. Spurs are in need of a play maker and someone who can create their own shot which was something they lacked off this past season. There Spurs will have 23,811,190 available in cap space to spend this off-season. Personally I would like to get rid of Demar Derozan and acquire these three players and I know of a rumor that is going around that could be true but would require everyone’s ego to be put aside.
The key free agent would be small forward Jimmy Butler who is what the Spurs need and the Spurs are what Jimmy Butler wants. First off Butler is one of the best defenders in the league and he knows how to score and get to his spots. He is also and excellent team player he is demanding and wants to be apart of a winning culture he is also a blue collar player who wants a coach who will yell at him and get the best out of him, that’s the Spurs everything he wants is in San Antonio but if he does come Spurs will have to work some magic with the cap and Butler would have to take less money.
Personally if the Spurs do not go after Butler I’m sure every Spurs fan would love to see Danny Green back who can still play and is still an all NBA defensive player and can hit threes. If Kawhi Leonard does leave Toronto Green will look to come back to San Antonio as he has said on his podcast The Green Room where he never wanted to leave and how he would be willing to comeback but I also do expect Green’s hometown team of the New York Knicks to go after him. Spurs are in need of a back up center and Ivica Zubac perfectly fits that role as he is young enough to learn from Aldridge and Popovich and should click right in with fellow international Jakob Poeltl plus he will be a cheap free agent.
The last free agent is Kawhi Leonard. Yes, Kawhi Leonard i have heard rumors that he could potentially be interested in returning to the San Antonio Spurs. Leonard has quickly realized how good he had it in San Antonio and what he was able to do with them. Leonard was not a fan of all the booing and traitor chants in San Antonio when he came back mainly because he does not like not being liked. According to some of Leonard’s family sources is that he has a tendency of going back to things and because of that I could see him returning. Leonard fit the Spurs perfectly. In order for it to happen Spurs would have to be open to fixing the relationship and adjust to him which is something the Spurs have never done for a player.
The San Antonio Spurs were officially eliminated from the NBA playoffs Saturday night after losing 90-86 against the Denver Nuggets. The Spurs started off playing horrifically they could not do anything offensively. The offense was horrific especially the starters you had shooting guard Demar Derozan taking horrendous mid range contested shots, power forward LaMarcus Aldridge could not hold onto the ball without turning it over, Bryn Forbes was air-balling three point shots as well as missing wide open layups, and Derrick white was nowhere to be found on the court. The only player on the starting line up that was decent was Jakob Poeltl and usually if he is doing good then the Spurs are in for a long night because they were not going to win the game if Jakob was there best player. The Spurs managed to only score thirteen points.
The second quarter did not get any better as we finished the half with thirty four points. In the second half our offense slowly started to become alive as Bryn Forbes who in the first half could not buy a single bucket managed to be the Spurs best player in the second half. Forbes ended the game with nineteen points and six rebounds. Derozan managed to make some buckets but was still making bad decisions and was absolutely terrible in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter. The Spurs best shooters Marco Belinelli and Davis Bertans were not able to score a bucket for their lives. Both Belinelli and Bertans ended the game with zero points. Spurs point guard Patty Mills helped lead the fifteen point comeback in the last six minutes of the game. Mills was playing excellent defense on Nuggets point guard Jamal Murray and was making clutch shots and right passes. Unfortunately Jamal Murray managed to get a switch off of Mills one too many times and he was the one who made the dagger three point shot after a Derozan turnover and ended the Spurs season. The Nuggets will now go on to face the Portland Trail Blazers in the second round of the playoffs.
Some may have not heard of the name but now the entire league knows who Derrick White is. There’s something about players whose last names are colors and who wear number four that happen to show up in big games. Derrick White managed to make his point in game one. He made a statement basically saying “I have arrived” making his presence felt Saturday night at the Pepsi Center.
Derrick White was making excellent plays and most importantly was making the right basketball decisions. He even dunked on Nuggets power forward Paul Millsap and hit a big clutch three point shot that eventually was the dagger for the Spurs win. White finished the night with sixteen points, five assist, and three rebounds. To most these stats may not seem like anything special especially for a starting point guard but White made his presence felt in game one. Denver was really prepared to just stop shooting guard Demar Derozan and contain power forward Lamarcus Aldridge to a certain extent and try to make the rest of the Spurs try to beat them but with White going off the Nuggets now have to worry about him.
The story of the night was the fact that Derrick White was from Denver and how he was facing his hometown team and about how he was having a nice game against them. White dunking on Millsap also added more to the story as his dunk was number one on SportsCenter top plays. White was a non star recruit out of high school and went to a culinary school to play college and did not even get a full tuition, then how he went to community college to play basketball and transferred to the University of Colorado at Boulder for his senior year and became a first round pick and now all of a sudden was shining in the playoffs. The first phrase that came to everyone’s mind was that he was a stereotypical Spurs player.
The #7 seed San Antonio Spurs will meet the #2 Denver Nuggets in the first-round of the NBA playoffs. Spurs begin a best of seven game series against the Denver Nuggets with the first game being held at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado. This according to most NBA experts is supposed to be a tough challenge for the Denver Nuggets due to the fact that the Nuggets have no experience in the playoffs and the Spurs have made it every year for the past twenty years.
The Spurs main advantage in this series is that they have playoff experience while the Nuggets do not have a single player with playoff experience. The Denver Nuggets had the third best record in all of the NBA and the second best in the western conference but teven with the high seed the Spurs were the team they wanted to avoid in the first round.
Both teams are very similar both teams are lead by excellent head coaches that have a defense first mentality and that like ball movement. They key players for the Spurs will be power forward Lamarcus Aldridge and shooting guard Demar Derozan because everything the Spurs due revolves around then and because the Spurs relay on them to make big shots in games and to break opposing team runs. Derozan is the most athletic player on the Spurs and will definitely give the Nuggets problems because they have no one who can match up with him.
The Nuggets are coming in completely inexperienced only one player on there team has playoff experience. Everything around the Nuggets revolves around Center Nikola Jokic. Like he has to touch the ball in order for them to score and leads there team in every statistical category. They have one X factor, that is point guard Jamal Murray who will make baskets thing will give you a heart attack so Spurs point guards Derrick White and Patty Mills will have their hands full with Murray. The Nuggets are the youngest team in the playoffs this season so I would expect some early mistakes in game one but be fine soon after.
There’s a new movement going on in San Antonio, Texas. It is called the united Nations of Ball Movement or UNBM for short. The UNBM was introduced to the world on an Instagram post by Spurs point guard Patty Mills. Mills posted a picture of him and some of his spurs teammates. The players in that picture where shooting guard Demar DeRozan, center Chimezie Metu, power forward Drew Eubanks, shooting guard Marco Belinelli, small forward Rudy Gay, shooting guard Bryn Forbes, power forward Davis Bertans, center Jakob Poeltl and point guard Dejounte Murray. The only players missing were center Pau Gasol, rookie small forward Lonnie Walker Jr and power forward Dante Cunningham.
The unique thing about the UNBM is that includes all the international players on the team. The Spurs pride themselves on their ball movement on the court especially with there find the open man mentality. There idea is pass up on a good shot in order to get an excellent shot. This is a good sign for the Spurs coaching staff because it shows that players have bought into the basketball idea of passing the ball and being unselfish. It also shows how much faith Patty Mills has in Popovich and how Mills has grown as a leader. Mills is the longest tenure player on the Spurs currently and has really grown and gone through what most players know as the Popovich wheel. Mills started off as a bench warmer when he first got to San Antonio in 2011 then slowly grew out of his role and was a pivotal player in the Spurs 2014 championship run and has slowly been getting more trust and playing time from Popovich. He also replaced Spurs legend Manu Ginobili as the new 6th man and leader of the second unit as soon as Ginobili decided to call it a career.
The Spurs are even selling UNBM T-shirts at there team store just outside the AT&T Center. Patty Mills is selling T-shirts as well as wristbands and hoodies on his website. The shirts come in three colors black, white, and silver. Essentially they come in Spurs colors.
San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich is known for lots of things besides being great head coach. One of those things is getting ejected from games for arguing with the refs. Except this time kit has happened in two straight games. During the Denver nuggets game last night Popovich was ejected sixty-three seconds into the game.
Popovich has always been know to be loud and get in people’s faces. It did not matter who they were officials or players. Just go ahead and ask Spurs legend and former Spurs point guard Tony Parker. Tony Parker came into the NBA when he just nineteen years old from France, Popovich got in his face and yelled at him constantly. Former teammates Tim Duncan and Sean Elliott said that sometimes during meetings it would be the Tony Parker show because Popovich would yell at him so much and that every now and then they would have to give him a pat on the back to let him know that everything was going to be ok. Like I said before Parker was only nineteen years old when he came into the league and quickly became the Spurs starting point guard after only four regular season games. Popovich had to make sure Parker grew up quickly especially because he had the biggest role on a veteran team at such a young age.
Popovich would also yell at shooting guard Manu Ginobili. Ginobili was a reckless player who would do all these weird passes that would drive Popovich crazy. With Ginobili there were two different kinds of passes the fancy pass that would be on Sportscenter later that night and the pass to the stands pass.The pass to the stands pass would mostly happen during the beginning of his career and Popovich’s face was priceless and he felt that yelling at Ginobili would be the only way to get to him.
Popovich does not just yell to yell, he is a smart man so he does it with a purpose. He wants to get his point across and wants to make his voice heard to either teach a lesson or to tell the refs that they were wrong and made a horrible call. Popovich has adjusted from all they yelling he has learned how sit back and let the players play like he did with Ginobili no matter how crazy whatever Ginobili did that drove him crazy and with the refs he would just give them the death stare that say it all.
Tonight will be a night of tears. Whether that be tears of joy or sadness along with Manu and ole ole ole chants. San Antonio Spurs legend and shooting guard Manu Ginobili will have his number twenty jersey hung up on the rafters of the AT&T center next to his former teammates Tim Duncan and David Robinson.
Ginobili has meant so much for the Spurs, he helped them win four championships and has had a pivotal role in each one. The Spurs do not win any of his four championships without him and they could have possibly won more if Ginobili had never got hurt. In 2005 if Ginobili had not been willing to come off the bench and become the sixth man for the Spurs they do not win as much as they did during his time there. Ginobili is also apart of the most wins as a trio with Tim Duncan and Tony Parker as well as the most ever wins as a duo with Tony Parker.
Ginobili may not have been the best player in Spurs history but he was the heart and passion of every Spurs team. There is no doubt that Ginobili is the most loved Spurs player ever. Yes, over Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and David Robinson it is easily able to notice by the cheers and love from the fans as well as the way current and former teammates talk about Ginobili. If Duncan were to score the crowd cheers but when Ginobili scores the place erupts. Ginobili was not just loved by San Antonio and his native country of Argentina but by the rest of the world. The fact that Ginobili when doing interviews speaks in both English and Spanish makes him connect with so many more people. On court Ginobili would always do the craziest passes and moves one could ever imagine.
Ginobili is my favorite player ever over Blake Griffin, Devin Booker and Lebron James. What I loved most about Manu was the passion he played with and all those crazy layups he did in the games. Manu Ginobili was the first Spurs player I have ever met and I still remember I was trying to grab my jersey for him to sign it and he grabs it and sign it. I remember I was frozen for a good two minutes and I said “gracias” then i went back to my mom and started crying because I could not believe it so I definitely know i will be in tears tonight during his jersey retirement.
ATLANTA, GEORGIA – MARCH 06: Derrick White #4 of the San Antonio Spurs dunks against Alex Len #25 of the Atlanta Hawks in the first half at State Farm Arena on March 06, 2019 in Atlanta, Georgia.
The San Antonio Spurs have been back on a roll lately. They got back on the winning column quickly and got in back in a rhythm quickly as well. After defeating the Atlanta hawks last night by a score of 111-104. Lamarcus Aldridge had himself one of the best games of his career where he dropped thirty two points but was all over the court and was very active.
The win streak started against the Detroit Pistons where before they beat the Pistons they were on a three game losing streak. Since then the Spurs have gone on to beat like stated before the Pistons, Oklahoma City Thunder, the Denver Nuggets in a close one and now the Atlanta Hawks. Spurs power forward has been hot these past four games as he has dropped twenty four points against the Pistons, twenty seven against the Thunder, twenty two against the Nuggets, and thirty two against the Hawks.
As a Spurs fan I may be overreacting to this since throughout seasons we are known for going on five to eight game win streaks throughout the season. But this is different because they are getting hot at the right time especially since the playoffs are approaching. The Spurs will play the Golden State Warriors on March eighteen. That is another four games away from the Warriors in my opinion the Spurs have a good chance of having an eight game win streak by the time they play the Warriors at the AT&T Center. Those four games will include playing the team with the best record in the NBA the Milwaukee Bucks which to me they are beatable considering both teams always split the season series each season. They will be on the road against the Dallas Mavericks which should be a win for the Spurs even though the Mavericks always give them a fight. They will face one of the worst teams in the NBA the New York Knicks in San Antonio so that is a blowout win. Lastly they will face the Portland Trail Blazers who for some reason can not beat San Antonio on the road and because of that reason I expect the Spurs to win that game lining up for a prime time game with of the Spurs and there eight game win streak heading against the defending champions the Warriors.
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