Spurs take 1-0 series lead
SAN ANTONIO — The Cleveland Cavaliers winning the NBA Eastern Conference title and making it into the NBA championship series against San Antonio is a great story. Cleveland, a sports town starved for success of any kind, had dreams of an NBA title and ABC television sports executives had dreams of huge prime-time ratings with LeBron James’ name in lights for Cleveland. Thursday night, however, the series became “Reality TV.” The San Antonio Spurs apparently didn’t read the Hollywood script that had been written for a Cleveland upset in the series, defeating the Cavs 85-76 to take Game One and a 1-0 series lead. In doing so, the Spurs continue to loop playoff victories, replaying the same methodical victory over and over again: The Spurs are in a playoff run in which they have defeated Denver, Phoenix and Utah for a 13-4 postseason record.
It doesn’t seem likely, given the Spurs’ exceptional team defense and playoff experience, that there will be any “made-for-TV” Cinderella story for Cleveland in this series. The Spurs are just too strong and play too well together for there to be a realistic upset scenario taking place. The Spurs’ leading player, Tim Duncan, has been league MVP twice, and is a 3-time Finals MVP. None of Cleveland’s players have such impressive credentials, or have anything even resembling the Spurs’ playoff experience.
Given that the Cavs employ LeBron James — a player of nearly superhuman athletic ability who proved in the conference finals that he has the special character of a winner too — there is still some hope remaining that Cleveland can make a game or two in the series interesting. But Thursday night, the brief chaos created by Cleveland’s stunning conference finals victory days before, was over — the world as we know it resumed normal orbital rotation; the Arctic ground squirrel emerged from its hole after winter hibernation, the stock market remained steady, the barometric weather pressure stabilized, Paris Hilton was released from prison — and the Spurs restored order in the NBA, proving that they are without question the league’s most dominant team.
“It felt like we played a month ago, so we had to get the rust off,” said Duncan, who finished with 24 points, 13 rebounds and five blocks. “We played well all around and on the defensive end we did a heck of a job tonight,” he said. (The Spurs were off for more than a week after defeating Utah in a 4-1 Western Conference Finals victory.)
“We were discombobulated to start offensively,” said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich. “LeBron didn’t have a great shooting night.”
James was 0-7 shooting in the first half and though he hit on consecutive 3s in the fourth to pad his scoring sheet, he appeared merely mortal offensively, finishing with 14 points.
“I didn’t play extremely well,” James said. “They (Spurs defense) were shrinking the floor and that’s something that I will have to adjust for and be ready to counter on Sunday. Six turnovers is uncharacteristic for me. I forced some passes that looked open and I have to play better in order for us to have a chance,” he said.
James was able to overcome Detroit’s defense in the conference finals; Richard Hamilton covered James well early in that series but James ran away from everybody later in the series. For San Antonio, Bruce Bowen played shut-down defense on James, and this post-season, Bowen has had a hand in the Spurs’ completely shutting down two of the Western Conference’s top offensive teams, Denver and Phoenix, the NBA’s leading offense.
“He’s so good at finding guys,“ said Duncan of James’ passing. “We have to keep hands in there every time he gets the ball.
“To play defense like we do it takes a lot of mental discipline and it takes five guys understanding the game plan and sticking with it. You have to give credit to our coaching staff. We just get good play from different people, even guys who aren’t usually there continue to step up for us,” Duncan said.
Guard Tony Parker had a superb night for the Spurs, scoring 27 and adding 7 assists.
“Coach told me to be aggressive and make quick decisions,” Parker said. “It’s timing, think ahead; in the second half we had more energy, we were more intense. He (James) scored two tough threes, but we’ll take that. We are trying to contain him, no easy layups, no dunks, we make every shot tough. We were focused on our transition defense so that we got back and he didn’t get any easy stuff,” he said.
“This is the best team we’ve faced,” said Cavs’ forward Drew Gooden. “Their experience overcame us in the first game.”
Cleveland was offensively-challenged throughout the game. The Cavs put up 15 points in the first quarter, 20 in the second, then a 14-point third quarter enabled the Spurs to run out to an 18-point lead. Cleveland had cut the lead to 8, 80-72 with 1:48 left, but that’s as close as the Cavs would get. James threw up a 3 that wouldn’t drop and Duncan came back to dunk on the other end to put the Spurs up 10 with just under one minute remaining.
Game 2 is set for Sunday night in San Antonio, with games 3 and 4 (and 5 if necessary) in Cleveland.
