The Luke Ridnour Power Hour: Spurs vs. Bucks recap

All hail the coining of another nickname!

Well done, tomasito! I heartily approve. And good job on the recap. I had to miss this game and while I’m not sad to have missed a cruddy performance, it’s good to have the details you gave.

Thanks a ton.

Great recap, tomasito. Sorry to hear about your pizza, I’ve been there.

Hope you’re feeling better.

this game made me want to poop. also, i have to ask – did this recap really question the clucth-ness of tim duncan? everyone makes and misses in the last seconds…..geez.

im ok with td getting the ball. did want him to try and draw contact though. we were on the friendly side of the whistle.

ok then. i just think tim didnt make his best move on that occasion rather than not being clutch at the last shot of a game.

we do usually go with manu (sometimes tony) in the 1-4 in many of those situations. i’d trust tim as much as i would either of those two if he is in a comfortable spot for him. tim definitely wasnt in the most comfortable position there, but something had to be done.

i hope you are feeling better (or managed to avoid the illness).

Agreed. Duncan is not a one on one end of game guy. He plays better off feeds from other players.

I don’t like Tony taking the last shot either. Near the end of the game, I trust him, but in the last seconds, I do not. Would rather see Manu penetrating (his clutch shots are legendary) or Tony kicking out to shooters.

Now, with that said, my nightmare scenario is unfolding. The Spurs will creep into the playoffs and then get housed by the Lakers or Hornets. I enjoy seeing us punching Shaq and the Suns in the face as much as anyone, but I am more concerned with a championship. We need somebody or bodies to counter act Paul Gasol.

I am still dreaming of a collapse and then getting the first draft pick.

Thabeet has looked like dog shit against Gonzaga (he got ejected from the game) and G Town. He seems to put up huge numbers against lower opponents. He is not developing as the season progresses. He did have 7 blocks against G Town though, so the potential is there.

Blake Griffin has been an absolute bad ass. Double digit rebounds in almost every game. Averaging 22 points a game. Remind you of anybody we know? I am still worried about his lack of height. There are a lot of guys around the NBA like him and he is no sure bet against the mega bigs of the NBA. However, Powe from Boston really roughed up the Lakers last season in the finals, so there is that.

Unless Thabeet shows improvement, I am going with Griffin. The Spurs better start losing and fast. Tank in 09! I will not settle for some Utha Jazz 50 win season and the get man handled in the playoffs. This is championship city here. We ain’t playin. This is for real. Come back with your shield or on it!

ummmmm. didnt mean to go down that path at all. i was just trying to respectfully disagree about timmy taking the last shot.

for the record, i’m calling TDs number in the 7th game of this years’ finals, with 2.2 seconds on the clock down a point.

I meant I don’t like Timmeh trying to go one on one in the final seconds. When he catches and shoots, that is when he is money. All the great big men operated best that way, Kareem, Moses..etc. Having a big gentleman dribbling around is pure trouble. Yao was shaking and baking a couple nights ago and sent up a real brick as time expired.

I do believe that if the Spurs wind up just missing the playoffs, they will indeed get the first pick of the draft. We have draft lottery mojo. Some teams have it, ie Houston with Sampson, Hakeem and Yao. Some teams don’t have it, ie LA Clippers (poor souls). Am I dreaming? Maybe, but dreams have come before. I must either dream or accept the reality that we have no chance at winning a championship in the waining years of the greatest power forward in the history of basketball.

For the record, barring injury, we have no chance against the Lakers. I love Big Red, but he is not a legitimate threat to the Lakers. Neither is Thomas. Nice reliable old guy, but will get over powered and run around by every Laker big man. We well get pounded on the boards and housed. Watching the Lakers win a championship will make me throw up. The whole Laker team makes me sick. They are completely illegitimate. Kobe held the Hornets hostage and forced a draft day trade. Paul Gasol came to the trout after the Grizz were infiltrated by Jerry West and heisted him out of there in old mob style fashion. He is fenced property. They are so far above the salary cap that it completely destroys the competitiveness of the league. In summary, the are a poster child for the bad side of capitalism.

With that said, I do admire the guts displayed by the current group of Spurs.

After careful consideration, I’ve reconsidered my opinion with regards to TD. He’s hit too many last-second shots for me to question his awesomeness in general. However, it seems like he gets in a funk when he’s playing poorly, and gets too down on himself. In my defense, I’m not feeling great, and the whole team played like a bunch of asshats.

I still think it was a mistake not to run a play that involved Romaju, who you know had to have had sky-high confidence that he would make the shot.

Games like this one are hard to swallow for us fans – they’re the good ol’ “we shouldn’t lose, why are we losing, we were there, it was ours, we lost” games that leave you with a putrid aftertaste till the next game. Recaps like yours, tomasito, really help me put them in perspective.

Any recap that features pizza, Gargamel and 2 blank stars is simply made of win. And cheese. Recced to the Heavens.

Regarding Duncan, clutch is sometimes difficult to define. There’s the clutchness of being able to play well in high pressure environments, like a game 7 in the Finals – and then there’s the clutchness of winning games on the last two or three possessions consistently. I think Timmy has a lot of the former, and a bit of the latter.

That said, just about everyone has only a bit of the won-the-game-on-the-last-possession clutchness. It all comes down to trust, I think. I trust Manu with the ball in the last minute because he’s come through in glorious fashion a numbers of times, and the highlights are forever etched in my mind. No one will remember Timmy’s weak layup against the Bucks in two years, but I’ll be telling my children about his 3-pointer against the Suns. So yeah, I trust Timmy too.

That said, Timmy, next time DUNK THAT CHIT.

Regardless of the game outcome, I’d like to take a second to give some props to some of the article names we’ve had. “The Luke Ridnour Power-hour” is simply great. I actually think my personal fave was “Scrappy-doo’s unholy sugar high”, but that wasn’t really for a recap.