Game Preview #25: Los Angeles Clippers @ San Antonio Spurs

by silverandblack_davis on Dec 21, 2009 6:00 AM CST in Game Previews

Other than the video above, I got nothing for today's game preview. The holiday hack spirit has gotten to me. Jump in.

See, I told you. Nuttin'. I had some ideas for this game but the holiday cheer and jeer has gotten the best of me, and the fact that we almost lost to the Pacers made the Spurs undeserving of a massive previewing effort. Let's just get a damn more comfortable win this time, pretty please?

Los Angeles Clippers @ San Antonio Spurs
Where: AT&T Center - San Antonio, TX
When: December 21, 2009, 7:30 PM Spurs time
Watch: FSN Southwest

How They Stack Up


11-4	Home	7-8
3-6	Road	5-6
101.8	Offense	95.8
97.3	Defense	97.8
47.7	FG%	46.0
38.7	3-pt%	30.7
73.9	FT%	73.0
42.9	Rebounds	41.7
14.6	TOs	15.5
6-4	Last 10	6-4
Won 2	Streak	Won 1
3rd, Southwest	Position	3rd, Pacific


Country/Time Zone	Game Time
Argentina	10:30 PM
West Coast	5:30 PM
Philippines	9:30 AM
Central Europe	2:30 AM
Palestine/Egypt	3:30 AM
East Coast	8:30 PM
Snowville	6:30 PM
Perth, AUS	9:30 AM
Tokyo, JP	10:30 AM
Sydney, AUS	12:30 PM

Spurs (14-10)	Matchups	Clippers (12-14)
Tony Parker French Fry	Point Guard Baron Davis has been healthy for the entire season so far and yet not much has changed for the Clippers. A full team with few injuries or setbacks has produced a better record, but the Clippers remain a team going nowhere fast. Baron's averages have gone slightly up (not from beyond the arc, where he's abysmal), but he proved in Golden State he needs to shoot a lot more to be effective. I'm still waiting on Tony to rekindle the brilliance and reliability that he showed last year. But even if he's operating below expectations, he's still a handful for any opposing team. Advantage: Spurs	Baron Davis Homeless Man

Keith Bogans The Thickness	Shooting Guard It's the battle of The Thick People - stocky guards that can bully smaller guards, Bogans on the defensive end and Eric Gordon on the offensive end. Keith has been playing both ends of the floor quite well over the last few games, so let's hope he can limit E.G.'s offensive outburst. Advantage: Clippers	Eric Gordon Baby Faced Assassin

Richard Jefferson Hansbrough Killer	Small Forward Despite weak numbers in the last game agains the Pacers, RJ still ended up with the second-highest plus-minus in the team. He had a good game during the first meeting (17-4-3) and I expect him to match that production or be slightly since, you know, he kinda pads the stats against sub-.500 teams. Al Thornton is no spring chicken when it comes to athleticism and skill, but he's playing for the Clippers so I'm giving the whities to RJ. Advantage: Spurs	Al Thornton Al-Thletic

Tim Duncan Clutch Bag	Power Forward He damn should be in the MVP discussion if our record becomes much, much better. For now, we should just look beyond that award and enjoy TD's brilliance. Advantage: Spurs	Marcus Camby Shot Swatter Extraordinaire

Antonio McDyess Cruisin' but Bruisin'	Center Antonio hasn't done much offensively with his silky smooth J, but you gotta give it to his hustle and tenacity on the boards. I don't know why, but I'm not complaining just yet. Pop has been able to manage Dice's minutes well, too, as he's been only averaging 21 mpg. Kaman, on the other hand, gets the nod here because I think he's just younger and more talented offensively now than McDyess. Advantage: Clippers	Chris Kaman Caveman Is Gone

George Hill The New Karate Kid	Bench & Role Players Our bench is still all sorts of deep even with the Red Rocket out (get well soon, Matty!). Let's hope Pop gives the MHs (Malik Hairston and Marcus Haislip) some burn and experience. We might need them sometime down the road. Also, Haislip has officially been activated. Advantage: Spurs	Rasual Butler Tracy Morgan Impersonator

Gregg Popovich Homeless Man Ancestor	Coach I could say a lot of bad things about Dunleavy, but I'll let you read what our fellow SB Nation blog Clips Nation has to say instead: Dunleavy is overly arrogant and stubborn. His in-game decisions seem to be based more on stats and paper matchups, when he should be more sensitive to the flow of the game and the shifts in momentum. His failure to do so has cost the Clippers many close games, and it will inevitably contribute to future losses against teams they should beat. Daaamn. Now are you happy we have Pop? Advantage: Spurs	Mike Dunleavy Fire Him
	images via yahoo.com

	Other Factors
	Intangibles I don't think we'll take this thing lightly after we nearly got ambushed by the Pacers. Advantage: Spurs
	Mojo On a positive note, the comeback win over the Pacers will help us in clutch situations against tougher opponents. That being said, we had no business being in a close game with an Indiana team missing its biggest star. Advantage: Spurs
	Winner The theme for the next few games is to pad the win column, but this Clips team remain dangerous and could have gotten some confidence after seeing us falter a bit in the last game. The Spurs should exercise caution and at the same time, show no mercy. Prediction: Spurs win (after our last game, I don't even want to speculate if it will be close or not)

Keys To The Game

Avoid Third Quarter Collapse - Oh, TQC, why must you haunt us so? Leave us alone.
Contain Baron Davis - Say what you want about him being a ballhog or trigger-happy, but Boom Dizzle sparks this team. He can make his teammates better if he wants to, and he'll always be a threat to explode any game if he just has his head screwed on rightly. He played well against the Spurs last time even after coming off the bench (due to the flu, I think), so it'll be interesting if he can do more damage now that he'll start.
Turnovers - We only had eight the last game. Let's try to build on that.

Last Time They Met

The Spurs beat the Clips just a week ago, on the road, with a score of 115-90. We had balance scoring from the team, with 6 guys scoring in double digits and 2 others scoring 8 points. It'll be good to lighten Timmy's load a bit.

Strength of Schedule

The every-other-day saga continues. A win would be imperative to get the momentum coming into Wednesday's showdown when the Blazers come to town.

The Clippers came off a nail-biting win themselves, edging out the Sixers the same day we slipped past the Pacers. They are on their 4th game of a six-game roadie, and came all the way from the City of Brotherly Love with only a day's rest. Tough.

Some Other Reading

Clippers

Clips Nation - The Clippers SBN blog is a very good site, run by Steve Perrin. It's amazing that he does everything on his own, and I'm sure the Clippers fans appreciate his hard work.
Clipper Blog - The TrueHoop affiliate blog for the Clippers. Doesn't hold a candle to 48MoH.

Spurs

48 Minutes of Hell: The standard I compare all TrueHoops blogs to. TBDTNOTP - The Best Damn TrueHoop Network Out There, Period.
Project Spurs: Part of the Bloguin network, and with plenty of great posts. Check out their Podcast!

Other Things of Possible Interest

In case you missed this, here's Baron Davis with his buddy Steve Nash spoofing the Step Brothers movie. Stevie does bring the hilarity and the dance moves, too.

Where to Tune In

TV

This game is not on national TV, so for those of you staying at home, you might want to read on below...

Online

As always, NBA league pass is recommended for those who are willing to pony up the cash. Almost every Spurs game will be broadcast there, which is especially helpful for those of us who aren't in the San Antonio area.

Please don't post links to illegal game feeds in the game thread. Links to illegal feeds are not permitted on SBNation, but you can probably find them out there on the internets if you're resourceful and desperate. In fact, nobody can stop you from googling "atdhe". You can also shoot an email to dmenendez@gmail.com for more assistance.

Spurs League Pass audio is still free this year, so check it out.

Radio

If you're in the San Antonio area and aren't near a TV, tune in to WOAI (1200 AM).

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Comments

Turnovers – We only had eight the last game. Let’s try to build on that.

Build on the effort to take care of the basketball, not the turnover total, please.

by BlaseE on Dec 21, 2009 7:50 AM CST reply actions

Small detail, but we had 9 turnovers against the Pacers. For those browsing box scores, the ‘total’ row only shows the sum of the individual turnovers. It doesn’t reflect the team turnovers like shot clock violations.

Regardless, turnovers are important.

We specialize in misinformation around here. Facts and stats just get in the way.

by Wayne Vore (ATS) on Dec 21, 2009 11:29 AM CST up reply actions

The guy with the ball the longest of the 24 should take the TO stat unless the final guy has it 6 seconds or more then he gets it unless the defense is really good and he shouldn’t have been passed to in the first place or unless 1 guy is hurt and your offense is playing 4 on 5 because then it can go on the team…..

or just blame the poing guard.

by BlaseE on Dec 21, 2009 1:08 PM CST up reply actions

Wow. That Stepbrothers video is….something else. And I think TOs will be our biggest indicator of how we’re doing. Hoepfully we can also keep Kaveman from destroying us again.

by joe20 on Dec 21, 2009 7:53 AM CST reply actions

How many times have we played these warriors and clippers. Feels like we haven’t seen any quality teams and what we did play, sucked. I need real basketball. Please.

by LionZion on Dec 21, 2009 9:24 AM CST reply actions

it’s a good thing there is only one San Antonio team. The clips should just relocate to a city not named Los Angeles.

If you liked it then you should have put a 5th ring on it. Oh oh oh.

by TDzilla! on Dec 21, 2009 9:25 AM CST reply actions

Let’s just win the game. The Spurs need to be sure to win against these basement dwellers.

by Big50 on Dec 21, 2009 9:26 AM CST reply actions

Hopefully, this game will end up far enough in our favor to get some good minutes fro Marcus. I’m curious to see how he’s doing with picking up the system.

The Spurs - now playing like sh*t again!

by Tim C. on Dec 21, 2009 11:41 AM CST reply actions

Honestly, its probably the most exciting thing about this game since we still can’t see Blake v. Blair.

Sidenote: I dislike mixing first and last names in general but the alliteration trumps it. I also get annoyed when I mix cities and team names within a paragraph like “Dallas blew the finals to the Heat in ’06.” It doesn’t bother me when other people write that way though.

by BlaseE on Dec 21, 2009 1:12 PM CST up reply actions

You know what phrase would go with Rasaul Butler’s picture?

“Waka waka!”

by ZeusVizzle on Dec 21, 2009 12:20 PM CST reply actions

Replacing Big Red

I just want some insight on who’s replacing Bonner for the next month. Will it be Marcus Haislip, like Tim C. just mentioned?

And do you all think Haislip is in Pop’s doghouse or is he just in street clothes all the time because he can’t get any playing time from the rest of the bigs?

by ZeusVizzle on Dec 21, 2009 12:25 PM CST reply actions

Haislip didn’t wow anybody in preseason, which is about all we have to go by for him. But on MySA.com, there’s an article that says Pop confirmed he will be activated.

The Spurs - now playing like sh*t again!

by Tim C. on Dec 21, 2009 12:39 PM CST up reply actions

I think that part of it is also limiting how many new faces we are integrating at once. Integrating RJ, Dice, Blair, and Bogans is the priority over getting Haislip minutes. Once the team gels and we have a winning record cushion, Haislip should get more minutes. I think these arguments might be why Ratliff has been so limited as well…obviously other than his injury and age issues.

by BlaseE on Dec 21, 2009 1:19 PM CST up reply actions

To add, at one point against the Pacers, I noted our lineup as:

Hill (sophomore player on second year with the team)
RJ
Dice
Blair
Bogans

If Finley and Bonner were healthy, I’m not sure we see that lineup but that is crazy for the Spurs only player from last year on the court to be a returning rookie.

by BlaseE on Dec 21, 2009 1:22 PM CST up reply actions

Talk about a test of his abilities to get the team into their sets and execute the offense!

Consider the gun jumped
5 in 10

by J.R. Wilco on Dec 21, 2009 3:55 PM CST up reply actions

Regarding the Some Other Reading section:

If you haven’t heard, ESPN launched a new ESPNLosAngeles.com local L A sports portal. The front page is very Purple & Gold but if you click on the Clippers logo or choose Clippers from the Team menu you’ll see more about them.

(In case anyone is interested, the guys who ran the L A Times Laker blog left and went over there.)

The Lakers "Too big, too strong, too long, too good."

by olf on Dec 21, 2009 12:48 PM CST reply actions

Just a little holiday gift for all of you seeking more Clippers info. :)

The Lakers "Too big, too strong, too long, too good."

by olf on Dec 21, 2009 1:01 PM CST up reply actions

Gee, thanks, olf :)

The Roleplayer's Realm

by silverandblack_davis on Dec 21, 2009 6:16 PM CST up reply actions

Hilarity with yet another stevenash joint: Barbosa learns the words to “All Night Long”

If the Suns end up having a great year, I wouldn’t be surprised, because they sure seem to be having a good time together as a team. Probably due in no small part to Nash.

I have flying monkeys at my disposal, and I'm not afraid to use them.

by Lauri on Dec 21, 2009 1:16 PM CST reply actions