The Spurs played their best half of basketball on Wednesday night, jumping to a 30 point lead at halftime. It was a site to behold my friends and the first time this season SA had all facets of their game working at once. The halftime stats were incredibly lopsided. The Spurs shot 60% from the field and had 20 assists on 27 FG. SA out rebounded GS 33-11 and limited the Warriors to 32% shooting and made it all look easy.
Some additional thoughts:
-Did Baron Davis even play? According to the box score he was out there 29 minutes, but I think even Mike Dunleavy had a bigger impact on the game.
-The Spurs passing was a joy to watch. At one point Manu threaded a pass across the lane to a backcutting Rasho for a layup. Iss so pretty; damn near brought a tear to my eye.
-Bowen continued his ridiculous shooting from 3, going 4-5 and raising his shooting percentage to 64.5% which leads the league.
-Speaking of shooting percentages, Tony's 11-13 night upped his FG% to 56.6%, good for 9th in the league. That shooting coach must be working! Wrong. WRONGWRONGWRONGWRONG. Tony's jumpshot has not improved. Take a look at the numbers: last year compared to this year. In the 04-05 season he had an eFG% of 40.5% for shots taken outside of the lane. This year that same value is down to 37.2%. The "e" in "eFG%" implies the stat gives extra credit for 3PM (because shooting 40% from 3 is more valuable than shooting 45% from 2). Some quick algebra shows that Tony made 40.2% of his perimeter 2P shots last year; this year he's making 39.3%. He's actually gotten worse!
His overall FG% is up this year because he's taking a larger portion of his shots in the lane (49% up from 42) and converting a higher percentage of those shots (a ridiculous 73.4% up from 63.3%). He's eschewing the 3P (on pace for 27 3PA compared to 156 last year) and concentrating on getting to the rizzack! The man is a French layup machine. In fact, I hereby declare that The Official PoundingTheRock.com Nickname for Tony Parker is now "French Layup Machine." I'll send out a memo.
I am no way belittling Tony's play this season. He's been spectaculicious and quite possibly the best guard finisher in the entire league. But the man still cannot hit a jumpshot and unless this changes in the next 4 months Tony is going to have the same problems he's always had in the post season. Hell, even the GS commentators have figured it out: they spent the whole night asking why the Warrior defenders weren't going under the screen against Parker.
-Troy Murphy had a great night for GS, going for 27 on only 13 FGA. He even managed to get the best of Timmeh! a couple of times. Tim Duncan's Afro felt disrespected and promptly slept with Troy's wife to even the score.