How about a little Saliva for you?
Ladies and Gentlemen. Do you want it? Do you need it? Let me hear it.
I was absolutely blown out of my seat when this was used as the intro today for the Spurs. You know what? It kicked ass. Bellasa, who's been lobbying for this for a few months, was right and wrong. She's right: it does make a great intro. She's wrong: the Spurs do have the stones to use it. You go girl. Please the mojo, get the 'W'. If you think J-Rich missing that dunk at the end of the game wasn't directly related to the Spurs using this song, then you haven't tried to dunk with Saliva on the ball.
Ladies and gentlemen.
Tenuous Start
Yep, a great way to start the game. The Spurs, I guess, are more hip hop and less metal because they didn't get off to such a great start. They scored on three of their first four possessions, then went ugly and scored on only three of the ensuing 12 possessions. On the 13th possession of the game, Keith Bogans missed his third shot. Why do I bring it up? It was the last shot Keith took. In fact, Keith's three misses and a missed three by Roger Mason in the second were the only shots taken by any Spur during the game that weren't our main 7 guys: Tim, Tony, Manu, RJ, Antoinio, DeJuan, and George.
The first quarter ended with the Suns up 25-21 and me writing "this could get really ugly" in my notes. Why ugly? We were playing at a ridiculously fast pace. We had 27 possessions in the quarter and we only got 1 free throw. I just thought it would be a disaster to keep playing at that pace. Of note, Tim was 2-6 in the quarter.
It was a great game and very close the whole way. The biggest lead for the Suns was 7. The Spurs got their biggest lead at 8 with 3:03 left in the game.
Solid Finish
Our defense was poor to terrible in the fourth quarter (except the defense on Richardson's dunk). But our offense was fantabulous. We scored on 17 of 23 possession in the quarter. Three of the non-scores were turnovers. Three of the scores were intentional fouls. However, one of the intentional fouls was after an offensive rebound so that was a good possession.
The percentage of successful possessions doesn't tell the whole story. We only took 4, yes 4, contested shots in the whole quarter and all of those were right at the rim. Two by Blair and two by Tim and we made all four. Of the 7 shots we missed, ALL were uncontested shots. Of those 7 missed shots, we got 4 offensive rebounds.
We also went 12-13 from the line.
Who made shots in the fourth?
- DeJuan 2
- Tim 2 (finished 10-15 from the field after his 2-6 start)
- Richard 2
- Manu 2
- Antonio 3
That is some nice balanced scoring. We moved the ball really well and got ourselves a lot of open shots. Plus, we won a close game for a change.
Ladies and gentlemen. We wanted it. We needed it. I'm taking this win.
End note: Amare threw a NASTY dunk down on RJ's head for a 3-point play with 1:34 left in the game and the Spurs up 5. Pop yelled at RJ, "Why? Why?" Me, I'm thrilled he got dunked on because he tried to make a play. I'd much rather him trying to go out and make plays than be timid and afraid of making mistakes. It was RJ's block of Amare with 3:21 left that led to our 8 point lead. It was also our last stop of the game except for Richardson's missed dunk and the final after the buzzer shot.