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The Spur of the Night could easily have been Tony Parker, but he looked pretty good in the preseason so I gave it to the Argentine. Manu Ginobili played quite the second half in this contest and in honor of him breaking out of his preseason shooting funk as well as not actually getting injured after banging knees with a Mav, he gets the nod.
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For his part, Tony was great on Tuesday night and even canned the game-winning shot. Tim Duncan, who during the preseason put up his customary per-36 numbers of 18.3 and 11.2, went Groundhog day on the new look Mavericks with 14 points and a game high 13 rebounds.
Marco Belinelli also played a good game, albeit with a couple of defensive lapses, and his preseason shooting struggles seem to be over as he scored 15 points on just eight shots.
One down and eighty-one to go and the Spurs are 1-0 to start their title-defense campaign.
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Some links about the game:
Hal Brown of Mavs Moneyball takes an optimistic stance on the game in their game recap, saying that, "the Mavericks lost 101-100, but this game was a glowing example of what the 2014-2015 NBA season might be."
SBNation's Mike Prada says that you shouldn't blame Chandler Parsons for taking the last shot for the Mavericks.
Prada also gave us this photoshop of Gregg Popovich's Last Crusade:
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Seth Rosenthal provided a couple of vines of Boris Diaw breaking Dirk Nowitzki's ankles, or maybe it was a wet spot. Either way it's pretty funny, and I say that as a pretty big Dirk fan.
Tim MacMahon of ESPN Dallas reports that Chandler Parsons knows he has to be better and the Mavs' 46 million dollar man said, "I can't have too many more nights like that. I'm more than confident in myself. I'll bounce back."
48 Minutes of Hell gave out their first report card of the year and Tony and Manu each received an A for their efforts. Extraneous G received an A+ for fronting the Spurs' 'gangster' coaching staff.
Finally, the NBA gave us "Rare access with Tim Duncan on the night he receives his 5th Championship Ring." Definitely check it out.
They also provided phantom cam ( super slo-mo) video which lets us know that Holt's ring may need a little resizing plus features some cool plays from the game.