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| San Antonio Spurs |
Saturday, he led the San Antonio Spurs in scoring during a closeout game of the Western Conference Finals.
Diaw scored 26 points – his most since Charlotte and most in a playoff game in eight seasons in the Spurs’ 112-107 Game 6 overtime win over the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili return to the Finals – to face the Miami Heat once again – but the Spurs’ big three has gotten this far due to teammates like Diaw, Cory Joseph, Patty Mills and Kawhi Leonard (can we call him a role player anymore?).
Parker (ankle injury) left the game at halftime with San Antonio down seven. I repeat: Cory Joseph and Patty Mills proved instrumental, at the pivotal point guard position no less, in a closeout conference finals game. All season, Gregg Popovich trusted his role players, starting them and sticking with them in crunch time. Make no mistake: The Spurs are better with Parker. Ginobili made a huge 3-pointer with 27 seconds left in regulation, and Duncan (19 points and 15 rebounds) scored seven of San Antonio’s overtime points.
Yet, the Spurs only put those two in position to make the big shots thanks to their heralded role players. San Antonio always knew, whatever its role players did, it could fall back on Duncan, Parker and Ginobili.
The Spurs want to be deep. Duncan, Leonard, Green, Ginobili and Diaw each played series-high minutes during regulation alone. Duncan played this much overall (39:01) just three times all season.
It took more than 34 minutes for an Oklahoma City player other than Kevin Durant, Russell Westbrook, Serge Ibaka or Reggie Jackson to score. Those four finished with 102 of the Thunder’s 107 points.
Oklahoma City got here and wanted to win. San Antonio has been prepping for this level all season.
Teams want to rely on their star players in the postseason. There has never been a team like these Spurs.
Yet, these Spurs are like so many Spurs teams before them – back in the Finals
Duncan, Parker and Ginobili led them here. With the San Antonio Spurs returning to the NBA Finals for a grudge match against the Miami Heat, they suddenly started using a word that coach Gregg Popovich once said wasn't in his basketball dictionary: "happy."
Ginobili is Ginobili again, having recovered from an awful 2013 playoff run and retirement thoughts to play his crucial sixth man role. Duncan still is Duncan, a surreal fact that the Thunder's Serge Ibaka can confirm. Role players such as revived big man Diaw (26 points in Game 6) serve as reminders that anyone can get it done in the Spurs' anti-star system.
How do we know that this year is different -- that if San Antonio Spurs get to another Game 6 with a chance to win the series, it will have a better outcome for them? Because they just had a Game 6, and this time they won it.
An NBA Finals rematch with the Miami Heat sat there for the Spurs in Game 6 of the Western Conference finals Saturday night, a chance to write a happy epilogue to that heartbreaking Finals Game 6 that slipped from their grasp last year. The Spurs had a 3-2 lead in this series and a six-point lead over the Oklahoma City Thunder when the same old problems resurfaced from that unforgettable night of June 18, 2013.
Manu Ginobili turnovers. Gregg Popovich tempting fate by holding Tim Duncan out of a critical defensive possession.
The Spurs went into overtime without Tony Parker, who didn't return for the second half because of what the team called left-ankle soreness. It's hard to fathom a franchise as accomplished as the Spurs having a breakthrough, but Saturday represented one. The Spurs were 11-3 in games Parker didn't play this regular season. Popovich said Parker's ankle was sprained in Game 4 of this series, aggravated in Game 5 and bothering him before Game 6 started, to the point that Popovich told Ginobili to be ready to play more point guard than usual.
"He couldn't cut," Popovich said of Parker. Just before the Spurs left the locker room at halftime, Popovich told Cory Joseph he would be starting the third quarter. "Playing hard, playing smart and just trying to compete every possession," Joseph said.
Take Boris Diaw, who played 36 minutes in Game 6 because he emerged as the Spurs' best threat against the interior defensive presence of the Thunder's Serge Ibaka and wound up scoring a team-high 26 points. Popovich began training camp by showing the team video of last year's Game 6. What's changed since the last Game 6 that helped the Spurs win Saturday's Game 6 and maybe the next one as well?
"We fixed the little mistakes," Spurs guard Danny Green said. As little as it seems, those are the plays that change the game in the playoffs." That's what the Spurs took from 2013's Game 6. That's what they applied to the latest Game 6.
