Line: Rockets -7. Total 213. Nenê Hilario is out for the season.
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Leonard has vowed to be back for Game 6.
An overall team effort by the Spurs lead them to a 110-107 overtime victory over the Rockets last night.
“Manu reached back and gave us one of his Manu performances from past years”, San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said.
Through San Antonio’s 11 playoff games, Aldridge is averaging a career-postseason-low 15.3 points and just 7.6 rebounds (only 4.8 per game are defensive boards).
“I was trying to keep them in front of me”, Harden said. The Spurs took bad shots at times, rushed shots at times and were tentative taking shots at other times. Aldridge and Leonard, whom Harden had to guard several times after switches, were a combined 0-for-8 against him. However, he took too many fade-away jumpers and did not take advantage of his height advantage inside. “We couldn’t get in a rhythm at the end of the game or in the overtime”, Harden told reporters.
Numerous talking heads on television were criticizing Houston coach Mike D’Antoni for only using seven players in Game 5. “He played (more than) 40 minutes at a great pace”.
Harden was called for the offensive foul and the Spurs wound up with the last possession of the game. They may be right. Leonard, one of the leading candidates to win the NBA MVP award, sat out much of the fourth quarter on Tuesday and didn’t step onto the court during the overtime period.
James Harden? That’s another matter.
What clearly stands out here, aside from how poorly the Spurs were able to shoot and still win, is the disparity in field goal attempts during crunch time. Both teams have lost vital pieces to their roster. O yeah and let’s not forget that the Spurs closed out game five without Kawhi Leonard. However, Houston is a team that does not seem to be very keen on making adjustments.
D’Antoni wasn’t sure after the game if he’d tweak the rotation in the next game.
With Nene out, backup center minutes went to Ryan Anderson, as the Rockets went to a seven man rotation. Up to that point, Ginobili hadn’t blocked a 3-point attempt in more than a year (Kyrie Irving on January 14, 2016), and hadn’t stuffed a postseason shot from range in more than five years (Alec Burks on May 5, 2012).
The offence was helped by a more balanced scoring attack with seven players scoring in double figures after only three Rockets scored more than 10 points in Game 3.
Ginobili’s biggest offensive play came when he hit a scooping off-balance layup to tie the score at 101 with 34 seconds left for the final score of regulation.
But the All-Star will be fit for Thursday’s trip to Houston, with the Spurs leading the National Basketball Association playoff series 3-2.
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While happy to return to friendlier confines, the Celtics say they aren’t feeling any added pressure despite being unable to recover from game-changing runs by the Wizards in Games Three and Four. And as fun as it was to watch the Rockets and Spurs duel down the stretch of Game 5 Tuesday, did the possibility of no Kawhi Leonard in Game 6 ruin the ending for you the way it did me?
