The San Antonio Spurs easily handled the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 1 of their second round playoff series Saturday night, which by itself is not all that interesting.
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It couldn’t have gone much better for the San Antonio Spurs in Game 1 against the Thunder on Saturday.
Damian Lillard scored 28 points and the host Portland Trail Blazers advanced to the Western Conference semifinals by beating the Clippers, 106-103, on Friday night in Los Angeles to claim the first-round playoff series, 4-2.
The memes describing how badly the San Antonio Spurs were whoppin’ the Oklahoma City Thunder were coming out before the game was over.
San Antonio hit on 18 of its 22 field-goal attempts in the first quarter in building a 43-20 advantage, with the 43 points the most scored by the Spurs in a quarter all season and the most allowed by Oklahoma City in its playoff history.
Leonard and Aldridge combined for 45 points in the first half, outscoring Oklahoma City as a team by four.
Oklahoma City’s star duo Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook were limited to 16 and 14 points respectively, as Serge Ibaka put up 19 points on the road.
The Spurs are 25-4 in best-of-seven series after winning Game 1 in the Gregg Popovich era.
The Spurs started 10-of-11 from the field while jumping out to an early 21-8 lead.
His answer? “I’m not telling you”. As usual, defense will be the key for them to dispatch a Thunder side that relies heavily on the one-two punch of Durant and Westbrook at the offensive side.
“I thought we did a really good job not only protecting the paint, but not fouling and putting them on the free throw line”, Spurs forward Tim Duncan said.
They just played harder than us man that’s what it was that’s all it came down to just effort they came out with a higher intensity level than we did. Meanwhile, San Antonio is just 2-6 ATS in its last eight games off a double-digit win and 1-5 ATS in its last six games versus. The Spurs’ second unit, with pass-addicts such as Patty Mills, Manu Ginobili and Boris Diaw, kept a shred of that old identity alive, but San Antonio’s most-used lineups had a different style.
I say that because this pick-and-role combination averaged 1.19 points per direct pick against the Spurs over the past three seasons (including postseason).
San Antonio matched a postseason franchise record for points in a quarter with 43 in the opening period. We just have to go and play better. “We have to make some corrections and find a way to play more competitively”. “We’ve got to do a lot of things better than we did yesterday”.
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As someone was quick to point out to Steven Adams the thunder lost by 35 in this building just two years ago in his rookie season as only Adams could respond he said thanks for the confidence booster mate by the way the thunder would go on to win the next two games in that series.
