A good, solid, hard-working, proud and deserving team will emerge from the West to reach the NBA Finals. Notice we didn’t add “exciting” and “fun to watch.”
The Spurs and Grizzlies went into overtime Tuesday, pushing Game 2 of their conference final well past midnight Eastern, and gave folks a few good reasons to fall asleep. That’s hard to do in a tight playoff game, which are usually riveting and hair-pulling. But these two teams, slow and methodical and too conservative even for Republican basketball fans, are testing our patience, aren’t they?
Is it too late to bring back the Warriors? Is Kobe healed yet? What about Russell Westbrook, all better now?
Our SOS will go unanswered, unfortunately. This is what we can expect, then, in this series, which now moves at tortoise speed to the house of the Grit and Grind, a place that celebrates boring basketball. Not that the Grizzlies and Spurs need to apologize for who they are. They shouldn’t. They’re still alive and playing for the right to compete for a championship. All the alley-oopers and dunkers are sitting at home, wishing they were here. San Antonio and Memphis are a heartbeat away because they’re better than 13 others in the West, and they’ve proven as much. We will and should applaud that.
But we still have to watch them, and while everyone can appreciate two teams that do whatever necessary to win games, are your eyes bleeding, too?
The Spurs were up 18 points in the third quarter and led Game 2 by 13 with seven minutes left and nearly blew it. Tony Parker played what was considered a strong game with 18 assists and almost flawless running of the offense, and he missed 14 of 20 shots. He wasn’t alone in the 93-89 Spurs win. Players on both teams couldn’t make wide open jumpers. They blew some layups that were barely contested, and at one point Memphis missed seven straight layups. The Grizzlies, tremendously poor shooters from 20 feet and beyond, shot 34 percent. The winners shot 43 percent. Both combined to make 14 of 42 three-pointers. Just brutal from an artistic standpoint.
Manu Ginobili must’ve flopped at least a half-dozen times. And then he was served some of his own medicine in a pivotal point in the fourth quarter, when he grabbed Tony Allen on a breakaway. Allen fell to the floor and instantly wriggled like he’d been close to death, screaming and grabbing his head, which never hit the ground. The refs were suckered and tagged Ginobili with a flagrant, allowing Allen to take two free throws and Memphis to keep the ball. That’s how the Grizzlies sent the game into OT.
And in the extra period, Parker missed a key free throw, keeping the door open, until Grizzlies guard Jerryd Bayless horrendously bricked a three-pointer with 14 seconds to spare on the clock. Those outside the San Antonio and Memphis ZIP codes who stayed up late to watch the ending probably wished they’d crashed early instead.
Here’s what we know about this slogging series after two games: The Spurs can build a big lead and also lose it like they did twice against the Warriors, Memphis is leaning heavily on sub Quincy Pondexter because the Grizzlies can’t shoot straight, Zach Randolph’s headband is guaranteed to be knocked crooked at least four times a night with the Spurs sticking close to him, and Ginobili will do something silly and smart. We also know these games are going straight to video, not to the Hall of Fame.
“We have to be true to our identity,” said Memphis coach Lionel Hollins. “We can’t go changing and shaving and taking a bath when we haven’t take one all along.”
Marc Gasol said: “We got back to playing Grizzlies basketball.”
Yeah. We saw.
The last time the Spurs won a championship, in 2007, the ratings were record-low, and that was with LeBron James in the Finals. Yes, it does get old, talking about how nobody wants to see the Spurs in the Finals based on the Nielsen ratings, but what if the alternative is Memphis? In that case, you’d beg for San Antonio.
Even though the Spurs are up 2-0, the Grizzlies are resilient. They were down two games to the Clippers and proceeded to wipe out the pretty boys who play above the rim a lot. As Randolph said: “We ain’t up there dunking. We in the mud.”
So expect more mud slinging and eyes bleeding in a series that should go at least six games. The Spurs and Grizzlies are trying to win a conference title and if that means grinding the game almost to a halt, so be it, then. In a sense, they’re saying to us: You want to be entertained? Then go find the Clippers. If you can.
