The Quick Two That Kicked Off The Madness In San Antonio
Coming out of a timeout, the Spurs found themselves trailing the Memphis Grizzlies by three points with 13.8 seconds left in the game. With two timeouts still in his pocket (and the fact that the Grizzlies have been so good defending the three point line), Spurs’ coach Gregg Popovich decided to go for the quick two, choosing to take the two points and extend the game by fouling. To get those two points, Popovich was able to use Memphis’ denial of the three point line against them:
The play starts with Matt Bonner setting a downscreen for Tim Duncanwho flashes to the top of the key to receive the basketball.
The Grizzlies do a good job here of switching this screen with Marc Gasol picking up Matt Bonner and Zach Randolph picking up Tim Duncan and trying to stay between Duncan and the basketball.
Duncan actually does a very good job of fighting through Randolph’s body to get the basketball. As soon as Duncan makes the catch, he starts to pivot away from the sideline. With this happening, Manu Ginobili starts towards Duncan as if he is going to look for a pass or a handoff.
With the Grizzlies looking to deny the game tying three point shot, Tony Allen steps up to keep himself between Ginobili and the basketball. When this happens, Ginobili puts his foot in the ground and cuts backdoor hard.
The beauty of this play is the Spurs keeping someone in the corner on the weakside. Normally, teams wouldn’t do this because it would allow help defense to come, but in this situation with this team, Popovich knows that Shane Battier is not going to leave Gary Neal under any circumstance (same actually goes with Matt Bonner on the strong side block).
Ginobili makes the catch and finishes, running about two and a half seconds off of the clock. The Spurs’ immediately foul after and extend the game. Here is the play in real time:
The key part of this play in my opinion is Tim Duncan fighting through Zach Randolph’s body to make himself available for the pass. If that pass doesn’t happen, the play blows up, and Duncan knows this. Memphis isn’t a fault here. They executed exactly what they wanted, running the Spurs off of the three point line and allowing a two point shot. Just better offense and execution by San Antonio.
Eventually, this decision to go for two and extend the game would pay off as the Spurs tie the game at the buzzer, sending the game into overtime, where they win.
