Trying to Avoid the Sweep
The Spurs have a tough test tonight playing against the Portland Trail Blazers on the back-end. After losing four out of five games, the Blazers roll into tonight having won two of their last three games. The Blazers have proven to be a thorn in the Spurs’ side this season as they have taken them down twice already and since these two teams only meet three times this year during the regular season, they will be going for the season sweep this evening.
It appears as though the Blazers will suit up without their MVP and best player Brandon Roy tonight. Roy has been shelved for the past eight games heading into tonight due to a strained right hamstring. In his absence second-year guard Jerryd Bayless has stepped up and filled some of the void left by the All-Star guard.
An intriguing match-up in tonight’s contest will be the storyline of these two terrific second-year guards stepping up in the absence of the usual starters. Just as Bayless has done an admirable job filling in for Roy, George Hill has really been doing well in the absence of Tony Parker. “George is probably the most improved played in the whole league,” Pop commented. “From his rookie year last year to this year he’s starting to get confident and played well at both ends of the court. He’s going to be a really fine player for us.”
Since Parker went down, Hill has led the Spurs to a record of 2-1 in the past three contests. Nevertheless, while George has done a great job, we’d be silly to overlook not only how well Bayless and Andre Miller have been playing in Roy’s absence but the fact that Bayless torched the Spurs last time these teams battled it out. It was Christmas Eve and Blazers fans got an early Christmas gift when Bayless went off for a career-best 31 points against the Spurs and led the Roy-less Blazers over the Spurs 98-94.
As mentioned above, the Spurs cannot sleep on Miller either. Although he’s not a player known for being an offensive juggernaut, Miller lit up the Dallas Mavericks earlier this week for 52 points.
The Blazers have endured the injury bug about as well as could have been expected. Without fail, time and time again when players have gone down with injuries the quality of depth and youthful energy of this Blazers team has been on display. Most recently, Nicolas Batum has come back and been inserted into their line-up and given them solid production from the wing position.
The Blazers have won the previous four contests between these two teams and five of the last six. As the Spurs look to break that trend, they will need to look to Duncan early and often to expose the Blazers’ thin frontline. Controlling the boards and manufacturing second-chance points will be important as well. For that reason, I expect DeJuan Blair to have a solid game tonight.
“This is really important because of how bad we have played so far,” said Duncan, who had 22 points and 13 rebounds in Wednesday’s win. “We’re very up and down, losing a lot of games on the road and at home against teams that we should have beaten.”
As usual, Timmy hit the nail on the head. The Spurs understand that they have grossly underachieved thus far this season. A win tonight would do wonders for the psyche going into this last stretch of road games heading into the All-Star break.
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