The San Antonio Spurs Scare The NBA

By Voxxi News

The San Antonio Spurs have had quite a season. The team from Texas are in the midst of a 18 game winning streak. Coach Gregg Popovich has his veteran laced team focused and ready.

The surprising Spurs have swept both the Utah Jazz and the Los Angeles Clippers in the first and second rounds of the playoffs.

San Antonio’s surprise run has been spearheaded by the usual suspects, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.  The Spurs “Big Three’ has accounted for 46 percent of the team’s points in the playoffs so far.

Tim Duncan, arguably the best power forward in the history of the NBA, his playoff numbers are pretty impressive thus far. He is averaging 17.6 points per game, 9 rebounds per game, 2.9 assists per game. He is averaging 2 points more per game and almost 1 assist more per game than what he averaged during the regular season.

Tony Parker, the starting point guard for San Antonio, has upped his scoring by a point per game in the playoffs compared to his regular season average. The Belgian-born point guard is averaging 19.1 points per game.

Manu Ginobili, the Argentine shooting guard extraordinaire,  has struggled a bit in the playoffs compared to the regular season. His scoring is down almost a full point per game, he is averaging 11.3 points per game. His intangibles however, are what makes him so good. His hustle cannot be measured with statistics, but it’s very important for San Antonio if they are to win.

The Spurs went from a team most pundits did not expect to win, due to Oklahoma City Thunder’sdominant play and the Clippers bringing future hall of fame point guard Chris Paul to lead a young, talented and athletic team, to a team with a good chance to take it all.

Yahoo sports reported, “Yet any fear so far has seemed to come from the opposing locker room. Jazz forward Al Jefferson said he didn’t see anyone beating the Spurs during their first-round series, which wasn’t even finished at the time. The Clippers confronted the reality of successfully harassing Parker into his lowest-scoring playoff game since 2003 in Game 1, only to get burned with a franchise-record 3-point barrage by the rest of the Spurs.”

Yahoo Sports also stated, “these Spurs can be classified as a higher-scoring, better-shooting and more-balanced version of their four championship seasons. San Antonio is the only playoff team averaging more than 100 points per game (102.5), and unlike in their previous championship runs, Duncan, Parker and Manu Ginobili aren’t burdened with more than half the scoring load.”

Despite the dominant performance by the Spurs so far, the team remains focused.

Tim Duncan stated, ”It feels a lot like some of the other championship teams. In saying that, we haven’t done anything yet.”

Dallas Mavericks star player, Dirk Nowitzki, heaped praise upon the Gregg Popovich. The German stated to ESPN, “To me, he’s the best coach in the league, he’s a genius on both ends of the floor. The adjustment that he goes through — at the beginning they win all their championships with defense, and he saw where the game’s going; the game is going to free-flowing and more movement, you need basically four shooters on the floor at all times, and he’s the man, he made it all happen.”

Popovich’s squad will be tested to the limit by the Oklahoma City Thunder, led by Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.

Game 2 of the Western Conference final is tonight.

Can anyone stop the San Antonio Spurs?

This article first appeared in Voxxi.