Following a 5-1 home stand, the Spurs kicked off their road trip Monday night against a Kawhi-less Clippers team, narrowly escaping with a win.<\/p>\n
The Spurs got off to a sluggish start, falling behind 17-3 in just the first four minutes of the game. It didn\u2019t help that LAC started hot from deep, hitting three triples and directing their offense away from Wemby\u2019s Go-Go Gadget arms. Following a timeout, San Antonio went on an 8-0 run to calm the Clippers\u2019 storm. De\u2019Aaron Fox and Stephon Castle got to the basket and scored at will, as they took advantage of LA\u2019s lack of rim protection. The Spurs went 11-15 from two in just the first quarter, but 1-12 from deep kept them from blowing the doors wide open.<\/p>\n
Defensively, the good guys weren\u2019t bad, but LA\u2019s hot shooting helped them score 37 in the opening frame alone. Thankfully, they soon grew cold, allowing San Antonio to go on a 15-0 run and lead for the first time. With Wemby back in the game, the Spurs also dominated the glass: San Antonio finished the first half with 12 offensive rebounds, and their inside dominance helped them turn a 14-point deficit into a 66-52 lead at halftime.<\/p>\n
The Silver & Black continued to control play to start the third. LA couldn\u2019t generate any offense with their shooting going cold and Wemby sealing off the basket, while the Spurs kept up their assault at the Clippers\u2019 rim. As a result, San Antonio went on another run to push their lead to 24, which seemed like an insurmountable deficit for LA. Unfortunately, the good guys seemed to think the same, as they took their foot off the gas after Wemby subbed out. The Clippers began scoring from inside the arc, which coincided with San Antonio getting careless with the ball and chucking up bad shots. In the blink of an eye, the home team had cut the lead down to 8, forcing Mitch Johnson to play Wemby and his starters more minutes than expected.<\/p>\n
As soon as the Alien came back in the game, the Spurs went on another run to regain their double-digit lead.
However, LA would not go away, making it a two-possession game once again following a four-point play from Darius Garland. San Antonio\u2019s late-game offense went into the gutter, forcing up bad shots and giving LA numerous chances to make a comeback. The Spurs needed two fortuitous foul calls from the refs and an unsuccessful challenge from Ty Lue to finally seal a 119-115 victory.<\/p>\n
Defense \u2014> offense from Area 51. What more can you ask for?<\/p>\n
Next game: @ Sacramento on Tuesday<\/p>\n
The Spurs are right back at it Tuesday night on the second half of a back-to-back against the lowly Kings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Following a 5-1 home stand, the Spurs kicked off their road trip Monday night against a Kawhi-less Clippers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662493,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,6,969,474,4075,4074,534,52387],"class_list":{"0":"post-662492","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-sanantoniospurs","14":"tag-spurs","15":"tag-spurs-game-recaps"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116243603787182967","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662492","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=662492"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662492\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662493"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662492"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662492"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662492"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}