Spurs' Ginobili nixes 76ers from deep
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Web Posted: 01/15/2008 12:18 AM CST
Jeff McDonald
Express-News
For nearly 44 minutes Monday night,
Manu Ginobili watched every shot he took find nothing but rim.
Six attempts had clanked harmlessly off the iron, and with a little more than four minutes left in a game that was threatening to slip away from the Spurs, Ginobili was poised to finish without a field goal.
Most anybody else would have conceded the off-night. The way Ginobili figured it, he was simply due.
"I was feeling good with the shots, they just weren't falling in," Ginobili said. "I guess I just needed one."
Instead, he got four. Ginobili closed the game by making four 3-pointers in a span of 2:24 in the fourth quarter to help the
Spurs beat Philadelphia 89-82 at the AT&T Center.
Ginobili, after starting the game 0 for 6, scored 14 of his 20 points in the fourth to help the
Spurs overcome a cockeyed shooting night and send the 76ers to their seventh-straight defeat.
The
Spurs (25-11) won despite missing 49 of 81 shots, including 17 in a row at one point in the second half, and going 10 minutes without a field goal.
They overcame all of that and won for the first time this season when shooting less than 40 percent, thanks to the fourth-quarter heroics of their unflappable Argentine sixth man.
"We really need to thank Manu for tonight's win,"
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "Obviously, he was the one who stepped up and made big shots."
Somebody had to do it.
There is a basketball adage as old as the game itself: You can't win if you can't score.
For the better part of the third quarter, the
Spurs and Sixers took turns testing that theory.
The teams combined to shoot 18.4 percent from the field in the frame, with the
Spurs getting the worst end of it. They made just 3 of 22 shots in the quarter, went the final 8:56 without a field goal, and finished with 12 points.
"We weren't taking bad shots," said
Tim Duncan, who had 18 points and 16 rebounds. "They just weren't going down."
Abandoned by their offense, the
Spurs leaned on their defense to keep them afloat.
Philadelphia, which was led by 21 points from sophomore guard Willie Green, didn't fare much better from the field.
It is testament to the harrying defense the
Spurs played that, when their 10-minute field-goal drought finally ended on a Michael Finley fallaway 1:10 into the fourth, it left them behind by only a single point.
"The ball doesn't always go in, but you can't let your missed shots let your defense go sour," Popovich said. "We did a good job defensively. It was just the offense that needed to get clicking."
Despite the Spurs' epic scoring struggle, the Sixers (14-24) could only push their lead to 71-65 with 8:05 remaining.
By then, their defense was sagging into the lane, daring some feeling-lucky
Spurs player to beat them from the outside.
Finally, Ginobili did.
His first 3-pointer, dropped in from the right corner with 4:10 to go, gave the
Spurs a 78-77 lead — their first since midway through the third quarter.
Twenty-seven seconds after his first make of the night, Ginobili buried his second — a 3-pointer from the left wing — to put the
Spurs ahead four.
That shot was set up on the defensive end by
Tony Parker, who had gone into the stands to save a long rebound and start the Spurs' break.
Ginobili knocked down two more 3-pointers, both over the protestations of Duncan, who after the game sheepishly admitted to admonishing Ginobili to swing the ball.
"I heard him," Ginobili said. "I was just feeling it."
