RealGM

When: Nov 27th, 2017 6:30 PM MT
Where: AT&T Center, San Antonio TX

Tony's back!! Should be a fun one tonight against a Mav's team that always plays us tough.

Key to this one is going to be just playing our game. We can't play down to their level.

Go Spurs!!

Story of the game so far: turnovers, turnovers, turnovers.

Clean it up, Spurs, let's go!

Pop's gone. Damn. He was right, refs **** up the call, but maybe pick your battles, coach.

Pop shouldn't be the most passionate guy on the team, so hopefully this wakes the players up.

Enjoy the Barolo, Pop. Hopefully it's a victory glass.

Ettore, you're up!

Ok well we righted the ship despite the slow start and mercurial waves that were Pop's temper. He now leads the league in techs with four, and two ejections - both this month. Not sure if something's going on with coach or what (he seems to yell less at players, but maybe all that gets bottled up and he rips into the refs to his own detriment), but berating too much tends to tune refs out. I love the passion, and hope it's directed towards adjustments to the game plan that result in utterly destroying the competition, followed by a FU smile to the refs at the end of the game.

Mavs are a pesky team, starting to put it together a bit more after getting a recent taste of winning. We should have had a sharper start against them - slow starts are a trend we need to improve. After committing too many early, Spurs had far fewer turnovers overall, but still these led to 17 points for the Mavs. We created more turnovers, but got fewer points off of them.

It's not secret that the Mavs have been shooting the 3 well, so I was surprised to see so many uncontested 3 point opportunities for them. Matthews, Harris and Barea were killing it. Luckily, everyone else couldn't hit the ocean with a beach ball. Also, Dirk got some of mismatches from automatic switches by Spurs on D. Finally, I really can't stand Mejri, not sure what it is, just something about him... irritating...

On to the positives, Tony's back!!! Team has to adjust to playing together, but it was great to see him contribute right away, even if in limited minutes. Luckily, Spurs 3pt% was not far behind that of Dallas and our overall FG% and FT% were better. LMA, Gasol, Anderson, Green, Mills and Forbes with solid D and O contributions - points, rebs, assists, blocks, steals.

Never realized that Anderson is 6'9". It's only when he posted up Barea that I realized just how long he is. That and the 10 rebounds. He's doing well posting up now, imagine what he'll do when he gets a bit stronger. Forbes is money from the 3. He's instant O with that confident shot. The high-low big to big was good to see; we should employ that more when we can exploit it. LMA had an incredible stat stuffing night, and I absolutely loved the passion Pau played with tonight which showed in his own complete contribution.

Overall, good team response to some adversity, even if some of it was self-inflicted early on. It was great to see Messina step in and guide the team, and to see the players receptive to his direction. Several times he called for a quicker tempo to pass the half court and get into setting up the play. That Messina, he knows a thing or two. He's an excellent supporting cast for a GOAT coach. I hope Pop sends him a bottle.

On to the next one... Bring on the Gasol brothers home-and-home battle.

Just an odd game last night but the final outcome was a fairly decisive win so i'm not too mad.

We got off to a great start in the first quarter, Tony gave us a real boost and LMA was amazing but things started to fall apart in the 2nd quarter. Turnovers and poor defense killed us. But in the 3rd we refocused and got back on track and slowly retook the lead and never gave it up.

Things I liked:

LMA - He was absolutely dominate on both ends. Just awesome.

Pau - Shot the ball well, did great work on the glass and made some great passes. He's really rounding into form over the last 3 or 4 games.

Tony - Didn't play a whole lot but was sharp. Made some lovely little vintage Tony moves on the offensive end and really brought another dimension to our offense. Wasn't sure about starting right away but it worked out.

Danny - Started slow but his offense is really a big reason why we retook the lead in the third. Excellent defense as always.

Anderson - Terrific game from him on both ends. Was in control and really took the game over at times.

Things I didn't care for:

The entire 2nd quarter - That was just awful. Turnovers galore and some of the worst defensive rotations I've seen from us in a while.