San Antonio vs Portland, Final Score: Spurs overcome the Trail Blazers 112-101

The Spurs turned in a solid performance tonight without Stephon Castle and Victor Wembanyama. It wasn’t a perfect game, as the team survived despite turning the ball over too much and not exactly playing the most efficient offense, allowing the Blazers to cut the lead to a couple of baskets late in the fourth quarter. Where the Silver and Black won the game was on the defensive end of the court, as they limited the Blazers to 101 points despite 29 points from Deni Avdija and 20 points from Scoot Henderson, who is starting to show the promise that made him the second third overall pick a few years back. De’Aaron Fox led the team with 25 points and Devin Vassell had one of his best games of the season on both ends of the court, making defensive plays and scoring 14 points and 8 rebounds. Carter Bryant had a career game, as Portland left him free at the three point line and he hit 5-6 three pointers. Harper excelled in his starting role tonight as he scored 13 and kept the offense organized. You have to also give credit to Keldon Johnson, who was unstoppable coming off of the bench, as it was a team effort where every player that got onto the court made an impact on the victory over a possible playoff opponent for their 61st victory of the season.

Observations

• Even though Wembanyama was out tonight, his imprint was all over the game. Nobody thought this was a 60 game winning team when the season started, but his competitive spirit drove the team to an amazing win total. He’s really young, but he’s already a leader.
• I was not really impressed with Harrison Ingram at first, but he’s really been working hard on his game in Austin, and he’s improved a lot. He’s going to make a run at joining the regular roster next season, and he has a shot.
• The Blazers started out quick but Fox righted things quickly with a personal 10-0 run to make the score 12-8 Spurs.
• Avdija looks really good out there, and without Wemby on the court to erase defensive mistakes, he had a lot of space to create tonight. Carter Bryant had a turn at defending him, and picked up a quick foul, but seemed to do a good job keeping up with his speed.
• Missed free throws (3) and turnovers (4) hampered the Silver and Black in the first quarter, but somehow led 32-23 after the first quarter on a final three-point shot from Dylan Harper.
• Sidy Cissoko was a player I hated to see leave San Antonio. His game was so raw when he was in San Antonio, but you could see they talent and athletic ability. I’m happy for his success in Portland. Blake Wesley is another former Spur who’s on Portland, and he showed his commitment to the game by going to the floor and wrestling Keldon for a loose ball and winning a jump ball.
• Jordan McLaughlin always contributes whenever he plays. It doesn’t matter if he doesn’t leave the bench for five games, he’s going to step up whenever he’s called upon.
• Spurs led by as many as 15 points in the second quarter, and led 61-51 at the half with Avdija getting some free throws to end the first half scoring. The biggest negative was 5 more turnovers in the quarter, which is something that could have been more harmful than it was, because the Spurs defense stepped to limit the damage.
• Deni Avdija on offense and Jrue Holiday on defense got the Blazers on a 17-12 start to start the third and cut the lead in half, forcing a Mitch Johnson timeout. The Spurs finished the rest of the quarter on a 15-5 run and led 88-73 with a quarter to play.
• Things got a little dicey early in the fourth as Scoot Henderson turned defense into offense by creating turnovers and putting them into the hoop.
• The Spurs took over the fourth with getting to every loose ball, but it was a uneven effort, as they also made mistakes that led to easy Portland points. It looked at times that the Spurs were going to run away with it, leading by as much as 17, but the Blazers stayed in it with their defense while the Spurs offense stagnated. When they cut the lead to single digits with 4:26 left, Mitch had to call a timeout to settle the team.
• The lead shrunk to 6 after the Spurs botched a jump ball with Keldon letting it go out of bounds thinking it was off of Portland. Luckily, the Spur found their mojo and closed out the game with timely stops and enough offense to win by double digits, 112-101.

There are only two more games left in the season, and Wemby has to play at least 20 minutes in one of them to qualify for post-season awards. I would guess that he’s going to play Friday against the Mavericks as they will just be funneling the rock to Cooper Flagg as he continues to rake in accolades for his rookie of the year campaign. There have been a lot of great first year players this year, but I don’t see anyone beating Cooper, who has been stellar on a really bad team. Dylan Harper is incredible, but his role on a good team is not going to grab the kind of attention that Flagg gets, and actually deserves.

The Spurs final game will be against the Nuggets, which should be a ho-hum affair, as both teams should have settled their playoff standings by then and will be resting all their starters and top contributors. It’s going to be Harrison Ingram time, and he’s going to make his case for being on the regular roster next year.