San Antonio Spurs: 3 stars from Spurs slump-busting win against Dallas

The San Antonio Spurs finally pulled out of their free fall against the Mavericks

Who knew that all it would take for the San Antonio Spurs to break out of their losing streak was a game against their biggest in-state rival? Okay clearly it’s not that simple, this most recent win against the Dallas Mavericks was so much more than just a common regular-season win.

Unless you’ve been blissfully ignoring their struggles or have been on a meditative silence retreat you’re probably well aware of the Spurs’ struggles as of late. Coming into last night’s game they cratering, had lost five in a row and eight of their last ten games.

To say San Antonio was starving for a win seems like an understatement. This was a team that had regularly looked out of sorts, getting even just one win in the right direction could do wonders for them. Thankfully, when they needed it most, the players we’d identified as potential keys in pulling them out of their tailspin were there to help out.

This was an all-around great win but the play of these three San Antonio Spurs stood out more than others. Here are our three stars from Sunday night’s game.

DeMar DeRozan’s late-game heroics save the San Antonio Spurs again

We can’t talk about last night’s win without highlighting the game that DeMar DeRozan had for San Antonio. By itself, a 33 point, 8 assist, 5 rebound performance would’ve been impressive. But for DeMar do pour in 12 of his points on 4-6 shooting and 4-4 from the charity stripe in the 4th quarter alone illustrated how important DeRozan is to San Antonio winning games.

I recently took a look at why DeMar dominating the 4th is so important for San Antonio and on Sunday night he did exactly that. Everyone watching the game knew that DeMar was getting the ball for that final shot. The Spurs knew it, the Mavs knew it, literally everyone. But the Mavs didn’t double and DeRozan got a look that he’s been knocking down for decades.

It’s that combination of fearlessness and veteran experience that makes DeMar the perfect Spur to close out games. I don’t think there is much that DeMar is afraid of but having tons of experience and a deep bag of moves and counters to dig into in the final seconds makes him nearly unstoppable when the game is on the line.

He’s taking an open-minded approach to his upcoming free agency and there’s a good reason to believe he’s looking elsewhere. But if he wants to come back to San Antonio, the Spurs should be thrilled to keep him around as their closer.

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