Tony Parker's dagger 3 puts away Hornets, keeps Spurs perfect on the road
It hasn’t been the smoothest start to the season for Tony Parker. The San Antonio Spurs point guard entered the 2016-17 NBA campaign after an underwhelming turn with the French national team that failed to make the medal stand at the 2016 Summer Olympics, and began the new slate with five straight single-digit scoring performances separated by several games on the shelf with a knee injury.
The 34-year-old veteran has started to round into form of late, though, and he bounced back from a rough start to Wednesday night’s matchup with the Charlotte Hornets by coming through with the clutch shot the Spurs needed at precisely the right time to put Charlotte down for the count:
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Parker’s pure 3-pointer from the short corner, his first in four tries from beyond the arc, put San Antonio up by five with 22 seconds remaining and proved to be the dagger, helping the Spurs withstand a furious fourth-quarter surge led by emerging star guard Kemba Walker to hold on for a 119-114 win.
After head coach Gregg Popovich lambasted his team for what he termed a “pathetic” performance in their Monday night win over the Dallas Mavericks, the Spurs cranked up the energy, effort and execution on Wednesday, shooting 51.2 percent as a team, dishing 28 assists on 44 made field goals, and committing just 10 turnovers that led to only five Hornets points. The charge was led, as all things Spursy are these days, by superstar forward Kawhi Leonard, who worked over the likes of Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and Nicolas Batum to carry the San Antonio attack against a Charlotte side that entered Wednesday ranked fourth in the NBA in points allowed per possession:
Leonard continued his masterful early-season play, scoring a game-high 31 points on sterling 14-for-21 shooting to go with five rebounds, four assists, a steal and a block in 37 minutes of turnover-free basketball. The reigning All-NBA First Team forward proved unsolvable for Steve Clifford’s club on Wednesday, peppering the Hornets with bucket after bucket in the post, out of the pick-and-roll and on catch-and-shoot looks after getting free off the ball, repeatedly getting wherever he wanted to go and doing precisely what he wanted to do en route to his fifth 30-point outing of the season in just 15 contests — more than he had in the first five years of his career combined.
With Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge (23 points, seven rebounds, two assists, two blocks, one steal) leading the way, the Spurs had enough offensive juice to improve their road record to a perfect 8-0, extend their winning streak to seven games, and get to 12-3 on the season, tying the second-best 15-game start in franchise history. They needed all the firepower they could muster, too, because the Hornets just kept matching San Antonio shot for shot and blow for blow in a hard-fought battle that saw 32 lead changes and 16 ties.
Through three quarters, Charlotte stayed level with a many-hands-make-light-work approach that saw six Hornets score in double figures through the first 36 minutes. Come crunch time, though, it was Walker — the 26-year-old triggerman who’s following up last season’s career year with an even stronger start and even sharper marksmanship this time around — who put the offense on his back, knocked San Antonio on its heels, and gave the Hornets a chance at fending off the Spurs’ strong closing kick:
Walker scored 15 of his 26 points in the fourth quarter, bedeviling the Spurs defense with slashing drives to the basket, finishes with a flourish at the cup, and a pair of 3-pointers, including one while being fouled that led to a four-point play that kept the Hornets within a bucket heading into the final minute.
“Kemba’s really fast,” Popovich said after the game, according to Steve Reed of The Associated Press. “It’s not even fair.”
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And yet, Walker also found himself on the business end of a pair of unfortunate errors that cost Charlotte late in the game. His turnover with 2:40 left — which came when Parker tipped Marvin Williams’ inbounds pass off him and he couldn’t corral the loose ball — sent the Spurs racing the other way for a Danny Green 3-pointer that put San Antonio up by four. (The Hornets committed 16 turnovers leading to 25 Spurs points, death in a game between two tough teams separated by so little.) And with the Spurs holding a two-point lead with 25 ticks remaining, it was Walker who lost contact with Parker as he cut away from the ball, getting caught up in the wash of Williams trying to defend an Aldridge post-up and leaving the Frenchman wide open in the corner for the dagger 3.
Parker came up huge after that, too, knocking down four free throws in the final 10 seconds to slam the door. His stat line won’t pop off the page — he finished with 11 points on 3-for-10 shooting with three assists, one steal and one rebound in 29 minutes — but the Spurs sure don’t see it as a coincidence that their recent run of form coincided with Parker’s return to the lineup. From a recent story by Tom Orsborn of the San Antonio Express-News:
“More than anything,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said, “he gives us kind of an anchor for time and score, when things are a little bit out of kilter, like we’ve taken six jump shots in a row and nobody is attacking the rim or there are mismatches that aren’t being taken advantage of.
“He’ll see some of those things on the court and will get us back in the flow of where we need to be, or put the ball where it needs to be.”
On Wednesday, with the game in the balance, he put the ball exactly where it needed to be to keep the Spurs perfect on the road, and send the Hornets to their third straight defeat.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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