Spurs-Grizzlies Game 2 - Part 2

Today we finish up the first rotation of the game. Everyone is still in the same place they were yesterday. Same exact players. Zach Randolph is no wider; Tim Duncan no thinner. Richard Jefferson no taller; Manu no less tenacious.

9:02 4-6

I was watching the Spurs-Knicks series a few weeks ago, and there were a couple hilarious Spurs possessions where no one was doing anything on offense, so much so that the announcers were vocally complaining before the possession was over. And then, with just seconds left on the shot clock, Tim Duncan still managed to drive to the basket or hit a high-arcing shot over his defender. It was really funny until I remembered this series, in which Zach Randolph did the exact same thing over and over. And his defender - usually that pinnacle of class (and legitimately skilled as a man defender) Antonio McDyess - could do nothing.

Spurs-Grizzlies Game 2 - Part 1

Introduction

As part of Pearls of Mystery's ongoing commitment to "stretch the game out; etch your [own] name out," we're going to be deconstructing the heck out of the Spurs-Grizzlies series.  The goals here are several, most of them federal:

1. Improve my ability to analyze basketball on a strategic level
2. Improve my knowledge of various star players and their actual contributions to basketball games, and 
3. Improve my communication and research apparatus of the above

So we're going to do look at every single possession of Game 2.  Some of these are going to be forgettable, especially in garbage time (after one rotation I eminently understand how the old saw "right way to play the game" has quite a bit of evidence), but even when a possession itself is broken or boring, oftentimes a string of possessions will be interesting and coherent.  So part of the challenge for me is to break it up into "possessions" at some times and "flows" at other times.  Will it drag on?  Yes, but after the first game or two like this, I'm going to switch this mode of analysis into 3-8 minute sequences deconstructing incredible runs or incredible breakdowns, or just basketball at its starkest and most stylistically interesting (for example, the Miami collapse in Game 2).

12:00, First Quarter, 0-0

The first possession of Game 2 is a startlingly elegant set play by the Spurs. Sebastian Pruiti shows perfectly a more extreme (and decisive) example of this play, but this more workaday possession is still a beaut.

After Duncan wins the tip, the Spurs and Grizzlies start with an insultingly simple defensive and offensive set-up reminiscent of a tic-tac-toe game gone wrong. I am insulted by this simplicity, Tim! Antonio McDyess stands in the high post (guarded by Zach Randolph) while Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Richard Jefferson, and Manu Ginobili stand around the perimeter. This is straightforward in every sense except that Tim Duncan has the ball.

The construction of humor from horror

Veteran Richard Jefferson woke up and his heart was beating too fast and his eyes felt wet and painful. "Probably the apnea, or the nightmares," he supposed as he stood up and walked to the hotel sink. "The basilisks of 2003. Would they ever slither in and out of Duncan's eyes again, as they had in Game 6? Were they ever really there or had I invented them?" he wondered as he turned on the faucet and moistened a towel to wipe off his bloodshot, pus-filled eyes.

During these quick first moments in the morning, in the slick and adequate hotels of Eastern Conference roadtrips, RJ often had days like this. According to the mirror, the whites of his eyes were completely red. "Clay Face" they used to call him, because his head and face seemed so malleable, innocent, and bald. But the reddened eyes gave the gentle giant a sort of distortive horror and ruined the illusion, and his face now appeared as a bleeding bronze stone - a single, indivisible sadness. He poured a cup of tea from the ancient bronze hotel samovar and noticed, intricately carved around the samovar, an ouroboros - the snake that eats its own tail. "How old was this samovar? What will happen if I -...," sipped Richard Jefferson.

These Mist Colored Mountains

Let's look at outer space through the eyes of a baller.

The Solar System (at time of writing) must be understood to be a Finals game between the Cavs and Spurs. Right now I suppose that the Spurs have the ball (Earth's moon) on offense, and the Earth is Tony Parker, driving the moon through Mars (LeBron) and Jupiter (Shaq) through Saturn's Rings, the rims of this side of the arena.

Unfortunately, Ilguaskas is Saturn, ever in a stupid goaltending position, hoisting himself between the great rims. Meanwhile, the other Cavs dance electric around Shaq and Lebron and Ilgauskas, like the moons of these respective planets in orbit. For example, Jamario Moon is a moon. This doomed gambit of Parker driving towards a blocked basket will soon demand an official or a foul of contact on the lingering lunk Saturn, but life is so slow for planets, those ponderous giants set in a world of light and speedy atoms. For planets any resolution is long in coming.

The Summoning

We all know, deep in our hearts, that virtue consists of all and only those things that David Robinson tried to teach us back in the day. The gnomes, Tim, are out of bounds. Not the flowers. The gnomes. The - the occult, Tim. Out of bounds. And building a school is a pretty cool thing to do too. But in the weeping moments, I sometimes crave more than what is written in the interviews and coded in the highlights. What does the Admiral think about the scaffold, for example? Where is his wisdom then?


Now, David Robinson is omnibenevolent, but certainly not omniscient - he is obviously not watching you watch his Hall of Fame speech or his old highlights; he is not so vain or idle. But while he does not see everything, he can be channeled to be anywhere. And I performed just such a channeling the other day.

That great Spurs player and school-builder appeared in a greatcoat outside my apartment - here in freezing, snowy St. Petersburg. Only Mr. Robinson's iconic face was visible through the black cloak, which was neatly ornamented with golden buttons like a constable's uniform. It looked somehow oversized, like a child's costume. This great figure was capped by a black hat shaped like a basketball court that made perfect sense when I saw it. With fast wit, I commented how GREAT his greatcoat was. He showed me that, face excepted, he was made totally of greatcoats. A mass of greatcoats, everstacked and interleaved like a planar knot. The heavy and stacked greatcoats were without flesh or form, just as Robinson himself was without malice. We were beyond the concerns of the physical world and its harsh winters. His face beamed and the winter went away.

Why I support the Spurs this year (I'm with you in Utah)

Why I support the Spurs this year
by Alex, age 20.

Dear SI-for-kids,


I'm sorry to be writing to a publication primarily aimed at sports fans half my age, but the knowledge I have encountered goes beyond age. I may be forgiven for having the pretensions of a more skilled author, just as your young readers may be forgiven for their naïve literary tastes and nebulous views of their home teams, good and bad. May I recommend to you Lovecraft's “At the Mountains of Madness”, kids? Do you know what a shoggoth is?



The god of scientists is an engineer. Whether this engineer is acknowledged as a god is another story, but whatever his name, his function is clear: To create a universe based on elegant laws and constants that we as humans can hope to divine through reason. This god is not a direct creator so much as he is a good engineer. A good electrical engineer doesn't constantly supervise the value of every circuit; rather, he uses as little information as he has to, in order to avoid repeated work and misunderstandings. Humans are therefore merely a consequence of creation, and not a cause, and that we happen to exist on this planet is a matter of likelihood, and not a matter of divine blessing.