Wemby Watch: Spurs Embarrassingly Lose to Clippers Despite Victor’s Best Defensive Game
“This one’s going to sting.”
True words from Spurs color man Sean Elliott.
This Clippers game was a horrible, horrible loss and there is tons of blame to go around.
If you go up 26 against a struggling and weakened Clippers team, with a chance to go over .500, you have to finish the job. The Spurs chose to do something else.
Let’s start with Spurs replacement head coach, Mitch Johnson.
Mitch Johnson
Mitch was again filling in from Pop who is reportedly suffering from a “health issue.”
Last game, I wrote Mitch shined. This game he fell apart. There’s a fair chance Pop’s coaching experience would have prevented the complete and utter collapse by the Spurs.
The Spurs were up 26 points (40–14) after the first quarter and less than 2 minutes into the third, the lead was down to 4.
Still, the Spurs were able to build the lead back up to 14 multiple times, but nevertheless lost by 9.
Looking back at the beginning of the collapse, Johnson iced his own player. Chris Paul was rolling early on and Johnson sat him at 4:33 in the first and didn’t bring him back until 7:34 in the second.
Stop trying to shave minutes and just play the damn game.
In Paul’s place, Branham came in and played typical low IQ Malaki Branham basketball.
Also, it was nice to Johnson finally recognize that Julian Champagnie could not guard James Harden in the 4th and switch Keldon Johnson onto him. It was too late, but at least he got there.
Jeremy Sochan
Jeremy Sochan hurt his hand and exited early. His presence was clearly missed as the Spurs let the Clippers run wild on offense (the Clippers scored 30+ in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th quarters).
Before he left, there was one really bad miscue. Victor blocked a shot and sprinted ahead of the pack and Jeremy retrieved the ball but didn’t throw it ahead for the wide open dunk; it didn’t even look like he considered it.
Not Getting Stops
What’s incredible about saying the Spurs weren’t getting stops is Victor was getting stops — he had his best defensive game ever, but the rest of the Spurs were playing turnstile defense.
Victor played brilliant defensively and was affecting the Clippers entire offense. Still, he could only do so much 1-on-5 and the Clippers had a field day from three (19–37).
Chris Paul
Chris Paul was the best signing of the offseason. The Spurs not only got a starting point guard, but they got a coach.
The more I watch Chris Paul, the more I see a master craftsman. The guy knows basketball inside and out. I have in my notes that his IQ is off the charts.
As I said, he was hitting early on and then Mitch froze him. But before Paul was benched, his shot was flowing as good as it ever has.
However, this game he did rack up 4 turnovers. Two uncharacteristically so.
One was a horrible pass that he was trying to force because he missed a wide-wide open Victor for a lob (you could tell that killed him). Another was him getting the ball poked away from behind — guys commonly try to poke the ball away from Paul and I’ve only ever seen Jose Alvarado (his “Grand Theft Alvarado” trick) succeed once.
On the bright side, Paul did hit Wemby for multiple lobs and we saw exactly what everyone envisioned when the Spurs nabbed the legendary point guard.
Mamu
For some reason, the Spurs only begrudgingly give Mamu minutes. Tonight, he finally got some real game time after Zach Collins played bad enough for long enough.
Immediately, he hit a needed three. But, then he missed a three badly, and it affected his confidence and he passed up two wide threes. This, in turn, messed up the Spurs offense because you can’t have three point shooters passing up wide open shots.
Mamu totaled only 5 minutes for being yanked.
He finally got a real opportunity and he blew it.
Spurs Inbound
At the end of one of the quarters, the Spurs inbounded the ball with, I believe, 3.6 seconds left and ended with a 3/4 court desperation heave from Stephon Castle.
You can’t just throw away 3.6 seconds. At least get an attempt from over half court.
Victor
This was by far the best defensive game of Victor’s career. Even his 9 blocks and 3 steals don’t tell how good of a story Victor was on defense.
The Clippers rerouted their offense more times than I can remember solely because of Victor. And he legitimately shut down several possessions single-handedly.
On offense, we saw a familiar pattern: Victor resorting to threes and missing.
His final stats, once again, tell the story:
9–22 field goals, 2–9 from 3
Victor’s a bad three point shooter this season and, over his career, he’s mediocre. Once it’s finally accepted that Victor launching a three is a poor offensive possession, then the Spurs can finally start to fully leverage the offensive advantage that Victor represents.
Ironically, it was towards the end of the game when the Spurs really needed some Victor three-point attempts that he didn’t take any.
However, he did find buckets inside and finished with 24 points so there was a lot of good.
But, an additional bad habit Victor has developed is passing out of advantageous position for a worse option. This decision-making, like his launching of threes, shows his timidity on the offensive end.
The Spurs just have to put 1 and 1 together and utilize Victor’s potential three point shooting ability when it makes sense to rather than have it as a feature in their offense.
Game Notes
Why was Michelle Beadle on the broadcast?
I don’t need someone trying to force (un)funny remarks every 35 seconds during a basketball game.
Her presence and constant chiming in got old very fast. It seemed like it also disrupted Sean. And it simply didn’t work on so many levels.
The addition was so unnecessary and inorganic, like someone higher in ranks, courtesy of the Peter Principle, had a brilliant idea in the office.
“We can add some humor into the broadcast to make it more entertaining and also appeal to the female audience.”
What was also curious was she quickly vanished as the game was headed south in the last several minutes of the fourth.
The new NBA refereeing is so much better now. Players aren’t getting every call (not every foul needs to be called) and the refs are letting a lot more go.
I don’t know how they ever let the game get so far out of hand, but this new brand of basketball is much, much better to watch.
The Clippers might have the record for number of different jerseys. When looking at the crowd, most of them had Clippers jerseys, but they varied significantly and there wasn’t one quickly identifiable brand.
I get that sales are sales and people are buying the jerseys, but is brand dilution a thing in the NBA?
What if you get to a point where your team doesn’t have a visual identity?
Summary
This was a bad loss because it was such a winnable game. The Clippers were always going to make a run, but you can’t give up a 20 minute margin so fast.
Allowing the Clippers to chip away from the lead so quickly was a difference maker because then the game reset early in the third quarter and the Clippers were able to withstand the Spurs counter and push past them with time to spare.
