Lose with grace. That sentiment still leads one to believe the person(s) in question is/are complicit in their defeat. San Antonio, meanwhile, failed to concede anything to the Clippers last night, except Game 7 — and ultimately the series — after getting eliminated almost before they had begun to defend their crown. But there was nothing conciliatory about their play, or their grace under the most charged of circumstances. They taught us all a lesson, one we all know but still often fail to heed when it’s our turn to maintain in a moment of overwhelming frustration.
Let’s start at the beginning of this story, which ironically came at the end of Game 7.
With one second left on the clock in the fourth quarter Saturday night, a Staples Center worker blew the horn right as San Antonio — trailing 111-109 — was midway through their last ATO set of the season and gave the Clippers a not-so-brief look at what was to come.
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Ultimately, the blunder — or emboldened bit of homecourt advantage — foretold the end for the suddenly clairvoyant Matt Barnes:
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“Absolutely,” Gregg Popovich answered when he was asked after the game whether the Clippers got a chance to see what San Antonio was running on that final possession to end the best game of the 2015 NBA Playoffs — and what may likely remain the best game of the playoffs because of just how hard both teams fought, how evenly they were matched and how realistic each team’s title chances were.
Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker were noticeably absent on that final play, with Popovich inserting little used three-point specialist Matt Bonner to force Jamal Crawford to stay with him in the corner.
But Matt Barnes saw what they were running from his vantage point on the perimeter guarding the stationary Spur Marc Bellinelli, and he timed his leap perfectly to bat the ball away and move on to the next round.
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Popovich didn’t dwell on the unfortunate bit of foreshadowing the buzzer provided — whether intentional or not, we’ll leave that to the masses; inevitable and self-repeating calls of nefarious collusion spring out of seemingly every playoff game that comes down to one or two possessions like last night’s Game 7 saga.
While “absolutely,” was the pithy Popovich retort when directly asked about the play, the assembled reporters weren’t yet done with the sequence even if Popovich was. When a reporter followed up and asked whether the Spurs coach thought San Antonio should gave been provided another timeout to change their impending play, his answer again skirted any mention of foul play, or the unfairness of it all, but merely fell back on the disappointment of the night, and the uncomfortable position the Spurs found themselves in after Chris Paul played *the laudable kind of “Hero Ball.”*
“There’s not a whole lot you can do with one second,” said a morose Pop. “They’d seen part of the play, you know; it was gonna be tough anyway.”
