Tony Parker stars again as the San Antonio Spurs show why they are the hot favourites for the championship this year by routing Utah Jazz by 31 points
San Antonio Spurs continued their winning streak here at the AT&T Center on Wednesday night with a comfortable 114-83 win over the Utah Jazz.
The winning ways for the mighty Spurs have now been prolonged to 12, the first win going back to April 12th, 2012. This win also helped the Spurs in getting their first 2-0 advantage in a playoff series since they did
it against Phoenix Suns back in 2008.
Seven players for San Antonio made sizable contributions in the game, led by 13 year veteran point guard, Tony Parker, who remained on song by recording a game high of 18 points along with 9 assists.
Rookie, Kawhi Leonard was very impressive and followed Parker up with 17 points. Tim Duncan notched up a double-double with 12 points and 13 boards. Boris Diaw contributed 11 points and Danny Green contributed 13 points, with 9
of those points coming from beyond the arc.
For the Jazz side, their lack of meaningful offence continued with only two player reaching double figures, the two being Josh Howard and Al Jefferson who recorded 10 each while the rest of the squad failed to get more then 9 points
individually.
Utah seemed to be facing the problem of having to play several players out of position. This has been taking its toll on the team defence as the players are failing to fulfil their defensive responsibilities. Playing a lot of paint
dominating players however did have its benefits as they out-rebounded the Spurs 18-5 on the offensive end.
Spurs got off and running in this one as they held a 17-4 lead in the early goings, which pretty much set up the tone for the rest of the match let alone the remaining part of the first quarter. Even though the Jazz were able to
get the advantage below double figures at one point, however by the end of the period, the lead was back up there with a score line of 28-17.
In the second quarter, the team from Salt Lake City tried to rally back managing to put together a 9-3 run in the opening 5 minutes of the period. Green put an end to that charge from the Jazz, courtesy of Leonard assists to knock
down a three pointer.
In the next two minutes, Spurs knocked down two more triples in addition to two points from the free throw line to get the advantage up to a sizable margin. This offensive dominance continued for the Spurs as they closed out the
last 7 minutes of the first half with a 22-2 offensive display.
If the first half was dominating, the third period was in the same spirit as the Spurs looked to put this game beyond Utah`s reach. The home side started the third period on a 15-7 run and went on to dominate the rest of the proceedings.
Spurs advantage was quickly extended to above 30 midway and it never really looked to getting below that. After three quarters of game time had been played, San Antonio, were leading with a score line of 87-53.
This ample advantage enabled the Spurs to give rest to some of their main players but still the Spurs second unit kept pace with the Jazz side.
Even though, Utah were able to pick up some slack in the final quarter, outscoring the Spurs 30-27 in the frame, however it did not have any effect what so ever on the eventual outcome. In the end, Spurs took this one by a huge
margin of 31 points. Game 3 sees the proceeding shift to Utah on Saturday night.
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