San Antonio Spurs crush Dallas Mavericks 111-86 to win their fifth straight: NBA Recap
San Antonio Spurs demolished the Dallas Mavericks for the second weekend in a row, extending their winning streak to 5 games with a 111-86 rout of the Mavericks here at the American Airlines Center Sunday night.
Tony Parker fell one assist shy of his double-double as he finished off with 21 points and 9 dimes. Manu Ginobili posted 20 points and 5 rebounds in his limited minutes off the bench while Tim Duncan had 18 points and 10 rebounds
against the struggling Mavs who have lost their 6 straight and 9 of their last 10 games.
Shooting from distance was one of the separating factors between the two teams once again. San Antonio set the franchise record for 20 three pointers the last time they played against Dallas. This time around Spurs made 8 of their
19 shots from downtown with Daniel Green going 2 of 3 from behind the arc. In comparison Mavericks managed only one three pointer in their 16 attempts.
Darren Collison led the Mavs with 18 points and 8 assists, Elton Brand posted a double-double off the bench with 14 points and 10 rebounds while Dirk Nowitzki finished off with 8 points in his limited minutes.
And despite the hammering, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich showed Nowitzki and his team a lot of respect,
"We were fortunate. Obviously Dirk is not ready. He's not Dirk Nowitzki, basically one of the greatest players that's ever played, so it's going to take time for him. Everybody's just trying to figure out their place and work around
and get back into a rotation. It's very, very difficult when you have a guy like that out and then he comes back.” Popovich said.
Spurs got off to a fast start and a 10 nil run put them up 14-2 early in the first period as they never trailed. A Parker jumper had the San Antonio up 25-12 but the Mavs started cutting into the lead late in the quarter and reduced
the deficit down to 22-27 by the end of the first period.
Whenever Dallas pulled Spurs within single digits, the latter pulled ahead to maintain a sufficient gap. It was still close on 60-65 for the Mavs midway in the third quarter but the turning point came when Ginobili nailed a three
pointer to put the Spurs up 80-70 with less than 31.9 seconds to go in the quarter.
San Antonio were in cruise control mode from that moment onwards, as the Mavs never really looked to threaten them in the fourth quarter. Dallas scored only a couple of points in the last 4:22 minutes as the Spurs closed the game
with an 11-2 run to win 111-86 in the end.
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