Leonard, Spurs hold off Mavs

“We’ve always tried to play defence like this, and we are running back into transition better”.

The Atlanta Hawks ended their three-game road trip on a sour note with a 108-88 loss to the San Antonio Spurs. He hampered Danilo Gallinari all game, but also was the offensive focal point. He also had eight rebounds, five assists and two steals. His emergence is the single factor in the Spurs Championship window staying open and now widening with the addition of LaMarcus Aldridge. Dallas was able to capitalize on seemingly every mistake, which played a huge role in the result of this one.

“We usually build as a team defensively, but this year we’ve started out very aggressively”, Spurs reserve guard Manu Ginobilli said.

San Antonio is 3-8 ATS in its last 11 games when playing Dallas.

“Our type of offense puts everybody in a good situation”, Leonard said. Al Horford added 10 points in a losing effort for Atlanta, while Dennis Schroder scored 9 points and dished out 6 dimes.

Devin Harris’ 3-pointer cut San Antonio’s lead to 84-83 with 33 seconds remaining, but Leonard followed with his own 3 just 18 seconds later.

The Spurs get it done back home in the AT&T Center.

“The defence was the key”, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. We had a couple of shots to take the lead or tie it at the end. Denver lost at home against Phoenix, Golden State, the Los Angeles Clippers and San Antonio by an average of 12.0 points and has turned the ball over 54 times in its last three.

“Yeah, he got a little bit excited”, Parker said. “I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t want to jinx it. a year ago I had so many things happen”.

“We have to finish off quarters outright”, Mudiay said. “I’d probably say ‘Wolverine.’ He heals pretty fast, he doesn’t age”. I’m just catching, shooting and making wide-open shots. The Mavs turned Nuggets mistakes into easy offense the other way, which is exactly what good teams do. The big German sharpshooter is averaging a team-high 18.0 points and 6.4 rebounds while shooting over 50 percent from three-point range. Their defense did just enough to squeeze out the win. With the loss, Dallas fell to 9-7 on the season and 5-5 on the road. Even with some intelligent calling of the game from Chris Marlowe and Scott Hastings this evening, the most poignant call of the night came at the 10:00 mark of Q4 for from Hastings in which yet another turnover was greeted by two seconds of silence from both men, and Scotty finally just loudly said, “Uggghhh”. All of the “stretch” forwards on this team is what makes the Nuggets so hard to matchup with on the perimeter, especially for a team like the Mavs that doesn’t have a lot of size on the wings. “There’s no way we can win when if we turn the ball over as much as we did tonight”, Morris sai “Some of that had to do with (Bledsoe) being out, and some of it had to do with the Spurs’ defense”. “It wouldn’t matter who we’re playing”.