National Basketball Association roundup: Davis returns to lift Pelicans

The San Antonio Spurs know they let one slip away in New Orleans on Friday night, but lucky for them – they had a game the very next day.

“Hopefully, we can go further into the postseason and play into June”, Davis said a month before the season. “That’s our goal. We came up short past year and made the playoffs”. “I told the guys this is something we have to try to build on though; we don’t need to take a step backwards either”.

Ryan Anderson hit six three-pointers and scored 30 points for the second straight game.

San Antonio (10-3) led just 86-80 in the final minute but got back-to-back running floaters from forward Tim Duncan and a 3-point dagger from Leonard with 16 seconds remaining and the shot clock ticking down to clinch their sixth win of the season at the AT&T Center. Marc Gasol had a decent 8 point, 8 rebound, and 6 assist game, but more encouragingly, looked engaged and (dare I say) pissed off down the stretch, which he converted into positive basketball energy… if not points.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich was asked after his team’s slug-fest win over the always competitive Grizzlies if his team’s rash of turnovers in the third quarter -five miscues in the first 5:33 of the period- was a sign of a team still trying to figure itself out. If you allow that much penetration, it just leaves everybody else open. Whenever you can beat the champs like that, it feels pretty good. I just saw gaps and tried to explore them. “Coach just wanted me to stay aggressive”.

It was the first of four three-pointers in the quarter for Anderson as the Pelicans took a 48-41 halftime lead.

In the midst of that fourth-quarter surge, Davis blocked Lamar Aldridge’s 15-foot jumper, chased down the ball and hurled it into Aldridge’s legs while falling into the front-row seats.

“Those are kind of like playoff-type effort plays”.

Though the Spurs made it a one-point game three times early in the fourth quarter, they would never regain the lead. Certain plays each game can make a difference.

“Coach does as really good job of drawing up plays to give me good opportunities against smaller guys. These plays can fire up the crowd and change the outcome of games”.

San Antonio is unbeaten at home after six games, but has struggled to close out games and it happened again against Memphis (7-7). Popovich pulled his starters with 2:40 left.

“I think what it does for us is create spacing situations on the offensive end, ” Gentry said.