First, the lights at FedEx Forum went out for 18 minutes. Then, the San Antonio Spurs put them out for good.
Gregg Popovich's club took care of business on Sunday, riding a dominant 37-point third quarter to another comfortable win. The Spurs beat the Memphis Grizzlies 116-95 win to finish off a four-game sweep of a Grizz squad that, thanks in part to a raft of injuries to key contributors, had absolutely zero chance against the 67-win Spurs. San Antonio is the first team to advance to the second round; Memphis is the first team to go home for the long spring and summer.
Kawhi Leonard led the way with 21 points on 6-for-10 shooting, adding seven rebounds, four assists, two blocks and a steal. LaMarcus Aldridge capped his first playoff series as a Spur with a double-double, chipping in 15 points on 6-for-11 shooting with 10 rebounds. Tony Parker added 16 points, and San Antonio's bench — led by veterans David West, Patty Mills, Manu Ginobili and Boris Diaw — buried their Grizzlies counterparts, combining for 55 points to help push the Spurs past the short-handed Grizz.
San Antonio didn't always look like its best self on Sunday, but the effort was still more than good enough to finish the job without overtaxing its top guns — no Spur played more than Leonard's 28 minutes — and to earn nearly a week off before having to resume play in the Western Conference semifinals. It's a good bet, though, that they'll stay busy.
"Pop always has something to work on," Aldridge told ABC's Heather Cox after the game. "Tim is 100 years old, you know, so guys like that, they always need the rest."
LaMarcus is exaggerating juuuuust a tad. Duncan turns 40 on Monday; he had seven points, three blocks, two rebounds and two assists in 19 minutes in the clincher.
Playing without its star bookends — center Marc Gasol, who was lost for the season back in February, and point guard Mike Conley, who went out in March — as well as injured-and-waived guard Mario Chalmers, pick-and-roll-dunking rim protector Brandan Wright, and young pieces Jarell Martin and Jordan Adams, the Grizzlies once again came into Game 4 with a piecemeal active roster featuring five players who weren't on the team when the season tipped off in October:
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Dave Joerger used 28 different players to get the Grizzlies to the playoffs, which is astounding to me pic.twitter.com/kb6GKrotAw
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As they did in a hardfought Game 3 loss, though, they gave San Antonio a fight from the opening tip, riding a small-ball starting lineup — Zach Randolph at center, veterans Vince Carter and Matt Barnes at the forward spots, Tony Allen and Jordan Farmar in the backcourt — to a series-high scoring total in the opening quarter.
The problem, of course, is that the high-water mark was still a paltry 19 points. Outside of Randolph post-ups, the occasional dribble-drive from Barnes and some streak-shooting wizardry from Lance Stephenson, who finished with a career playoff high 26 points in 35 1/2 minutes off the bench, Memphis continued to lack the kind of consistent shot-creation vehicles and scoring threats necessary to puncture a Spurs defense that finished tops in the NBA in points allowed per possession during the regular season.
Even so, the Spurs led by only six after the first quarter and by just two at halftime, due in large part to an offensive outing that Popovich described in a between-quarters interview with ABC's Heather Cox as "sloppy" and "unprofessional" — just 40 percent shooting through two quarters, with an uncharacteristically high 12 3-point attempts and eight team turnovers in the first half. Pop challenged his charges to tighten up after intermission, and they answered the call in an excellent third quarter.
Five Spurs scored at least four points in the third, with the one-two punch of Leonard and Aldridge punishing the Grizzlies' frontcourt defenders while Parker masterfully orchestrated the offense. San Antonio opened the frame with a 22-8 run, and finished 14-for-22 from the field in the frame. On the other end, the Spurs' vaunted defense clamped down, holding Memphis to 36.4 percent shooting in the third while forcing five turnovers that led to eight San Antonio points. The Spurs built the lead to 20 on a West dunk with 1:06 left in the third; it was all over but the shoutin' from there.
The Grizzlies head into an offseason that figures to be dominated by the question of whether they can re-sign Conley, their linchpin point guard and an unrestricted free-agent to be, to continue teaming with Gasol as the centerpieces of the Grizzlies' present and future. The second-seeded Spurs advance to take on the winner of the series between the No. 3 Oklahoma City Thunder and No. 6 Dallas Mavericks, which the Thunder lead 3-1 after a 119-108 win in Saturday's Game 4.
Whichever opponent they face, they figure to face a significantly stiffer test than they did against the decimated Grizzlies. With Leonard and Aldridge at the forefront and a deep, experienced, well-drilled cast of supporting characters alongside them, though, the Spurs certainly seem to have all the tools to be able to answer that challenge.
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