Tony Parker will be a member of the Basketball Hall of Fame after he retires and becomes eligible for the honor. After back-to-back NBA Finals appearances and one more NBA championship as part of the San Antonio Spurs’ dynasty, there is nothing Parker and his old-man teammates truly have to prove.
However, after Game 1 of the Western Conference playoffs, it’s really rather clear: Anything you might have thought about the Spurs being Kawhi Leonard’s team is not correct… not yet.
It brings to mind the point that while news organizations reported Parker as saying the Spurs “are” Kawhi’s team — present tense — Parker was actually referring to the future. This distinction between now and tomorrow underscores the Spurs’ suddenly tenuous position after a Game 1 butt-kicking late Sunday night in Los Angeles. The NBA is a superstar league, and the Clippers — locked in at the defensive end of the floor and getting the very best from their superstars — brought a lot more to the table than the Spurs did.
Everyone has been talking about Kawhi Leonard the past few months, but if the Spurs are going to find their way out of this series and challenge the Golden State Warriors in the Western Conference, it’s Parker who has to rise. His 4-of-11 shooting performance, with only two free throw attempts and one assist, points to a player who is still not physically whole after being dogged for much of the season with injuries.
No one is more aware of the situation than Parker himself, and it’s essential to say with great care and clarity that this is not Kawhi’s team. It’s still Parker’s.
Allow the Frenchman’s words to frame the issue in its proper context.
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The Spurs aren’t Kawhi’s team. They will be, but they haven’t yet made that transition. If you thought Parker had already passed the baton, he didn’t:
“You have to share and wait your turn. Sometimes I don’t see the ball for a long time but Kawhi is playing unbelievable. And it’s going to be Kawhi’s team anyway. Like Timmy transitioned to Manu, Manu transitioned to me, now it’s going to be transitioned to Kawhi. I’ll try my best to be aggressive and stay involved, but Kawhi’s going to be the man.”
Sure, Parker knows this process of making the Spurs into Kawhi’s team is happening, but it’s in its beginning stages. It’s anything but a completed process, and if it’s going to be completed, it’s going to manifest itself throughout a season. It’s not something an NBA team will do in the playoffs after following a different path through 82 games.
If you stayed up late to watch Game 1, you saw Chris Paul — who, by the way, played a full 82-game schedule for the first time in his career this season– dominate on the perimeter. It wasn’t just that Paul scored 32 points; it was that he drew enough attention that Blake Griffin enjoyed some wide driving lanes as a result. In our quick-hit visual posting hub here at Bloguin, which we call “The Locker,” contributor Kevin Causey compiled Griffin’s best dunks from Sunday night. If Paul didn’t win the point-guard matchup to the extent he did, Griffin would not have frolicked to such an extent.
(Also, a healthy Tiago Splitter would have been able to deny Griffin more effectively than the hopelessly overmatched Aron Baynes. The Spurs are just not healthy enough at multiple positions. They need the likes of Danny Green and Boris Diaw, who just didn’t have it in Game 1, to “find it” pretty quickly in Game 2.)
Yogi Berra famously said about playing the outfield at Yankee Stadium during the World Series, “It gets late early out there.” The reference was to the shadows that emerge rather early in the day, a big difference from the long and sunny days of summer.
In the Western Conference playoffs, it has gotten late very early for the San Antonio Spurs. The Los Angeles Clippers looked younger, fresher and stronger on Sunday night, and the Spurs’ late surge — 21 wins in 26 games — has not masked the fact that their point guard and backup big man are not physically up to par.
In future seasons, yes, the Spurs will become Kawhi Leonard’s team. In Game 2 and for the rest of these playoffs, though, Tony Parker has to knock down those 16-foot pull-ups and eight-foot floaters. He has to assert himself at the offensive end of the floor and do the things that have carried San Antonio into the month of June. If Parker’s tank runs on empty the next few nights, the Spurs will find themselves in the unusual position of not playing a single game in the month of May.
