NBA Preview: The Spurs look to snap the streak of home teams winning every game in their head-to-head battles in 2016-17. A win tonight would clinch a conference semifinal berth in the West.
#2 San Antonio Spurs (64-23) at #7 Memphis Grizzlies (45-42), Thursday, 9:30 p.m. EST
Line: Spurs -4. Total 190.
Series: Spurs 3-2.
The Spurs and Grizzlies have played nine games this season head to head and the home team has won every game. That is the definition of home cooking.
This series parallels the results of the Wizards / Hawks series. The home team had won and more importantly, covered the spread in every home game in that series. The operative word in that sentence is “had”. The Wizards did win Thursday night against the Hawks at home, 103-99. However, Washington did not cover the closing line of 6 points.
I expect Game 6 of this series to break from the norm of the previous five games. I believe the Spurs will win and cover the spread. The Spurs are too good a team to lose three straight games at the same venue to a team they were 18 wins better than in the regular season.
San Antonio was very close to beating Memphis in Game 4 at the FedExForum. The Spurs were up 3 points with 1:45 left in regulation time when Patty Mills missed a wide open three-pointer. Had Mills made that shot, San Antonio would have been in complete control of the game. Instead, Mike Conley hit a 12-foot jumper with four seconds left for Memphis to send the game into overtime. As a result, Marc Gasol hit a runner in the lane with 0.7 seconds left in overtime to lift the Grizzlies to a 110-108 victory.
The two stars of this series have been shining. Conley is averaging 24.4 points per game, 7.4 assists per game and 3.6 rebounds per game for the Grizzlies. For San Antonio, Kawhi Leonard is averaging 31.6 points per game, 3.8 assists per game and 5.4 rebounds per game.
Tony Parker is showing signs of life for the Spurs the last two games. Parker has averaged 19 points per game and 5.5 assists per game over the previous two contests. However, he scored 0 points with 0 assists in Game 3 and had a total of just 3 assists over the first 3 games of the series.
Memphis deserves a lot of credit for battling hard in this series. Coach David Fizdale also deserves a lot of credit for making this a competitive series. He inserted Zach Randolph and James Ennis into the starting lineup for Game 3 to replace JaMychal Green and Wayne Selden. Fizdale had the back of all his players after the officiating debacle of Game 2 at San Antonio by calling out the refs in his postgame press conference. Fizdale knew he was getting a heavy fine. As a result, he was fined $30,ooo for his remarks. However, the best part of that story is his players are paying the fine for their first-year coach.
This game will probably be close throughout. However, I see the Spurs making a run at some point and winning this game by more than 5 points.
On a side note, it was reported on several websites that Gregg Popovich left a $5000 tip at a Memphis restaurant between Games 3 and 4. The Spurs lost both those games. I wonder how big the tip may have been if the Spurs won?
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