San Antonio Spurs 'Digging Out of Hole' vs. New York Knicks, Says Tre Jones
For the second straight game, the San Antonio Spurs got blown out.
On Wednesday night, they lost in pathetic fashion to the New York Knicks in Victor Wembanyama’s Madison Square Garden debut. The final score of 126-105 doesn’t reflect how poorly the Spurs played. At one point, they were down by 30.
Tre Jones, only 23 years old but already a veteran leader, did not mince words after the game.
"The rough start definitely doesn’t help and tonight it was both halves," Jones said. "We got off to a slow start and we were digging ourselves out of the hole the entire time."
Tre Jones is averaging 8.9 points and 6.3 assists off the bench for the Spurs.
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A rough start is a nice way to put it, the Spurs were down 17 in the first quarter. At halftime, the Spurs were down by only 14 points and then had their deficit balloon to an insurmountable 30 points by the midpoint of the third quarter.
The phrase “digging ourselves out of the hole” implies that the Spurs were making shots in order to close the gap. That’s simply not true, as San Antonio shot nine of 34 from deep all game. New York went 19 of 42 from deep, which kept things from ever getting close.
Another way the Spurs could have kept the game from becoming a blowout was playing good perimeter defense, but that idealistic scenario slipped away quickly, as the Knicks went five of nine from deep in the opening frame compared to the Spurs’ zero of five.
Making threes is important, but if you can’t do that, preventing the opponent from making them is just as imperative.
The Spurs fall to 3-5, and in eight games they have only had one normal, close-ish contest. They opened the season losing to the Dallas Mavericks by seven points. Since then, they’ve won in overtime, gotten blown out by 40 points, crawled back from a 22-point deficit against Kevin Durant’s Suns, narrowly escaped a fourth-quarter comeback against the same Suns, blew a massive lead to lose to Toronto in OT, and now have been blown out in two straight games by the Pacers (40 points) and Knicks (21 points).
A winning stretch would be nice, but the Spurs are the youngest team in the league. At this point, fans are just asking the Spurs to keep it close to the games are fun to watch.
