NFL Tickets
LaMarcus Aldridge and Boris Diaw both stepped up big on Saturday night, and the San Antonio Spurs secured a key victory against the Golden State Warriors thanks to that.
Tim Duncan came off the bench for just the third time in his career this weekend, and this might have been a mind game being played by Gregg Popovich against Steve Kerr. Or it could have been an experiment to see if this was a viable lineup to use against the Warriors in the playoffs. Will Diaw start throughout the postseason? It is a legitimate question that is on now on the table.
It seems inevitable that the Spurs and Golden State will eventually meet in the playoffs, and coach Popovich probably can’t help but think about what to do when that happens. He has routinely held out his star players against contenders during the regular season, and it was interesting that he chose to switch Diaw into the starting lineup this late in the year.
It wasn’t an accident, though.
Popovich might be the most underrated coach in NBA history. There is no way that his decisions about player rest and lineup changes have been a coincidence in the past, and coach Kerr followed that thinking by starting Andre Iguodala midway through the 2015 NBA Finals.
Popovich might consider playing Diaw a lot more based on what we’ve seen so far, and that would be an intriguing twist in this rivalry. The Spurs would essentially be conceding that the Warriors play the most efficient type of basketball, and that would obviously be an amazing concession for a team that used to be mainly focused on getting Duncan the ball in the post.
The Spurs are right where they want to be. They are under the radar, and that suits most of their personnel. Duncan and Kawhi Leonard aren’t the kind to cause trouble or seek the limelight, and that is why Diaw starting down the stretch wouldn’t create any chemistry problems.
Share 
