San Antonio Spurs give up barrage of triples on the road in Dallas

Collapsing in the second half, the San Antonio Spurs dropped another road game – this time in Dallas.

In yet another ugly shooting night, the San Antonio Spurs continued what’s been a downward spiral this season with a 98-102 loss against their Southwest Division rival, the Dallas Mavericks. This wasted an amazing all-around effort by Rudy Gay in 26 minutes off the bench.

Gay was crucial in holding big man Kristaps Porzingis to 13 points on 26.7% shooting. He also had one of his best shooting nights, making 4-of-7 triples and 7-of-10 field goal attempts. With the offense running through the versatile forward, San Antonio outperformed the Mavs as shown by his +15 plus/minus. He also asserted himself with eight boards, two steals and two blocked shots.

The first half was relatively quiet for swingman DeMar DeRozan, but he led the team in final scoring with 21. However, his defense was lackluster and his body language was detrimental for someone who’s supposed to be a leader to this team.

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His running mate, former All-Star LaMarcus Aldridge, finished with 17 points, seven boards and two blocks. Needless to say, this wasn’t a great effort by the big man coming off a 40-point outing against the Grizzlies.

Dallas clearly highlighted Bryn Forbes as the player to attack in the half court with Tim Hardaway Jr. (17 points, 50% from the field and three) firing a high volume of jumpers over the top of the undrafted guard. This was a huge part in the Mavs’ hot shooting night as they hit 40% of 40 triples.

Forbes, Marco Belinelli and Patty Mills took four triples each and not a single one of them dropped. There’s essentially no way for the Spurs to win without these three making a three-pointer.

San Antonio has another chance at redemption when they host the Detroit Pistons on Saturday evening at 7:30 CT.