Write On Sports LLC - "Black eye motivation" by Jake Lloyd

Black eye motivation

2007-05-13 12:12:54 | By: Jake Lloyd

Entering Saturday night's Game 3 of his team's Western Conference semifinal series against Phoenix, San Antonio's Manu Ginobili was having a very un-Manu-like series. In the first two games, split by the teams, he averaged a mere seven points.

All he needed to get him going -- take a guess, but you won't get it -- was a black eye.

Late in the third quarter, with the Spurs hanging onto a slim 72-71 lead, Ginobili was inadvertently swiped across the face by Phoenix's Shawn Marion on a drive to the basket. Within a minute of the play -- which didn't even warrant a foul -- there was a large black spot below a quickly swelling eye.

That's when Ginobili took over.

After some quick swabbing from his trainer -- whom, I must say, did a superior job to Phoenix's trainer tending to Steve Nash's eye during Game 1 -- Ginobili came back on the floor. And with Tim Duncan and Tony Parker on the bench, black eye or not, Ginobili had to lead the offense.

He did more than that.

Ginobili fearlessly swooped to the basket for two and a 74-71 lead. Ginobili stepped into a 3-pointer in the face of Raja Bell, who fouled him hard. Three free throws later, the lead had doubled to 77-71.

Thirty-some seconds later, Ginobili connected on a 3-pointer for an 80-71 lead, prompting ABC color commentator Jon Barry to say Ginobili is "taking the pop in the eye and taking over the game."

And indeed the Argentinean was.

He would nail another 3-pointer a minute into the final quarter, and Phoenix was never able to get closer than six points the rest of the way as San Antonio held on for a 108-101 win and a 2-1 lead in the series heading into Game 4 Monday.

"It really helped me," Ginobili said of the eye-swatting, "because it got me upset and I started attacking really hard.

"From that point on everything changed for me."

Ginobili finished with 24 points and three steals, complementing Tim Duncan's gargantuan performance of 33 points, 19 rebounds and three blocks.

The pair's performance equaled a hard-fought victory for San Antonio.

While Duncan was on fire all night, shooting 12-for-19 from the field and scoring 13 fourth-quarter points, he praised Ginobili for creating some distance between his team and the always quick-strike Suns and had an idea to keep his teammate's shooting accurate, "It (the incident) fixed his shot, so it might be the other eye on Monday," Duncan said.

But joking aside, Saturday's victory showcased why the central players on the Spurs roster have won two championships the past four seasons. They come to play in the big games.

Phoenix's two-time MVP Steve Nash got the memo, but it was too late. Nash missed his first nine field goals, which allowed the Spurs to come back from a nine-point second quarter deficit, and while Nash's first basket cut San Antonio's lead to 66-62 midway through the third, the Spurs had the lead for good.

Nash scored seven consecutive points in the fourth quarter (he finished with 16 points and 11 assists) and then fed Marion for a dunk, but each time the Spurs had an answer. Duncan, for the most part, resembled that answer. First he hit a jumper -- off the glass, of course. Then another jumper.

... and another.

And when Phoenix's defense got a little too up on him, Duncan drove, completing a three-point play with about 3 minutes to go that extended San Antonio's lead to 102-93 and all but iced the contest.

"Timmy was great," San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich said. "He shot the ball (well), he rebounded, he found open people."

Which is nothing new this series. Duncan is averaging 31.7 points and 15.3 rebounds, and he's shooting a blistering 57.1 percent from the field.

But would the Spurs have won if not for the heroic performance of Ginobili?

"If Manu doesn't score in that particular situation (the end of the third quarter), we've got some problems," Popovich said.

GLUED TO THE BENCH
Saturday's result might have been a completely different story had Phoenix's Amare Stoudemire been able to stay out of foul trouble. The Suns' center was plagued by fouls all night and played just 21 minutes during which he scored 21 points.

Imagine what he could have done in 40 minutes.

Stoudemire came out with fire in his eyes, obviously pumped up after making comments during the three-day layoff between games that San Antonio, in particular Bruce Bowen, is a dirty team.

While you can't fault a player's aggressiveness, I think it hurt Stoudemire in this case. He was never able to calm down and play smart basketball. Yes, a couple of the calls were questionable, but especially the fifth foul -- an obvious slap of Duncan early in the fourth quarter -- had to be called, and Stoudemire's absence cost his team.

D'ANTONI IRATE
You could see the anger boiling up in him as the game went on.

Phoenix coach Mike D'Antoni was not a happy camper. He believed his team was getting slapped around while similar plays were being called fouls on the other end (San Antonio attempted 36 free throws to 27 for Phoenix).

After the loss, when asked if the series could be defined as physical, D'Antoni chuckled, uttered a "YEAH," then modified his statement to say that "their half" was physical. In other words, the Spurs have played physical but not the Suns.

D'Antoni then promised that from now on his Suns will play just as hard-nosed.

I can't wait until Monday night.