SAN ANTONIO – The beating was thorough, complete, convincing.
Well, almost.
There was an area of Game 1 that had left Spurs coach Gregg Popovich far removed from satisfied. Rebounding. The Knicks held a 43-37 rebounding edge, including 13-4 mastery of the offensive glass, and that left the Spurs brooding. Especially when that old adage of “rebounds equal rings” filters through the mind.
So the Spurs could not afford to go into Game 2 last night counting on the dominance they showed in so many other areas, which made the Knicks’ 19-2 Game 1 edge in second-chance points seem as bothersome as a sheet of tissue paper before a runaway train.
“It’s of huge importance for us to clean up the glass,” Sean Elliott said. “We haven’t been outrebounded like that for a while. Maybe Portland for a couple games but the Knicks go after the glass hard and if we want to win the series, we have to reverse that.
“It’s pure effort on their part,” Elliott continued. “They really crash the glass. Camby, Dudley, Kurt Thomas. Those guys have the work ethic. They really go after it.”
The Knicks’ efforts on the glass have proven to be a huge reason why they landed in the Finals. When the Spurs approached the prospect of facing New York, they continually harped on the Knick transition offense. Stop that and stop the Knicks, they claimed. But maybe they got too zealous in Game 1. Maybe they were so intent on getting back defensively, that they gave up on their own offensive rebounding.
“I don’t think so,” offered Popovich.
Then again, maybe not.
“We’ve had problems with it all year. We’re not a great team at putting bodies on people sometimes,” Popovich explained. “We just kind of go to the rim rather than making contact. We’re aggressive in every other way on the court but for some reason, we forget to make contact going to the board in those situations. So every now and then we’ll have a game like that where we get beat badly on the offensive boards.”
Rebounding, of course, is effort. No one questions the Knick effort. And, Mario Elie promised, for last night and the remainder of the series, no one will question the Spurs’ gang approach to the glass. Getting snuffed 19-2 on put-back points is unacceptable.
“That kept them in the game, that 19-2,” Elie said. “It’s obvious we can’t let that happen again. I don’t think it was worrying about the fast break. I saw a lot of pushes behind the back that weren’t called but I give those guys credit. Kurt Thomas and Marcus Camby and Chris Dudley, they play hard. They outhustled us to a lot of balls.
“That’s what we must do,” Elie stressed. “And that comes in with the guards, too. We’ve got to get in on the gang rebounding.”