Manu Ginobli scored 15 in the fourth with 11 of those coming from the line to guide the Spurs home. I have been saying for a long time now that Manu is the X-factor for this team. They are nothing without Timmy and Tony is nice, but Manu holds the key to a championship. If he is on top of his game, they are championship caliber. Otherwise, they are just another contender like Utah or Detroit. Today, Manu played like 2 years ago after having a so-so season last year and early this tear due to injuries. He is a treat to watch. The guy is fearless! I have never seen anybody play with such gay abandon. He just wills his way to the paint with that herky-jerky motion using long strides and uses his left hand to finish some unconventional drives. He is not afraid of getting hit. Of course, he is notorious for flopping and the Jazz fans and players got all worked up in this game about some calls involving Manu.
Manu is incredibly poised and smart. He single-handedly got Fisher ejected with 2 technicals. Manu has that Euro/foreign demeanor where he never gets upset or feels compelled to fight someone to show he is a tough guy like most American ballers. He just gets hit, flops, picks himself up and knocks the throws down. But the Euro/soccer culture is also getting blamed more and more by some writers for increased flopping in the NBA with Manu being a prominent culprit. In any case, he took this game over and put his stamp all over it in the 4-Th. The Spurs needed that too as Tony Parker had his first bad game of the series, may be this entire playoffs, as he had a 17-3-2 night on 6/19 shooting. Timmy was good, but not great with 19-9 and 5 blocks. So Manu's 22-6 was the difference.
For the Jazz, they just unravelled in the fourth, though the game was over by the time all the Manu theatrics and T's came down. Deron Williams had lost 8 pounds to sickness over the past 2 days and he clearly looked gassed in the fourth. The guy was awesome again as he had a 27-3-10 night. Once again, Boozer was the only other contributor with 18-9 and the rest of the Jazz are giving them nothing. AK-47 had a decent game with a 9-8-1-1-4, but they need scoring from Okur, Fish and the bench and thats just not there with the Spurs defense. Boozer had an awesome block on Timmy way above the rim in the third quarter, but a close game got away in the fourth. The Jazz will find it difficult to bring this series back to Utah. San Antonio knows what to do in close-out games.
San Antonio @ Utah - 91-79
Playoff schedule for 05/29/2007
Detroit @ Cleveland - The Cavs can definitely win this one. They now look like they belong in this series.
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