Spurs Try to Make Sweeping Statement Above the Noise

It’s all over but the clincher.

For the San Antonio Spurs, that could come as soon as tonight: The defending NBA champions can complete a sweep of their first-round playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies with a Game 4 victory at Memphis, Tenn.

The Spurs, after winning the first two games by an average of more than 20 points, all but assured themselves of advancing to the Western Conference semifinals with a 95-93 victory in Game 3 on Thursday night, overcoming a 10-point deficit amid a charged atmosphere in the Pyramid.

No team has ever come back to win an NBA playoff series after losing the first three games, but Grizzly fans will be primed again tonight.

“It will be just as crazy,” Spur Coach Gregg Popovich said Thursday night after the city of Memphis had emotionally celebrated its first NBA playoff game, a towel-waving sellout crowd having practically willed the Grizzlies to a big early lead.

A missed three-point shot at the buzzer by Mike Miller ended the revelry on a down note, pushing the Grizzlies to the brink of elimination and the Spurs toward a possible conference semifinal rematch against the Lakers, provided the Lakers can hold off the Houston Rockets, of course. The Spurs ended the Lakers’ run of three consecutive championships in last year’s conference semifinals.

This season, they were 1-3 against the Lakers, but Popovich said before the playoffs that the record was misleading because the Spurs’ three losses had come in the season’s first five weeks, when they were still finding themselves.

“We couldn’t have beat your Budweiser team three times before Christmas,” Popovich said.

After a 9-10 start, however, the Spurs closed 48-15.

They haven’t lost since March 23, when they were outscored by the Minnesota Timberwolves, and rode an 11-game winning streak into the playoffs.

The Grizzlies, meanwhile, have lost seven in a row and nine of 10, their storybook season -- in which they won 50 games, eclipsing the previous franchise record by 22 victories -- about to end disappointingly.

In their two losses at San Antonio, they made less than 36% of their shots. They improved to 58% in the first half of Game 3, taking a 57-50 halftime lead, but the Spurs clamped down again and the Grizzlies made 37% in the second half.

Still, Bonzi Wells isn’t counting them out. The Grizzly guard played for the Portland Trail Blazers last spring when they lost the first three games of a first-round series against the Dallas Mavericks before rallying to force Game 7.

“It’s like I’m experiencing deja vu,” Wells said Friday.

He ultimately wound up on the losing side last year too.