Spurs, no strangers to Game 7s, say they will be ready for Clippers
The San Antonio Spurs are acutely aware of what the outcome of Game 7 of Saturday means.
“It’s win or go home,” Boris Diaw said after the Spurs’ uninspired Game 6 loss at AT&T Center on Thursday night to the Clippers.
The winner of the game at Staples Center will advance to the Western Conference semifinals to face the well-rested Houston Rockets.
The loser will go home and lament about what could have been.
San Antonio reached this juncture because of its failure at home to close out the Clippers in Game 6, forcing the Spurs to return to Los Angeles for the deciding game.
“We understand the pressure that’s there and we understand the magnitude of the game,” Tim Duncan said. “We understand that we can play better than we did [Thursday] night. Hopefully we will clean up a whole lot of that up and play a much better game in this short turnaround. I know we are capable of it. We will be ready for it.”
The defending NBA champions have traveled this road before of having to win a seventh game.
The Spurs beat the Dallas Mavericks in seven games in a first-round series last year and San Antonio lost Game 7 in the 2013 NBA Finals to the Miami Heat.
“We’ve been playing those kinds of games so it won’t be the first seventh game we’ve played,” Diaw said. “We also won in the first round in seven games last year. We even had a higher seed and we still went to a Game 7.”
Homecourt hasn’t mean much in the Clippers-Spurs series, because the road team has won four of the six games.
But for all their championship pedigree throughout their history of winning five NBA championships, the Spurs are just 1-3 in Game 7s on the road.
“It’s going to be hard,” Tony Parker said. “However, we’ve won over there twice [in L.A.] so we’re going to have to do it again.”,
It should be noted a Game 7 loss could possibly be the end of San Antonio’s Big Three — Duncan, Parker and Manu Ginobili.
Though still playing at high level in the series, Duncan just turned 39 and is in the final year of his contract and hasn’t said what his future holds. Ginobili, 37, is in the final year of his contract and has had an uneven season and playoff series. Parker, 32, has three years left on his deal for $43 million.
But for now the focus is on the task at hand.
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“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” Diaw said. “We expect it to be hard and now it’s on us to either take the game or not.”
Twitter:@BA_Turner
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