Boracay Island, Philippines ? All Star DeMar DeRozan?s first game as a Spur started slow, but ended well, as the San Antonio Spurs eked out a 112-108 victory over the visiting Minnesota Timberwolves at the jam-packed AT&T Center in San Antonio, Texas, home of the Spurs, Wednesday night (Thursday morning, Philippine time).
DeRozan finished with a game high 28 points on a 10 of 21 field goal shooting, to go along with 4 boards and 4 dimes across his name.
Fellow All Star LaMarcus Aldridge overcame a horrible shooting efficiency to still end up with a monster double-double performance of 21 points and 19 rebounds ? 8 of which on the offensive end, including 2 assists, 1 steal and 3 blocks to dominate his counterpart Karl-Anthony Towns, who was limited to a measly 8 points, 9 boards and 3 assists before fouling out.
Veteran forward Rudy Gay was also steady for the Spurs with his 18 points on an 8 of 12 field goal shooting and 7 rebounds. All but one of the players fielded in by Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich contributed on the points department.
The Timberwolves? guard-wing rotation was very productive with Jeff Teague, Andrew Wiggins, and Jimmy Butler contributing 27, 20, and 23 points, respectively, but the starting frontline of Karl-Anthony Towns and Taj Gibson only finished with a combined 14 points for Minnesota head coach Tom Thibodeau.
Sharpshooting big man Davis Bertans provided a much-needed spark off-the-bench with three timely bombs from the rainbow territory to help the Spurs gain cushion down the stretch.
Up Next for the Spurs: Will face the Portland Trailblazers at home on Saturday night (Sunday morning Philippine time)
Up Next for the Timberwolves: Will face the Cleveland Cavaliers at home on Friday night (Saturday morning Philippine time)
How They Scored:
Spurs 112: DeRozan 28, Aldridge 21, Gay 18, Forbes 11, Bellineli 10, Bertans 9, Mills 6, Gasol 5, Poeltl 4, Cunningham 0
Timberwolves 108: Teague 27, Butler 23, Wiggins 20, Dieng 12, Towns 8, Rose 8, Gibson 6, Jones 4, Tolliver 0
Comments are highly appreciated. You may send them to reylanloberternos@yahoo.com.ph and you may follow @reylan_l on twitter.
Comments
Share your thoughts on the above article by Reylan Loberternos.