The San Antonio Spurs opened up preseason play with a 111-85 victory over the Utah Jazz at the AT&T Center.
Dejounte Murray and Joshua Primo led the Spurs with 17 points each. Up next, the Spurs travel to Detroit to take on the Pistons on Wednesday night. The regular season begins on October 20 against the Orlando Magic.
Postgame Comments:
Spurs Head Coach Gregg Popovich:
(On the Spurs’ defensive activity)
“What I was interested mostly is what kind of carryover we would have from practices, and I was pleased with that. A lot of guys tried to do what we talked about, so that was good. Their effort, their aggressiveness lasted for the whole 48. That was impressive also. When we finally started making some more shots, that was even more impressive. Overall, I think it was a good outing. Obviously, they didn’t have all their guys, so don’t get too excited, but it was a very good effort by a lot of guys.”
(On the offense progressing throughout the game)
“Yeah, you’re right. They hit the open man, pace was real good, the ball moved, people moved just the way we need to play. That was very fine.”
Spurs Guard Dejounte Murray:
(On early offensive struggles)
“Just going up and down and trying to get stops, trying to play together. That’s one thing we’ve been working on in open gym to training camp is sharing the ball and want the best for your teammate, because we all have the same goal, which is win. We’re just trying to share the ball. Shots are going to fall.”
(On the Spurs’ potential defensively)
“Just going up and down and trying to get stops, trying to play together. That’s one thing we’ve been working on in open gym to training camp is sharing the ball and want the best for your teammate, because we all have the same goal, which is win. We’re just trying to share the ball. Shots are going to fall.”
Jazz Head Coach Quin Snyder:
(On the issues seen tonight being quickly fixable or needing more work…)
“I think a little bit of everything. Give the Spurs credit, I thought their movement off the ball had an impact. We needed to communicate better to guard some of that, some of the cutting, some of the late switching situations, particularly in pick-and-roll. I thought offensively we didn’t convert when we did defensive rebound. We weren’t able to get down the court and get some easy looks and I think that showed. I think we shot twenty-something three’s at halftime, but we didn’t have a lot of assists where the ball was moving into the lane. I think some guys, this was their first time playing together, and those are things as we get a little more continuity with those groups, that should improve. But again, give San Antonio credit for the way that they played; they played hard. Not that we didn’t. I thought we gave effort, but there’s things that we can do better and that’s why you have preseason games.”
Jazz Guard Donovan Mitchell:
(On what he saw was the biggest issue of the night…)
“We tweaked a bunch of things in our offense. I started offense, but I’ll go defense. Offensively we tweaked a bunch of things. I wouldn’t say a bunch of things, but we tweaked a few things. I think just being able to think instinctively. Guys learning stuff, but then also spacing. That’s really it. There are times when we are not spaced; we aren’t really sure; we are kind of figuring stuff out. I think once we get more comfortable with each other and more comfortable in the system, I think we’ll be fine as a group. Especially with Eli starting his first game, Hassan is out there not necessarily sure. It’s not a bad thing. It comes with it. And that’s the part of the system that is going to grow. I think that’s the biggest thing offensively, is just understanding where to be. We’re a read-based offense and if you don’t necessarily know all the reads at one spot it takes a while to get used to it. We’ll be good as far as that goes. We shot, shoot, like 30%. I went 5 and 19. We didn’t make shots. That happens. It’s the first preseason game and we’ll get better and we’ll evolve. Defensively, I think the biggest thing is – I think they had 20 rebounds in the first quarter, seven of them offensive – and I think for us is being able to get them off the glass. We didn’t run and that limits our transition, where we get a lot of our three’s, a lot of our shots. That changed the game. And then just contain the ball. Little things that we can adjust and tweak and fix.”