Danny Green scored a season-high 23 points in San Antonio Spurs' comprehensive victory over Charlotte Bobcats 132-102 on Saturday night. The Spurs had 19 3-pointers in the game, which is a new franchise record.
''We made a lot of 3s,'' The Associated Press quoted Spurs coach Gregg Poppovich as saying. ''You know, we had a phenomenal night from the 3-point line. When an NBA team does that it makes it pretty tough on an opponent. It's abnormal but it happened tonight so it made it tough on Charlotte.''
Green hit seven 3-pointrs and eight of 10 attempts from the field. Tony Parker scored 22 points, nine assists and had 10 of 12 from the field.
''Tony was driving and the defense was collapsing on Timmy (Duncan), so there were a lot of open shots from the perimeter,'' Green said. ''We were driving and kicking and moving the ball. It makes the game a lot easier when you're making shots. We haven't been shooting the ball as well lately from the outside so I don't blame them for trying to do that.''
Manu Ginobili added 11 points and seven assists for the Spurs.
Bobcats coach Mike Dunlap instructed players to follow a new strategy to focus on the inside, but the outcome was not in Charlotte's favor.
''We've been really good about moving the ball and we're really getting on the same page with that,'' said Duncan. ''When our guys get open shots they knock them down. So if they don't want to concede them in the paint, we will hurt them on the outside.''
The Spurs led from the beginning and scored 32 points against the Bobcats' 23 in the first quarter and in the second, they again outscored their opponents 27-21.
Parker and Green dominated the third quarter by scoring 11 and eight points respectively and helped the Spurs outscore the Bobcats by 15 points during that period. After that, the Bobcats never looked in the position to come back in the game.
For the Bobcats, top scorer Kemba Walker contributed with 23 points, Gerald Henderson scored 13, Ramon Sessions added 12 points and Jeffery Taylor finished with 10 points.
Dunlap also made a few changes in the team by benching center Brendan Haywood and Byron Mullens and asking Gana Diop and Bismack Biyombo to start, but could not avoid another loss.
''It was to let everybody know that there is some live chairs,'' Dunlap said. ''When you're going through this process it's important to live to the standard of how you want guys to play, and for us that's (playing) extremely hard.''
Diop could not score any point, whereas he added four points after playing in 33.29 minues. Haywood and Mullens were average off the bench. So Dunlap's strategy and changes were useless on Saturday and Bobcats lost their seventh game in a row.
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