The Third Quarter Massacre

A familiar problem to anyone who watched the Spurs last year resurfaced in tonight's 99-90 loss to the New Orleans Hornets: the inability to play a complete 48 minutes. We played 2 sterling quarters (the first and the fourth), winning them by a combined score of 54-40. However, the middle two quarters were a completely different story, as the Hornets outscored us 59-36. Yikes. The real killer was the close to the third quarter, when the Spurs went almost 6 minutes without a field goal and the Hornets pulled away, ultimately putting the game out of reach, despite a noble effort by the squad of Ginobili, Hill, Jefferson, Neal, and Blair that played almost the entirety of the 4th quarter and got us to within 3 before running out of gas. People may question Pop's choice to play the same group for the entire quarter and not put Duncan or Parker back in once the game got close. I can see both sides of the dilemma, but I support continuing to play the players that got you back...