The Spurs don’t have an obvious #2 guy behind LaMarcus Aldridge. Maybe that’s cool for people who self-righteously support teams who “play the right way” with “teamwork” and “no egos” but my simple little brain prefers a clearly-defined team hierarchy where there is a first banana, a second banana, and preferably a bunch of sequentially-numbered bananas below them.
For reference, this would still be a problem even if Kawhi wasn’t being held captive by his entourage in an underground bunker where they perform unauthorized surgeries on his tendons, because then the hierarchy would be Kawhi – LaMarcus – ????? and there would be no clear-cut #3 guy.
I’m saying all this because, right at this moment (and ignoring his sad five-point performance in game one of this series), it seems like Patty Mills is the number two guy. It’s either him or Rudy Gay. For a team that has Patty Mills (or Rudy Gay [or maybe even Manu Ginobili]) in that position to make the playoffs is actually quite mind-blowing when you think about it. I don’t really see a way for them to make this series competitive other than all their role-players going off at once, but if they were to theoretically take a game off the Warriors, it would probably involve Mills scoring thirty, so that should be Mills’ plan going into game three. He’ll be at home, the fans will be behind him, all of Australia will also be behind him, I see no reason why this can’t happen.