Spurs want Game 3 out of sight, mind

It may have been a thing of beauty for the Utah Jazz and their fans, but Saturday's 109-83 loss at EnergySolutions Arena in Game 3 of the Western Conference finals was ugly to the San Antonio Spurs.

Actually, it was beyond ugly — so much so that the Spurs coaching staff didn't even show tape of the game to their players.

"It's tough to watch a massacre," explained Spurs swingman Michael Finley, "especially when you are the ones being decapitated."

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich and his staff broke down game film and talked to the team about what went wrong during meetings on Sunday. But the coaches didn't feel they needed to subject the players to the actual torture of reliving the carnage.

"It would have been way too painful and cruel and unusual punishment to have them watch the tape," said Popovich. "So just the coaches did that to themselves."

The veteran-laden Spurs didn't need to watch game film to know what went wrong in Game 3 — foul trouble, too many turnovers, not going strong enough to the boards and too little defense on Utah's stars Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer.

Of course, the Spurs pride themselves on not getting rattled by a loss — just as they don't get too giddy after a win.

"It's important that you never get too high or too low," said Spurs guard Bruce Bowen. "We understand there are a lot of areas that we didn't do well (in Game 3), so it's important that we do a better job come next game."

While they didn't practice on the court on Sunday, the Spurs worked on met to talk about ways to be better in tonight's Game 4 in hopes of taking a 3-1 series lead in the best-of-7 series back to Texas. Otherwise, the Jazz will knot the series at 2-2 with another home win tonight.

"Usually we are pretty good at bouncing back after a bad loss," said veteran Spurs guard Manu Ginobili. "But, as I always say, we can't rely on that ... We just have to be very humble, work really hard and try to outwork them this time. That's the only way we are going to have a chance to win it."

Foul trouble to Spurs star power forward Tim Duncan caused him to miss chunks of Saturday's game in each half. During the first half the Spurs actually went on a little run with Duncan out and held on to their lead. In the second half, however, Utah took better advantage of the situation — which is one reason the Jazz outscored the Spurs 66-36 after halftime.

"Timmy's not just huge on offense. On defense he's the key for us, too," said point guard Tony Parker. "When he is not in there it really hurt us in the paint. They scored like 50 points in the paint and that is way too much."

When Duncan was in the game, the Jazz were able to force him into an uncharacteristic eight turnovers. As a team the Spurs turned the ball over 20 times to just 12 for the Jazz.

"I'll shoulder a lot of the responsibility (for the loss)," said Duncan. "We have a lot of things that we can clean up very easily. If we can do those things then we can be in the right position."

Finley went so far as to suggest that Saturday's 26-point loss may work to the Spurs' advantage.

"It was good for us to see that we're maybe not as good as we think we are," said Finley. "We still have to go out and play every game. (It showed) that we are beatable."

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