GAME 1: San Antonio Spurs (0-1) vs. Dallas Mavericks (1-0)| 119-126 WIN!

[StrandedOnBeauboisHill]

Last night, THJ scored in a variety of ways (he's not being giving credit for that, but there were multi-dribble pull-ups from mid-range, back door cuts, fast break catch and shoots, etc)

I thought that Hardaway scoring at all three levels was incredibly encouraging.  One thing that frustrated me last year was knowing that the year prior to that, before he broke his foot, we would low key see Hardaway get to the rim a lot (he probably had the best dunk highlights of anyone on the team) and that just kind of disappeared.  Any way he can score outside of spot up shooting just makes his shooting that much more dangerous because defenses have to respect a counter.  

While the shots didn't fall in the second half, I thought he looked good in his bench role, giving us 15 quick points when he first came in when we really needed it.  If Green and Hardaway are both going to be playing around 30 minutes a night, until Green shows more offensive aggressiveness it makes way more sense to bring Hardaway and his scoring off the bench when one of Luka or Kyrie sit and let Green's defense and energy compliment the offense those two bring at the beginning and ending of games.  I still think the organization has set themselves to use Hardaway as a trade asset to get help in other areas given that a lot of offense you would lose could potentially be replaced by Curry and Hardy, but I expect him to play well in his bench role with this group as long as he's here.