Written by Michael C. Wright at ESPN.com
Tony Parker groaned in discomfort from the visitors locker room at FedExForum, having plunged both feet into an orange Gatorade cooler filled to the brim with ice water.
At least now something would finally cool off Parker after the point guard combined with Kawhi Leonard to burn the Memphis Grizzlies into elimination on Thursday, as the duo combined for 56 points in the San Antonio Spurs’ 103-96 victory in Game 6 of the first round of the Western Conference playoffs.
The victory pushes the Spurs into the Western Conference semifinals, where they will host the Houston Rockets on Monday in Game 1.
“Tony wasn’t just effective today,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “He’s done a masterful job of getting in shape down the stretch of the season and playing his best basketball during this playoff — finding people, scoring himself, working hard defensively. He had a magnificent playoff.”
Parker will need more of that throughout the Western Conference playoffs, as San Antonio’s side of the postseason bracket features plenty of formidable point guards, including James Harden, Chris Paul and Stephen Curry.
Throughout the first-round series, Parker, 34, matched up against 29-year-old Grizzlies guard Mike Conley, who appears to be coming into his own as one of the league’s premier players at the position.
From Games 1 through 5, Conley served as the primary defender on Parker for 44 percent of the plays, with the latter scoring 21 points on 9 of 27 shooting with five turnovers, according to research from ESPN Stats & Information research. In Game 6, Parker found Conley guarding him on 59 percent of his touches. Still, Parker bludgeoned Conley for 17 points on 7 of -8 shooting with only one turnover; four of those shots went uncontested.
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