Austin Spurs Win Their Home Opener 117-110 Over Laketown: Gillespie Scores 25
Austin's G League club is 2-0. The Spurs trailed after a quarter in their H-E-B Center home opener, led by four after three, pushed the margin to 19 in the fourth — and then held off a late Laketown run behind Ja'Kobi Gillespie's 25 points, seven rebounds and seven assists.
CEDAR PARK — The Austin Spurs opened their home schedule the way they opened the season: by winning. Austin beat the Laketown Squadron 117-110 on Sunday afternoon at H-E-B Center, improving to 2-0 in the G League Tip-Off Tournament in the Squadron's first game as a franchise, Crescent City Sports reported.
Laketown, the New Orleans Pelicans' new affiliate, started the faster of the two teams and led 22-21 after the first quarter behind its pair of two-way rookies. Malik Dia led all scorers with 31 points in his first professional game, and Dia and Jaron Pierre Jr. combined for 56 of Laketown's points — the kind of debut that kept the visitors in the game every time Austin threatened to separate.
The separation came in the second half. Austin carried an 87-83 lead into the fourth quarter and stretched it to as many as 19 points, before Laketown trimmed the deficit back to single digits late. The Spurs' closer was Ja'Kobi Gillespie, San Antonio's 2026 second-round pick, who found his game after halftime and finished with 25 points, seven rebounds and seven assists, Sports Illustrated reported.
Two games in, Austin is averaging 118.5 points and has won once on the road and once at home, with Gillespie at the center of both. The Tip-Off Tournament slate continues at H-E-B Center — and Sunday's lesson for the rest of the South pod is that this team can win a track meet and a late-possession game in the same weekend.
