Al Jefferson | SAN ANTONIO SPURS TICKETS

Banner this — Spurs earned the series

Column by Buck Harvey

Someone put in a work order, and someone pulled down the banner. Then, someone added this to the bottom of the list:

“2011-12.”

Someone pulled the banner back to where it had been, high on one end of the ATT Center. And, with that, the Spurs had announced they had won another division title.

Someone might have noticed.

But, this time, the Spurs need to do more to show what they accomplished in the regular season.

The playoffs suggest as much.

There was a time the Spurs hung individual banners every time they came in first in their division. There was also a time when the Spurs had never won an NBA title.

But as the years passed, and their standards changed, so did their sense of success. Now they stencil in the next divisional title with the casualness of a prisoner marking off another day on the calendar. This season they won their 18th.

It doesn’t mean much. Furthermore, winning the division had little to do with what they actually accomplished, which was securing the No. 1 seed.

But this is the only way the Spurs publicly note a successful regular season, and this one was that and more. The Spurs rose at the end, drawing Utah, and the contrast to that is clear.

Anyone else watching Oklahoma City play Dallas?

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Gary Neal said, nodding his head. “There’s a difference.”

Neal went out of his way not to disrespect the Jazz. He knows, as his teammates do, there will be challenges in Utah.

But isn’t it clear to everyone? The defending champs took the Thunder to the last shot in both games in Oklahoma City.

Gregg Popovich was asked the other day if there was a difference between being the No. 1 or No. 2 seed, and he said this: It depends.

A year ago, for example, it didn’t help. Memphis was a No. 8 seed in name only.

But Utah is the real thing. The Jazz have none of the swagger of the Grizzlies, and they also don’t have the same talent. Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson are solid big men, but neither is what Zach Randolph was a year ago.

The Jazz aren’t as awful as they were Wednesday. Neal had more points in 15 minutes (11) Wednesday than any Utah player had for the game.

They want to believe they are better than this, too. The Jazz said the right things afterward, that the Spurs merely did what the home team is supposed to do.

But there was nothing in their play that indicates they believe, and there are reasons. The Jazz, for example, were less concerned about the seeding. The franchise had been splintered a year ago, and they felt good getting into the playoffs. They were hoping for more, but now it’s reality for them.

“We got to learn our lessons from it and scrap it,” coach Tyrone Corbin said Wednesday, “and then start it over.”

Going by their body language: Starting over begins in training camp next fall.

The Spurs haven’t been in a series like this, curiously, since the 2007 Finals against Cleveland. They won the first two against Phoenix in the first round the next year, but that series started nothing like this one. Then, the Spurs needed double overtime and a Tim Duncan 3-pointer.

The Spurs might lose a game in Salt Lake City. And if they don’t, a sweep won’t guarantee a thing. The Spurs swept Memphis in 2004, after all, and didn’t make the conference finals.

Still, the postseason is a grind. Being able to lessen that means something.

Avoiding a dangerous opponent means more. So while the Thunder play the Mavericks tonight in Dallas, the Spurs are flying in the other direction.

Someone needs to edit the banner to say that.

bharvey@express-news.net
Twitter: @Buck_SA

SPURS LEAD BEST-OF-7 SERIES 2-0

Game 1:

Game 2:

Game 3 Saturday: Spurs @Jazz, 9 p.m.
TV: FSNSW, TNT Radio: WOAI-AM 1200; KCOR-AM 1350?

Game 4 Monday: Spurs @Jazz, TBD
TV: FSNSW, TBD Radio: WOAI-AM 1200; KCOR-AM 1350?

* Game 5 Wednesday: Jazz @Spurs, TBD
TV: FSNSW, TBD Radio: WOAI-AM 1200; KCOR-AM 1350?

* Game 6 May 11: Spurs @Jazz, TBD
TV: FSNSW, TBD Radio: WOAI-AM 1200; KCOR-AM 1350?

* Game 7 May 13: Jazz @Spurs, TBD
TV: TBD Radio: WOAI-AM 1200; KCOR-AM 1350?

* — As needed in best-of-7 series

Spurs notebook: Jazz’s Jefferson can’t see any team beating S.A.

SALT LAKE CITY — For three games in the Western Conference playoffs, Utah center Al Jefferson has seen his team beaten every which way, and by a combined 58 points.

Finally, he has seen enough.

Before Sunday’s practice, Jefferson essentially declared the Spurs to be NBA champions-in-waiting.

“I just think we’re playing against a team that is at its peak,” Jefferson said. “I don’t see nobody beating them.”

Jefferson’s comments were striking, considering Utah’s series with the Spurs is still in progress.

Game 4 is tonight in Utah.

Apprised of Jefferson’s prediction after their own practice session at EnergySolutions Arena, the Spurs seemed flattered, but deemed it premature.

“The best team out there won’t be decided for a while yet,” coach Gregg Popovich said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do if we want to be that team, and we’re trying.”

It is a one-game-at-a-time approach echoed by Popovich’s captain, Tim Duncan, even with the Spurs on the verge of sweeping a playoff series for the first time since the 2007 NBA Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Even with the Spurs going 41-7 since Jan. 30.

“We’re still growing a little bit,” Duncan said. “It’s early in the playoffs. We have some ways to go before we can define what kind of team we’re going to be.”

Jefferson thinks he knows the Spurs’ ceiling. Whether he’s correct will be determined over the next six weeks or so.

“Right now, they just playing well, man,” Jefferson said. “I ain’t never seen nothing like this.”

Checkmate for Parker: Jazz coach Tyrone Corbin made his first strategic move of the series in Game 3 when he assigned 6-foot-8 small forward Gordon Hayward to guard Tony Parker for long stretches.

The move might have backfired.

Not only did it fail to faze Parker — who finished with 27 points to raise his average in the series to 24.3 — it seemed to take Hayward out of his own game. Hayward ended with four points and made just 1 of 10 shots.

Parker, meanwhile, pumped in 16 points in the fourth quarter to put the game away.

“He’s kind of seen it all,” Duncan said. “I thought (Hayward) did a pretty good job early on, affecting him with his size a little bit, but Tony figured it out.”

Other ways to help: Manu Ginobili’s shooting struggles continued with a 2-for-6 night in Game 3. Yet he still found a way to contribute to the Spurs’ 102-90 victory with a season-high 10 assists.

“Whether it’s a rebound or scoring or assists, making a steal, he figures out what needs to be done in a game,” Popovich said. “Those 10 assists really helped us.”

Ginobili is still looking for his first made 3-pointer in eight tries in the series, and the 17 points he’s totaled have been surpassed by seven teammates.

As long as the Spurs’ offense is humming — and it’s averaging 107.3 points in the playoffs so far — Ginobili is content to be a setup man.

“The team is playing good offense,” he said. “Tony is taking us where we want to be. There’s no need to force the issue to try to make shots.”

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Spurs’ smooth progression to 2-0 lead

By Jeff McDonald

Danny Green snatched a rebound late in the first half Wednesday. Then he got excited, and went deep.

Looking to hit a streaking Tony Parker on a fly pattern, Green miscalculated and sailed the ball into the Utah bench. After the turnover, still early in the Spurs’ 114-83 Game 2 romp at the ATT Center, Green didn’t even bother to look at his coach.

Just his point guard.

“I was like, ‘Damn, Tony,’” Green recalled later, laughing. “You could have made me look a little better.”

This was the Spurs’ evening in a nutshell. Their biggest failing was that their All-Star point guard wasn’t 8 feet tall.

Everything else went their way, starting with a 20-0 run in the second quarter and ending with a 2-0 series lead that for the Jazz must only feel insurmountable.

Seven players scored in double figures for the Spurs, who led 53-28 at half en route to the third-largest playoff victory in franchise history. It was the Spurs’ most lopsided win in the postseason win since a 34-point trouncing of Sacramento in 2006.

“For whatever reason, we just let them do whatever they wanted to do,” Utah forward Gordon Hayward said.

As is becoming clearer with each passing moment in the series, the Jazz might not have much of a say in the matter. After closing the regular season by winning 10 in a row, the Spurs have extended it to a 12-game winning streak, technically their longest of the season.

Whatever adjustments the Jazz made on Parker — going under screens, switching on pick and rolls and hedging harder with their big men — it didn’t seem to work.

Parker finished with 18 points and nine assists in less than 28 minutes, and would have logged less playing time had Popovich had his way. Late in the third quarter, Popovich sent Patrick Mills to the scorer’s table to replace him.

After a brief on-court debate during a Utah free throw, Parker convinced Popovich to leave him a few more minutes, and waved Mills back to the bench.

“When you have a game like this, it’s always a struggle between keeping someone in shape and not letting them get hurt,” Popovich said.

These are the worries of a coach ahead by 38 points in the second half of a playoff game.

The Spurs got a 12-point, 13-rebound double-double from their oldest player — 36-year-old Tim Duncan — but it was largely the work of their two youngest starters that set the fuse on the rout.

After looking overwhelmed early in Game 1, 20-year-old rookie small forward Kawhi Leonard and Green, a 24-year-old guard, nearly outscored Utah in the first half by themselves in Game 2. Leonard had 12 of his 17 points before intermission, while Green scored all 13 of his.

In all, Leonard had made 6 of his 7 shots, including 3 of 4 3-pointers. It was an offensive bonus for a player drafted for his defense and rebounding.

“They need me to knock down shots if I’m wide open,” said Leonard, who had netted 17 points just three times before. “I’m not out there to miss shots.”

Ostensibly, neither is Al Jefferson, Utah’s center and leading scorer. Wednesday, he proved pretty adept at misfiring anyway.

Flummoxed by a steady diet of Spurs double teams, Jefferson went 5 of 15 for 10 points, part of a night in which the Jazz were shooting below 30 percent into the fourth quarter.

“We made shots and they couldn’t throw it in the ocean,” Popovich said. “It happens to all of us.”

Before he’d even vacated the postgame podium Wednesday, Popovich was already guarding against overconfidence heading into Game 3 on Saturday in Salt Lake City.

“This is nothing to be satisfied about,” he said. “When we get up to Utah, the balls will fall for them. So we have to play a lot better.”

Given the chance, Utah coach Tyrone Corbin would be willing to swap problems. As the series shifts to Salt Lake this weekend, the Jazz can look forward to at least one silver lining.

Unless Parker sprouts another 2 feet between now and then, the Spurs are unlikely to play much better than this.

jmcdonald@express-news.net
Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN