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Joseph hits summer’s first rough patch

LAS VEGAS — His summer school teacher was absent Friday, but for Spurs point guard Cory Joseph, the education continued.

With Summer League coach Jacque Vaughn indisposed by a second interview with the Orlando Magic, Joseph was left to handle the first pressure situation of the week without his mentor’s guidance.

The results were what might be expected from a 20-year-old with all of 266 minutes of NBA experience.

Joseph committed three of his 10 turnovers in the final 1:24, and also missed two long 3-point tries, as Miami rallied for an 83-78 win at Cox Pavilion.

“I felt like I did a bad job down the stretch, keeping the guys calm and controlling the basketball,” Joseph said. “It’s part of the growing process.”

Joseph finished with nine points and six assists and missed 7 of 11 shots, turning in by far his worst outing in a Summer League that had otherwise been going well for him.

This is considered an important time for Joseph, the 29th pick in the 2011 draft after one season at Texas. The Spurs have until Oct. 31 to decide whether to pick up his contract option for the 2013-14 season.

Entering the game, Joseph was averaging 19.3 points and five assists while shooting 48.8 percent. Two nights earlier, he had opened eyes with a steady game against the L.A. Clippers’ Eric Bledsoe, an established NBA rotation player.

Spurs coaches have been impressed with Joseph’s poise and command of the team throughout the week, which had been solid until late in Friday’s game.

“It’s all about learning experience, game situations, clock management,” Vaughn, himself a former NBA point guard, said earlier in the week.

Friday’s lesson: How to bounce back from late-game missteps.

With the game in the balance, Joseph for the first time all week looked overwhelmed.

He admitted he lost command of the floor during the frantic final 2:37 that saw the Spurs go from four points ahead to five behind.

“They were double-teaming, and it forced me to give up the ball,” Joseph said. “They had us out of control, and we weren’t really running sets.”

It is an experience Joseph vows to learn from. After all, that is the point of Summer League.

Vaughn interviews again: With Vaughn meeting with Orlando’s ownership group elsewhere in Las Vegas, the reins to the Spurs’ Summer League team were handed to Taylor Jenkins, assistant coach of the Austin Toros.

It was a second interview for Vaughn, considered in some corners to be the front-runner to replace Stan Van Gundy with the Magic, and the first to include Magic CEO Alex Martins.

Vaughn’s availability for today’s finale against Dallas will largely be determined by the direction of Orlando’s coaching search.

Ajinca aims to be seen: When Slovenian prospect Erazem Lorbek chose to re-sign with his Spanish League club, it opened a window of opportunity — albeit ever so slight — for another big man to make the Spurs’ roster.

At 7-foot-2, and with 77 games of NBA work on his résumé, Alexis Ajinca is both the biggest and most experienced candidate to fill that void.

But his chance to make an impression might be running out. The 24-year-old Frenchman, a former first-round pick for Charlotte, had six points and six rebounds in 16 minutes Friday. It was by far his most active game of the week.

“So far, it’s been hard,” said Ajinca, who hasn’t played in the NBA since 2010-11 with Toronto. “I didn’t have any chance to prove what I’ve been working on. Tonight I had a lot of minutes to show what I’ve been working on overseas.”

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Don’t tell rookie Denmon the odds

LAS VEGAS — Even before he arrived at Summer League, Spurs guard Marcus Denmon knew what he was up against.

The team already has 14 players under contract for the 2012-13 season. The league maximum is 15.

A general studies major at Missouri, Denmon is a good enough mathematician to realize the odds of making the Spurs’ final roster are not in his favor.

“Every time you go out and compete, you’re playing for a job,” said Denmon, the lone member of the Spurs’ 2012 draft class, selected 59th overall.

A scoring star at Missouri, where his 17.7 points per game as a senior ranked second in the Big 12, Denmon hasn’t had much of a chance to make an impression so far in Las Vegas.

In three games, he has averaged 5.7 points and 2.3 assists while shooting 37.5 percent, including 1 of 6 from 3-point range.

Seeing time at his college position (shooting guard) and the position most 6-foot-3 players occupy in the NBA (point guard), Denmon’s focus has been on absorbing the reams of new information coming at him in waves.

It’s a learning process he hopes to continue when the Spurs resume Summer League play tonight against Miami.

“I’m a pretty quick learner,” Denmon said. “I think as you continue to play and learn under a system, your play will continue to elevate.”

Backing up Cory Joseph and James Anderson, two players the Spurs want to force-feed minutes while in Vegas, has limited both Denmon’s time and touches.

Spurs assistant Jacque Vaughn, coach of the summer league squad, has been impressed by Denmon’s willingness to fit into a smaller role than he had in college.

“He hasn’t tried to do too much, but has done enough,” Vaughn said. “Which is a lot harder for guys to understand, especially when you’re fighting for a job.

“The best part is he competes,” Vaughn added. “That’s what I want to see in an individual.”

Based on sheer numbers, the most likely destination for Denmon is overseas, or the Development League.

Holding fast to his NBA dream, however, Denmon refuses to be deterred by math.

“The Spurs drafted me because of the talent they feel I have,” Denmon said. “My job is to hold up my end and just come out and play hard.”

Switch for Green: For the first time in his career, Danny Green came to Summer League as a spectator, and not a player.

Still, even after signing a three-year, $12 million contract to return to the Spurs last week, Green could recall his days as a fledgling Cleveland Cavaliers summer-leaguer hoping to play well enough to impress the right people.

“I know what it’s like to be in these guys’ positions, trying to get a job and make a team,” Green said while watching the Spurs’ loss to the Los Angeles Clippers late Wednesday night. “It’s a lot more comfortable, a lot less stressful, being a spectator.”

Green called his contract, the first guaranteed deal of his NBA career, “a stress-reliever.”

Green is one of three starters the Spurs re-signed in hopes of keeping together a roster that advanced to the Western Conference finals before losing to Oklahoma City.

Power forward Tim Duncan and center Boris Diaw are the others. The Spurs also re-upped with backup point guard Patrick Mills.

“It shows the organization had a great deal of confidence in us,” Green said. “We had a really good team.”

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Spurs’ summer schedule

The Spurs’ summer league team has two games remaining in Las Vegas:

Today: vs. Heat, Cox Pavilion, 7 p.m.

Saturday: vs. Mavericks, Cox Pavilion, 5 p.m.

Standing pat is just fine with Popovich

LAS VEGAS — To hear Spurs coach Gregg Popovich tell it, negotiating a new contract with franchise big man Tim Duncan this summer was a lot like negotiating with the mob.

“He was just as big a pain in the neck as he was when he almost went to Orlando,” Popovich joked, referring to Duncan’s free-agent flirtation with the Magic in 2000.

“He toyed with me. He lied to me. He intimidated me. He threatened me. In the end, it worked out. But I had to take much abuse to get it done.”

Having last week secured Duncan’s autograph on a three-year deal believed to be worth $39 million — one that could carry the 36-year-old future Hall of Famer to the conclusion of his career — the Spurs’ front office commenced on an offseason signing spree that went quickly, quietly and by design produced little in the way of roster turnover.

With guard Danny Green (three years, $12 million), center Boris Diaw (two years, $9.2 million) and backup point guard Patty Mills back in the fold, the team the Spurs trot out on opening day 2012 will look remarkably like the one last seen slumping off the court at Oklahoma City in the Western Conference finals.

“We had a very good year, went a pretty long ways,” Popovich said earlier this week from NBA Summer League in Las Vegas. “We would have liked to have gone further, but we want to keep that group together.”

Since the start of free agency July 1, the Los Angeles Lakers added a two-time MVP in Steve Nash, Dallas almost completely revamped around Dirk Nowitzki, Phoenix remade itself for the post-Nash era, and Houston cashed out Luis Scola for a dose of Jeremy Lin-sanity.

In the face of such a shifting landscape in the Western Conference, the Spurs opted to make like the Grand Canyon and hardly change at all.

The only new addition so far is Nando de Colo, a 25-year-old French guard drafted 53rd overall in 2009, who Popovich likens to “a poor-man’s Danny Ainge.”

“He’s a good basketball player, fits in well with the group, makes good decisions, finishes on the break,” Popovich said. “He’s going to be fun to watch.”

For the 16th consecutive season, the Spurs will build around Duncan, who enjoyed a resurgent campaign (15.4 points, nine rebounds in 28.2 minutes per game) in 2011-12.

Once Duncan’s new deal sapped any shot the Spurs had at salary cap room, doubling down on a roster that won 50 of 66 games last season and came within two wins of the NBA Finals became the only sensible play for Popovich and general manager R.C. Buford.

In a turn of events that should please team chairman Peter Holt, the Spurs were able to do it without crossing the luxury-tax line of $70.307 million.

“Lots of times you don’t have a choice (but to stand pat), because of contracts or numbers or whatever,” Popovich said. “This year, we were able to do everything and stay under the tax at the same time. That was a goal, to stay under the tax. We weren’t sure we were going to be able to do it.”

Between now and the start of training camp in October, Popovich and Buford will keep an eye on the waiver wire for opportunities to upgrade the roster.

The bulk of the front office’s summertime work, however, is already done.

The Spurs already have 14 players under contract for next season, one less than the league maximum, though they could create an extra space if needed by waiving DeJuan Blair’s non-guaranteed $1.504 million deal.

Popovich acknowledges the challenge of running down the young and hungry Oklahoma City Thunder — much less the NBA champion Miami Heat — with a roster nearly identical to the one that could not get it done last season.

He also sees room for internal improvement, particularly in Green, second-year small forward Kawhi Leonard and Diaw, who did not join the team until March.

“I think we can get better,” Popovich said. “We’re going to stick with the group and see how it goes.”

No Leonard, no win: Leonard’s summer league is over.

Having apparently seen enough in two dominant games from their second-year small forward, the Spurs allowed Leonard to leave Las Vegas for good Wednesday.

Leonard will not play in either of the Spurs’ remaining two games, ending his summer stint sporting a healthy 25-point per game scoring average.

Without their leading scorer, the Spurs lost 86-80 to the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night. Cory Joseph continued a strong summer league with 22 points and six assists.

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Spurs’ summer schedule

The Spurs’ Summer League team has two games remaining in Las Vegas:

• Friday: vs. Heat, Cox Pavilion, 7 p.m.

• Saturday: vs. Mavericks, Cox Pavilion, 5 p.m.