Author: katadmin

Mike Monroe: Sometimes less is more in terms of star power

When they arrived in Denver late Tuesday afternoon, the Spurs brought with them fans’ fears that a magical season is about to go poof.

The Spurs know they won’t disappear from their spot atop the Western Conference standings if they remember they got there as a committed and cohesive unit and not because Tim Duncan dragged them to the pinnacle.

If they need a reminder that having a healthy superstar is no guarantee of victory, they can check the Nuggets’ starting lineup tonight.

Denver traded its All-Star starter, Carmelo Anthony, to the Knicks and has made a run up the West standings without the player who had been its leading scorer.

Wilson Chandler, one of four Knicks surrendered in the trade war for Anthony, now occupies ’Melo’s starting spot at small forward. No threat to score 40 or 50 points — his career high is 31 — Chandler has averaged 14.3 points in 13 games as a Nugget, a little more than half what Anthony scored for Denver this season.

It is the Nuggets, not the Knicks, who have found redemption in the biggest trade of the season. Playing fine team basketball, they are 10-4 since the deal was made and playing the sort of unselfish ball that reduces the stress on their cancer survivor coach.

“I don’t think there’s any question there was a lifting of the stress when the trade went down,” George Karl said after putting his new lineup through a Tuesday morning practice. “There was a lot of excitement that came with that deal. Arron (Afflalo) and Ty (Lawson) were starting to play their best basketball then, and Kenyon (Martin) was getting stronger and more confident at that time.

“Then we got the new guys, and it only took us one practice to know they were pretty good.”

Denver’s first game after that first practice was an 89-75 victory over the East-leading Celtics that served as instant rebuttal of the notion the Nuggets had ceded a spot among the Western Conference elite by trading an elite-level player.

General manager Masai Ujiri didn’t help perception when he said the Nuggets had been “killed” in the trade, but such candid humility now seems more smoke screen than admission of failure.

“People need to understand that (Nuggets president) Josh (Kroenke) and Masai squeezed everything they could out of that deal,” Karl said. “We got some good pieces.”

What Karl understood after just one practice was that he had the sort of roster that breeds overachievement.

“There is competition going on for minutes in every game,” he said. “Some of us were debating yesterday about J.R. (Smith), Wilson Chandler, Arron and Danilo Gallinari. Which one will be the best player three years from now? Then you’ve got Ty and Raymond Felton. Who will be the best point guard three years from now?”

“It’s exciting, and you’ve got competition every night motivating everyone to play, and play well.”

Coaching is fun again for Karl, who now spends quality time scribbling Xs and Os, rather than managing rumors and personalities.

“Yes, it is (fun), and I think a lot of it was just a release of the six months of stress and the excitement that we’re still capable of reaching the goals of this season,” he said. “No one knows how good we’re going to be. It’s going to be determined in the playoffs.

“Everyone has said we won’t be any good, but that’s fine. They’ve been saying it’s Doomsdsay around here for a long time.”

Now Doomsday is part of the calendar in New York City. Anthony’s new team is 7-9 since his arrival, and he has discovered that you can’t be the toast of Broadway unless you give New Yorkers reason to pop their corks.

’Melo wanted the bright lights of the big city but hid in the dark of the team bus after a loss last week so that the media couldn’t shine a light on his failures.

mikemonroe@express-news.net

Notes on a scorecard: Whatever happened to San Antonio’s vaunted defense?

Remember back in the glory days of the San Antonio Spurs?

You recall that era don’t you? Back when “The Twin Towers” of David Robinson and Tim Duncan made shooting a nightmare for Spurs opponents.

Even after Robinson retired, the Spurs found serviceable replacements like Rasho Nesterovic, Nazr Mohammed, Francisco Elson  and Fabricio Oberto to make it tough inside.

And Bruce Bowen, of course, flashed the kind of legendary skills that enabled him to harrass the leading scorers of his era as one of the best on-ball defenders in NBA history.

Those days have never appeared farther away than over the last 20 games or so as the Spurs have evolved into their new order.

They are winning as much as any team in the NBA this season. But the defense had taken a big step back along the way.

In Monday’s 100-92 loss to Portland, Portland shot 52.3 percent from the field. It marked the third time in the Spurs’ four-game losing streak that opponents have topped 50 percent. Opponents have topped 50 percent in four of  six games and six of eight contests.

The strong recent shooting has been bad enough. But a more telling statistic can be found in the minimums that opponents have shot during the recent games. Since limiting Cleveland to 39.6 percent on March 2, the Spurs have allowed every opponent to shot at least 45.2 percent from the field — a span of 13 games.  

For the month of March, Spurs opponents are hitting 48.3 percent from the field. It’s a trend that a distinct retreat from most Gregg Popovich teams that traditionally improve defensively after the All-Star break.

It’s a vexing problem as the playoffs near, particularly as no jump-shooting team has been able to win an NBA title in recent history.

The Spurs will have to pick up their defense if they want to make a long playoff run this season. 

Here are a few other notes and tidbits from the first game where either Duncan, Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili wasn’t in the starting lineup since the final regular season game last season.

  • George Hill led the team in scoring for the second straight game, scoring 27 points. His two-game, 57-point scoring binge over the last two games is the largest two-game production in his career. He’s hitting 62.5 percent from the field and 76.2 percent from the line during that span.
  • Tiago Splitter had a strong game again, notching 14 points and nine rebounds in 28:21 — his longest playing stint of his career. It was his third-highest scoring game and tied for his second-highest rebounding game. During his last six games, he’s averaging 9.0 points and 8.0 rebounds while shooting 60 percent from the field.
  • Some nights shooters have the kind of game that Gary Neal struggled through Monday night. His 3-for-14 shooting effort — including 2-for-10 in the fourth quarter — represented one of his 10 worst shooting nights of the season.
  • The team could have used more of Neal after  he hit two of his first three shots to start the fourth quarter. From there, he missed his final seven shots. Neal matched his career high with two steals. And his shooting effort ended a recent spree where he’s hit 58.6 percent from the field, shot 62.5 percent from beyond the 3-point line and averaged 15 points in his last three games.
  • Danny Green showed some of the talent that made him one of the top players on North Carolina’s 2009 national championship team as he produced two dunks and a 3-pointer in his 3-for-3 shooting effort. His seven points and 20:15 in playing time both were career highs.
  • DeJuan Blair was limited to three points and five rebounds. His three points were his smallest scoring effort since scoring two points on March 18.  Blair has failed to score in double figures for the last seven games. It’s his longest streak of non-double figure scoring games since starting the season with seven games without double figures. But most significantly, his minutes played are up over last season, but his scoring, rebounding and shooting all have dipped from his rookie season.
  • The Spurs did  show  some defensive improvement during stages of the Portland game. After allowing 58 points in the paint against Memphis Sunday night, they permitted only 34 against Portland. And they limited the Trail Blazers to nine points in the third quarter — lowest production in any quarter by an opponent this season. But they then allowed the Trail Blazers to score 33 points — tied for second-most by an opponent this season — in the pivotal fourth quarter.
  • San Antonio had only three players with positive plus-minus scores with James Anderson at plus-7, Chris Quinn at plus-3 and Steve Novak at plus-2. Neal had the worst score at minus-16, Matt Bonner was at minus-10, Splitter was at minus-8 and Richard Jefferson was at minus-8.

Hill helps Spurs get over the hump

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

As the losses piled up to unthinkable heights, and the Spurs’ once unapproachable lead in the Western Conference dwindled to next to nothing, Matt Bonner found himself looking back in time and across an ocean for perspective.

Playing for an Italian team, Sicilia Messina, as a professional rookie in 2003, Bonner not only endured a losing streak longer than the one the Spurs ended Sunday with a 114-97 demolition of Phoenix. His team finished dead last.

“It wasn’t my fault though,” Bonner said. “The team went bankrupt, and a couple guys stopped showing up.”

Say this much about the Spurs’ six-game losing streak, the club’s longest since 1996-97: At least the checks still cleared.

The frustration-venting that occurred Sunday at the ATT Center was more priceless than any paycheck for the Spurs, even if it came at the expense of a Suns team now eliminated from playoff contention.

George Hill scored 29 points, Bonner broke out of a personal slump of his own, and the Spurs’ bench sparked the team’s first victory since a March 21 win over Golden State that only feels like last season.

After the win, which came with Suns guard Steve Nash at home with the flu, the Spurs ? got bonus help from Denver, which ended the Lakers’ nine-game winning streak. That pushed the Spurs’ cushion in the West back to 2 1/2 games.

The Spurs (58-19) clinched the Southwest Division when Dallas went on to lose at Portland on Sunday night. It’s the club’s 17th division crown overall.

More than that, it gave the Spurs assurance that the team that won 57 of its first 70 games still lurked somewhere inside them.

“It’s all about confidence,” Bonner said. “We lost some during the losing streak. Hopefully, we got some of it back.”

The Spurs, who led by as many as 31, got 63 points off the bench, including Bonner’s first double-double of the season (16 points, 11 rebounds) and 15 points from Gary Neal.

The Spurs’ star, however, was a reserve who had combined for 11 points the previous two games.

Cajoling Hill to revert to his shoot-first roots, coach Gregg Popovich approached the third-year guard with a specific piece of instruction.

“He said, ‘You need to be the Indiana George,’” Hill said.

Hill had little trouble deciphering that code.

“Play like I did in high school and college,” said Hill, the Indianapolis native and IUPUI alum.

Instead, Hill went back to playing like he did last week, when he dumped 57 points on Memphis and Portland. Hill shot 10 of 16, including 4 of 7 from the 3-point line, and by halftime had more points (24) than he’d totaled in all but two other games this season.

“He gave us what Manu (Ginobili) used to give us coming off the bench,” Popovich said.

Hill’s early explosion, which included 11 points in the final 2:01 of the first quarter, boosted the Spurs to a 70-46 lead at intermission, the Suns’ largest halftime deficit of the season.

“We got knocked on our heels early,” said Phoenix coach Alvin Gentry, whose team is lottery-bound one year after sweeping the Spurs from the second round of the playoffs. “When you get that kind of separation, it’s hard to work your way back.”

A victory in their pocket, the weight of the longest losing streak of the Tim Duncan era off their shoulders and the West’s No. 1 seed still in their possession, the Spurs depart for Atlanta fully aware of more work to be done over the final five games.

Still, the Spurs took time to celebrate Sunday. For the first time in 13 days, winning beat losing.

“Losing six in a row, after winning so many games all year, wears on you mentally,” Bonner said. “First and foremost, (it was) get the win, end the losing streak, and try to build off that confidence.”

For Bonner, Sunday meant something else. For the first time in a while, being penniless in Italy did not feel like the good old days.