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Duncan looks up to speed in loss

By Jeff McDonald

Denver coach George Karl retreated to the visitor’s locker room at the ATT Center on Friday, not long after his Nuggets had finished off a 97-91 preseason victory over the Spurs.

After addressing his team, pow-wowing with his friend, former Nuggets and Spurs coach Doug Moe, and consulting a box score, Karl made a mental note to later double-check his team’s regular-season schedule.

He doesn’t want to face this Tim Duncan anytime soon.

“I don’t know when we play them in-season,” Karl said, after Duncan went for 21 points and eight rebounds in a little more than 25 minutes. “I’m hoping it’s the end of the season. Maybe the wear and tear will have caught up with him.”

Karl will be dismayed to learn he’ll be right back in the ATT Center in less than a month, facing a Duncan as fresh as can be in the regular season.

In handing the Spurs their first loss of the preseason, the Nuggets showed flashes of why many observers consider them a team to watch in the Western Conference.

Devoid of an alpha dog star but deploying one of the deepest rosters in the league, the Nuggets used 24 points from Corey Brewer — 18 in the first half — and 19 from Danilo Gallinari to outrun the Spurs to the finish line.

Denver turned 22 Spurs turnovers into 28 points, and scored 31 points in transition. During an 18-5 spurt to start the second half that pried the game open, the Nuggets notched eight points on dunks — three from JaVale McGee and one from Andre Iguodala.

“We wanted to work on getting back (on defense) because we knew this was a fast-paced team,” said Spurs forward Stephen Jackson, who added 13 points. “We didn’t do as well as we wanted to, but we got something out of the game as far as understanding how far we have to go.”

At the center of it all, new contract in hand, was Duncan.

A veteran of 15 NBA preseasons, Duncan remains in the early stages of gearing up for games that count. At 36 years old, he has learned how to pace himself through October and how to conserve energy for the regular season.

That all went out the window early Friday.

Duncan hit his first five shots, including a basket-and-a-foul against Denver’s Kenneth Faried. Six minutes in, Duncan had 11 points, and the Spurs had a 15-2 lead. He would finish 8 of 11 from the field before taking a seat for the fourth quarter.

“That’s what Timmy does,” Spurs guard Danny Green said. “We’re going to need that from him this year.”

At this stage of his career, Duncan isn’t a lock for these kind of games every night. If nothing else, coach Gregg Popovich’s meticulous handling of Duncan’s minutes often serves to depress his nightly box score.

What Karl noticed Friday was the way Duncan scored: His first three field goals were jump shots.

“It looks like his jumper’s got to the point where it’s a little scary right now,” Karl said. “You’re going to have to cover him out there. Making that jumper gives him that cleverness, that quickness that he now can get by you a little bit.”

This is why Karl would prefer to face Duncan in February, when the season has worn him down, and his legs are weary and his jump shot is flat.

Instead, the Nuggets return to the ATT Center on Nov. 17.

jmcdonald@express-news.net
Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Pop wants Spurs to remember ‘nasty’ feeling

By Jeff McDonald

Four months later, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich is still asking for some nasty.

His players say they are ready and willing to oblige.

“A lot of people still see us as the nice Spurs,” point guard Tony Parker said. “This year, I think we need to play like we’re hungry and we want it.”

It is a question of attitude and a question of identity, which Popovich believes the Spurs surrendered in the final four games of last year’s playoff ejection against Oklahoma City.

That “nasty” Popovich asked for and received during a memorable timeout in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals is what the Spurs aim to channel into a full 82-game slate this season.

“Everybody needs to eat some gunpowder before every game,” said forward Stephen Jackson, who often plays as if he’s ingested an entire arsenal. “We need to be more fired up, a tougher team.”

It would be overkill to suggest tonight’s preseason opener against Italian team Montepaschi Siena at the ATT Center represents the opening salvo of the Spurs’ own personal hunger games.

But it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Siena to practice a duck-and-cover drill beforehand, just to be safe.

Popovich’s intent from the start of training camp — which began with a film-session flashback of last summer’s collapse against the Thunder — has been to nurture a growing chip on the shoulder of his players.

“We have to stop saying, ‘Oh, we won a lot of championships and we’ll come back,’?” Parker said. “We have to play with more attitude — like Pop said, more nasty — all season long.”

Nasty lasted for about two games of last year’s series with OKC, as the Spurs watched their 2-0 lead dissolve into a six-game ouster that propelled the Thunder to the NBA Finals for the first time.

“There was an identity theft that took place in that playoff,” Popovich said. “We played like the Spurs the first couple of games. Oklahoma City, I believe, learned from that and they played like we did offensively, sharing the ball and trusting their teammates, and we lost our identity.

“I want to make sure we understand that and get that back.”

Popovich hopes that nasty attitude will manifest itself most often on the defensive end this season. For the 16th consecutive fall, he opened training camp vowing to improve the Spurs’ mercurial ability to guard people.

As the Spurs have transformed into a more offensive-oriented team in recent years, their defensive standing has declined.

In 2011-12, they ranked second in the NBA by scoring 103.7 points per game. Defensively, they were below the league average in both points allowed (96.5 per game) and field-goal percentage defense (44.8 percent).

“We’ve got to do our best to become a better defensive team,” Popovich said. “That’s easy to say, but it’s more about a consistency that we didn’t have.”

A fair question: How can a team that made limited personnel changes, bringing back 13 players from last year’s squad, expect to make those strides?

“It’s just an all-around team focus on being a defensive ballclub,” power forward Tim Duncan said. “I think the last couple years, our focus has kind of been on offense, trying to up our tempo and be more of a scoring team. We want to keep that, obviously. But defensively, we’re going to have to be better.”

As the Spurs proved for a brief shining moment last June, there’s no problem an attitude adjustment can’t fix.

Their season of nasty begins tonight.

jmcdonald@express-news.net
Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Pop scolds reporters, wife scolds Pop




































































































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Almost as much as his championship pedigree, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich is well known for his snarky sideline demeanor. Indeed, how many NBA coaches have their own highlight reels on Youtube? (See below. Personal favorite: Former Spurs assistant Don Newman cackling “Look at the shoes!” as Pop questions Craig Sager’s sartorial splendor.)

It turns out even Pop has someone to answer to: His wife, who apparently isn’t a fan of his sarcastic manner.  As he told Miami radio station :

“I know. I’m a jerk. I’m going to go ahead and admit it publically to the whole world. Tell me what to do. What should I do?… I don’t know how to answer so sue me for being stupid and not having the answers to the questions. (Host: Keep doing it, it’s entertaining.) It entertains everybody but my wife. When I get home and she says ‘geez why are you so mean? You’re a jerk, people hate you.’ I go I’m sorry honey, I have to do better next time.”

“And there’s no exaggeration. Did you see that guy honey? Did you see him? All you have to do is see him and you know why I answered the way I did. (She says) ‘That’s no excuse, you’re a grown man. Show some maturity.’ I said ‘I can’t, I can’t do it.”

Timely double-team from: .