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Bruce Bowen’s jersey retirement luncheon

Former Spur Bruce Bowen speaks to the media before his jersey retirement luncheon at the ATT Center on Monday, March 19, 2012. Bowen’s jersey will be retired as part of Wednesday’s game at the arena against the Timberwolves. (Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News)

Bruce Bowen’s No. 12 jersey hangs at the ATT Center during his jersey retirement luncheon on Monday, March 19, 2012. Bowen’s jersey will be retired as part of Wednesday’s game at the arena against the Timberwolves. (Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News)

Former Spur Bruce Bowen (left) and current Spur Tim Duncan share a moment at Bowen’s jersey retirement luncheon at the ATT Center on Monday, March 19, 2012. Bowen’s jersey will be retired as part of Wednesday’s game at the arena against the Timberwolves. (Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News)

Spur Tony Parker (center) shares a laugh with teammates Tiago Splitter (left) and Tim Duncan (right) at Bruce Bowen’s jersey retirement luncheon at the ATT Center on Monday, March 19, 2012. Bowen’s jersey will be retired as part of Wednesday’s game at the arena against the Timberwolves. (Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News)

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich (from left) and players Tony Parker, Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili tell stories about former teammate Bruce Bowen at his jersey retirement luncheon at the ATT Center on Monday, March 19, 2012. Bowen’s jersey will be retired as part of Wednesday’s game at the arena against the Timberwolves. (Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News)

Retired Spurs forward Bruce Bowen is introduced by fellow Spurs great Sean Elliott at a luncheon honoring Bowen at the ATT Center on Monday, March 19, 2012. Bowen’s jersey will be retired as part of Wednesday’s game at the arena against the Timberwolves. (Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News)

Former Spurs players Danny Ferry (right) and Sean Marks chat during the jersey retirement luncheon for Bruce Bowen at the ATT Center on Monday, March 19, 2012. Bowen’s jersey will be retired as part of Wednesday’s game at the arena against the Timberwolves. (Bob Owen / San Antonio Express-News)

As deftly as Gregg Popovich has managed the minutes of his players in the compressed, 66-game post-lockout schedule — only Tony Parker and Tim Duncan average as many as 28 minutes per game — the Spurs coach is mindful of the grind that awaits his team in the final six weeks.

Wednesday’s game against the Timberwolves at the ATT Center will begin a stretch of six games in eight nights, including the final three on the road.

Awaiting in mid-April: Eight games in 11 days.

Thus, the three-day break in the schedule that arrived after Saturday’s loss in Dallas was welcomed by everyone, especially Parker, the only Spurs player averaging more than 30 minutes (34.5).

“Definitely, it’s going to help recharge the battery,” said Parker, who admitted fatigue played a role Saturday when he was held to 13 points, his lowest output in March. “I think it was catching up with me because it was a hard game against Oklahoma City (on Friday).

“These three days are definitely going to help me be ready for the big stretch coming up for us.

“Back-to-back-to-back, six games in eight days. That’s a lot of games coming up, so these three days are perfect.”

Aware that Parker didn’t seem as sharp Saturday as he has been most of the season, Popovich promised to guard against overworking him.

“We’ll watch that,” he said. “He’s strong, he’s in great shape, he’s more focused than ever. It’s his best year, and he’s had some good ones.

“We want him to keep that level of energy and focus, and we certainly don’t want to start overplaying him to win a game here and there, that’s for sure.”

Retirement lunch: After an early practice Monday morning, the entire Spurs roster bussed to the ATT Center for a luncheon honoring Bruce Bowen, whose No. 12 will be retired in conjunction with Wednesday’s game.

Bowen, who won three championships with the Spurs before retiring in the summer of 2009, called the impending honor the most special one ever bestowed on him.

“Someone asked me, ‘What if you’re inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame?’” Bowen, 40, said before the luncheon. “It wouldn’t surpass this. This is something that comes from the organization and people you were around for quite some time.”

Considered the premier wing defender of his time, Bowen was named to eight consecutive All-Defensive teams, including five straight first-team mentions between 2002-03 and 2007-08.

Those who played with Bowen consider his inclusion in the ATT Center rafters to be a no-brainer. He will join George Gervin, David Robinson, James Silas, Johnny Moore, Avery Johnson and Sean Elliott as players similarly honored.

“He’s not the type of player who normally gets his jersey retired,” said Manu Ginobili, who played alongside Bowen for seven seasons. “But what he’s done in this franchise was big. It’s very well-deserved.”

mikemonroe@express-news.net

Leonard conjures echoes of Bowen

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

On the bench at the ATT Center for the first time in his young life, Malcolm Thomas watched intently as fellow rookie Kawhi Leonard rendered helpless a serial Spurs tormenter during the critical minutes of an overtime victory against the Rockets.

Rockets guard Kevin Martin has tortured the Spurs a few times in the past, whether in Sacramento or Houston. Most recently, he made 10 of 17 shots and scored 25 points in Houston’s 105-85 win over the Spurs on Dec. 29.

But when Martin re-entered Wednesday’s airtight game with 7:29 left in the fourth quarter, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich countered immediately by getting Leonard back in the game with instructions to prevent Martin from another opportunity to dominate.

More than anyone in the arena, Thomas knew what to expect — a rough time for Martin.

Sure enough, barely able to get open long enough to get the ball, Martin didn’t score in either the fourth period or OT, going 0 for 3.

“I’d seen it all before, in college, too,” said Thomas, Leonard’s teammate for two seasons at San Diego State. “I was sitting there thinking, ‘It’s crunch time, and he’s going to get down and play defense really hard.’ He does it all game long, but when it matters most, he’s really going to make it count. In my opinion, he’s a monster.”

A monster?

It’s what a lot of Spurs foes called Bruce Bowen when the perennial all-defensive team forward was irritating the league’s most gifted scorers so often that some called him the NBA’s dirtiest player during his eight seasons in silver and black.

Now Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has referenced Bowen while discussing Leonard’s defensive versatility on the occasion of his performance in the first starting assignment of his career. Leonard’s second start is expected tonight against the Portland Trail Blazers at the ATT Center.

“It’s huge for us to have a guy on this team that can do similar things to what Bruce did in the past,” Popovich said after the forward’s defensive opus in crunch time Wednesday.

Popovich isn’t ready to declare Leonard his new Bowen, but it is clear he believes he has the potential to make a similar defensive impact.

“This young man’s got a lot to learn,” Popovich said. “But as I’ve said a lot of times, he’s very willing, he’s very versatile and I think he’s got the ability to be one heck of a player, and he wants to be. We’re very excited about him.”

Popovich didn’t give Leonard a chance to get overly excited about his first starting assignment. Not until he heard his named called out by PA announcer Kevin Brock did Leonard know he would be on the court for the opening tip.

Leonard doesn’t seem to get excited about much, and it’s not clear he understands the significance of Popovich’s implication he can be the defensive stopper Bowen once was.

“It just gives me a little more confidence to just go out there and do my job even better,” Leonard said.

Ask him what he knows about Bowen, and Leonard recalls 3-pointers from the corners, mentioning his defensive play as an afterthought.

When training camp opened, Leonard fell into the trap most often tripped by rookies — belief they must impress the coaching staff by scoring.

“He was trying to justify himself by shooting shots, taking threes, making an impact that way,” said Richard Jefferson, who knows how hard it is to adapt to Popovich’s approach to the game. “He didn’t understand exactly what Pop wanted from him. Now he knows that if he just goes and plays defense consistently, he’s going to get those minutes and those, in turn, are going to lead to some offense.”

Indeed, with his defensive work earning 34, 33 and 38 minutes in his past three games, Leonard has scored 13, 19 and 11 points.

Spurs’ Project Get Young continues

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

Kawhi Leonard can’t say for certain if he was watching the NBA draft that night in 1997, when the Spurs made Tim Duncan the No. 1 overall pick and set the stage for a four-championship dynasty.

Back then, Leonard wasn’t allowed to stay up that late.

“I was 6 years old,” Leonard said.

On another June night some 14 years later, the Spurs made Leonard their highest-drafted rookie since Duncan, sending popular guard George Hill to Indiana in a trade that brought, among other baubles, the player the Pacers had taken with the 15th pick.

Stakes are high for Leonard, a 20-year-old small forward fresh off two college seasons at San Diego State. They are equally as high for the Spurs, who would not have gambled a key rotation piece such as Hill to acquire a player they did not think could readily contribute.

“I’m just happy they wanted me on their team,” Leonard said.

Though still the team of Duncan (35), Manu Ginobili (34) and Tony Parker (29), if the Spurs are to beat the odds and get back to the NBA mountaintop this season, they will rely on younger legs to help carry them.

Fresh off a paradoxical campaign in which they finished with the best record in the Western Conference (61-21), then were promptly ushered from the playoffs in the first round by Memphis, the Spurs have dipped their roster in the Fountain of Youth, hoping for a reboot.

Leonard’s arrival marks another chapter in a silver-and-black sea change that has been ongoing since the Spurs’ most recent NBA championship in 2007.

The 2007-08 roster — which coach Gregg Popovich once laughingly derided as “older than dirt” — featured Robert Horry (37), Brent Barry (36), Bruce Bowen (36) and Michael Finley (34).

This season, in addition to Leonard, the Spurs expect significant contributions from each of their previous two top draft picks, 22-year-olds James Anderson and DeJuan Blair, as well as from 26-year-old center Tiago Splitter and 27-year-old reserve guard Gary Neal.

In a lockout-condensed, 66-game season, in which back-to-backs are plentiful and rest for old, tired bodies is not, young depth will be crucial now more than ever.

“It’s probably mandatory,” Popovich said. “Those games — five in six nights and three in a row, that sort of thing — is not going to be conducive to playing older players too many minutes.”

In short order, the Spurs’ roster has gone from too old to go out to the club to young enough to be carded when they get there. Their recipe for success this season is simple, yet difficult.

They need Leonard, a 6-foot-7 defensive menace and rebounding machine, to defy the normal rookie learning curve in a short training camp. They need Anderson, the 2010 Big 12 Player of the Year at Oklahoma State, to stay on the floor after injuries short-circuited his rookie year.

They need Splitter to rise to a bigger role and play more like the Spanish League MVP he once was. They need the 6-7 Blair to sprout a couple inches, or at least not grow a couple pant sizes.

They need Neal to pick up where he left off after an All-Rookie campaign.

If all that happens, the no-longer-older-than-dirt Spurs can expect to once again be a force in the Western Conference.

“This was always a veteran team,” Blair said. “Now we’ve gone young, and everybody is running around like a chicken with their head cut off.”

Parker, the only member of the Spurs’ so-called Big Three still shy of the big 3-0, compares the team’s situation now to the early 2000s, when he and Ginobili arrived to inject life into an aging roster.

In 2002-03, Ginobili’s rookie season, the Spurs won their second championship.

“It’s a little bit like when I came or Manu came, we had to contribute right away,” Parker said. “All of our young guys this season have to do the same thing.”

With the influx of youth is sure to come growing pains.

Ginobili recalls his inaugural NBA season, when it seemed as if more of his fancy passes wound up in the seats than his teammates’ hands.

“I’ve always said making mistakes is huge,” Ginobili said. “In my first two seasons, Pop wanted to kill me. But it helped me to understand the game.”

How long will Popovich be able to tolerate the mistakes of youth? The answer may be irrelevant.

The Spurs’ young bucks will play this season, and play a lot, because there is no other alternative.

TURNING BACK TIME

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich referred to the team that followed his last NBA championship in 2007 as “older than dirt.” It brought about the desired laughter, and that 2007-08 team made the Western Conference finals.

But since then, Popovich and the Spurs’ front office have been busy securing fresh legs in hopes of getting younger. Here’s a look at the 13 guys who played and lost to the Lakers in five games in 2008 and the ones who step up Monday to face the Grizzlies in the 2011-12 season opener.

Source: Douglas Pils, Express-News research