Tag: Chicago

Spurs preparing for Thunder storm

By Mike Monroe

Gregg Popovich fussed with a lock on the door that separates his postgame interview room from the Spurs locker room. The pregnant pause inspired a final shouted inquiry from the back of the media pack that had interrogated him after his team’s Thursday night victory over the Hornets at the ATT Center.

“What about the Thunder on Saturday night?”

As he pulled a curtain over the jamb so the door wouldn’t lock behind him, Popovich stuck his head back in the room. He summarized the challenge the Spurs face tonight against Oklahoma City, the team with the NBA’s best record, in what will be their last game at home for 25 days.

“I don’t think they’ve lost a game yet, have they?” he said.

The door closed on the curtain and Popovich headed to his office to begin plotting a way to compete against a team that has been only slightly less dominant than he had suggested.

Oklahoma City isn’t undefeated, but the 17-4 record the Thunder took into Friday’s home game against Memphis had them 2??1/2 games better than second-place Denver in the Western Conference and two games better than Chicago, which is tops in the East.“They’re the best team in the league right now, playing the best basketball in the league right now,” said Spurs captain Tim Duncan. “They’re very comfortable with each other and very talented. We’re going to have a lot on our hands.”

The Thunder has one of the league’s most potent one-two offensive punches.

Former Texas Longhorns star Kevin Durant, a legitimate Most Valuable Player candidate, is the league’s No. 3 scorer at 26.6 points per game. Point guard Russell Westbrook ranks eighth at 21.9 points per game.

Only Miami’s duo of LeBron James (29.7 points) and Chris Bosh (20.4) has been more productive.

? The Spurs have reached the brink of their annual rodeo road trip with a 15-9 record. They’re fourth in a tight Western race despite playing all but five games without two-time All-Star guard Manu Ginobili, sidelined since Jan. 2 by a fractured fifth metacarpal in his left hand.Their ability to stockpile home wins before the San Antonio Stock Show Rodeo, which will send them packing for more than three weeks, has been vital. Their 12-1 record at the ATT Center is the league’s best home mark.

Duncan understands the importance of dominating at home, even against a Thunder team that has the league’s best road record at 9-3.

“Absolutely, absolutely we have to, especially the way we’ve played on the road so far,” he said. “Home court is huge for us, and we have to continue to win here.”

There have been some close calls at home of late, including Wednesday’s victory over the Rockets that required a second-half comeback from a 58-40 deficit, but Duncan has found encouragement in the team’s recent defensive improvement.

“Yeah, the defense is getting up there,” he said. “We’re starting to understand and starting to get on the same page. There’s not a lot of practice, so there’s not a lot of situations where we can go in there and work on one thing and get it under out belts.

“We have to work on things during the game and get that experience there. Then watch film when we can and work on those situations. But we’re getting there.”

The Spurs haven’t spent one minute of practice time working on zone defense.

Nevertheless, they came out of a timeout in the fourth quarter Thursday and played one defensive possession in a zone, forcing a Hornets miss.

Forward Matt Bonner called it a Popovich exercise in negative reinforcement.

“That’s Coach Pop’s joke when you screw up,” he said.

mikemonroe@express-news.net

RJ remains, but for how long?

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

Richard Jefferson walked off the floor after the first practice of training camp Friday, took one look at the assembled media horde waiting for him and smiled.

“I feel like I just got traded here,” Jefferson joked.

Only 72 hours earlier, Jefferson’s Spurs career had been fitted for a toe tag. The Spurs had all but decided to exercise their one-time amnesty provision on him, prepared to offer him a handshake, a ticket out of town and several million dollars to chase other small forwards on the free-agent market.

The Spurs still could do all of the above.

But for now — and with that being the key phrase — Jefferson began his third Spurs training camp in the same manner he’d opened the previous two: as the team’s apparent starter at small forward.

“Things could happen, or things could stay the same,” said Jefferson, 31. “As far as I’m concerned, I’m a Spur right now.”

Jefferson, of course, has heard the rampant speculation that he was not long for the Spurs. Earlier this week, he was telling teammates that team officials had informed him he would be waived.

Then, the Spurs came up short in pursuit of their top free-agent target when Caron Butler agreed to a more lucrative offer from the Los Angeles Clippers. Grant Hill decided to return for one more go-round in Phoenix.

The Spurs appear to have little interest in pursuing 35-year-old Vince Carter, who was waived by the Suns on Friday in a cost-cutting manuever and is likely headed to Dallas.

The Spurs remain in the hunt for Washington’s Josh Howard, 31, who is still weighing interest from Chicago, New Jersey, Washington, Utah and Denver, according to a member of his camp, but hopes to decide early next week.

“San Antonio is still very much in the discussions with Josh and his agent (Derek Lafayette),” said Howard’s publicist, Crystal Howard (no relation). “A decision has not been made yet, but he’s certainly considering San Antonio as his new home.”

The Spurs would prefer a resolution sooner rather than later. They have until Dec. 16 to waive Jefferson if they plan to use amnesty on him this season, but are unlikely to do so unless a suitable replacement is found.

If the Spurs don’t use amnesty now, they could keep that card in their pocket until the summer, when the free agent crop should be substantially deeper.

For now, Jefferson remains in limbo, employed by a team that has been openly shopping for his substitute. He averaged 11.6 points in two seasons in San Antonio, and last season shot a career-best 44 percent from 3-point range, but seemed like a poor fit in the Spurs’ system.

Asked if he felt unwanted in San Antonio, Jefferson — who has three years and $30.5 million left on the deal he signed in July 2010 — said the answer was unimportant.

“We’re not little kids, where we want to feel wanted and hugged,” Jefferson said. “You want to work and enjoy your environment, not necessarily to feel wanted. You can feel wanted in a situation you don’t want to be in.”

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said he expects Jefferson will remain professional, whether he’s with the team for another week or another season.

“He’s got a job to do,” Popovich said. “He’s a Spur just like Timmy (Duncan) or Manu (Ginobili) or (new signee) T.J. Ford or anybody else.”

In his role as team captain, Duncan likewise saw no need to engage in damage control with Jefferson.

“He’s a professional, and I don’t think any one of us knows what is going to happen with that,” Duncan said. “It’s all rumors until something happens.”

And so Jefferson will continue to show up at the Spurs practice facility everyday, until somebody tells him not to.

“I’m a Spur right now,” Jefferson said, repeating himself. “That’s pretty much the best way to describe it.”

Phil Jackson still hammering Spurs about 1999 ‘asterisk’ season

Spurs Nation has held a special grudge against Phil Jackson for a long time.

It’s not just because he always seemed to end up playing the Spurs in a competitive playoff series with the Lakers.

Most Spurs fans have never forgiven Jackson for branding the Spurs first title team in 1999 as an “asterisk” team because they won the championship after playing in a truncated 50-game schedule after tghea lockout.

Now with the league in the midst of the same kind of work stoppage, Jackson is talking about the Spurs first championship again. He’s remembering that season in a way that he believes would be bad for the league after the lockout ends.

Jackson told the Chicago-based Waddle and Silvy Show about his and how different that 1999 season was from a normal one.

And yes, Spurs Nation, he has another not-so-subtle tweak about that championship season. (Hat tip: Sports Radio Interviews.com/Project Spurs.com)

“You want to have a season that is comparable to what it is like to play a season of basketball,” Jackson said. ” The year they patched together [1998-99 season] when they played 50 games they lost more than a third of the season and then they rushed to play those games into a magnified schedule and it questioned the teams that were really going to have a chance to win it like Indiana and Utah.

“New York finished 8th that year and obviously an up-and-coming San Antonio team, which turned out to be quite a great team, but those were the teams that ended up in the finals. When teams would play 18-19 games in the last month of the season it broke down some of the older steady teams because of that impact of a heavy schedule.

“I always kind of term that as an asterisk season out of this fun at poking fun at San Antonio. In reality it changes the complexity of how you play the game and what you make your team up with. You have to have young players and you have to have healthy players to win. So they want to have a representative season and we have some terrific teams in the NBA right now and there are some teams that are very, very good. It should be interesting to see how a lot of them come out and a lot of teams don’t want to lose that opportunity.”

A shortened season will pose some unique challenges for Gregg Popovich and the Spurs this season. They are much older than that 1999 team, so a shortened season would be favorable in that sense. But cramming multiple games into too short of a period with a lot of back-to-back games could be catastrophic for an older team.

It will be interesting to see. But whoever emerges as the champion will have to battle the same stigma the Spurs have faced since that first title because of playing a less-than-complete season.