Popovich keeps tried, true practice pattern

By Mike Monroe

After a day off that followed a game in which nobody played as many as 22 minutes, the Spurs knew what to expect from Monday’s practice session: One of the longest days of the preseason, a practice stretching well past three hours.

Veterans of past camps under coach Gregg Popovich weren’t surprised.

“Actually, the first three days was the same,” said All-NBA point guard Tony Parker, now in his 12th Spurs camp. “Especially coming off a day off, we knew Pop was going to be intense and it was going to be a long practice.

“I don’t mind. You can’t complain with Pop. He does a great job resting guys. All the stuff we do makes sense. He’s not that hard if you want to go far and get back to where we were last year. You can’t skip steps.”

Even after Monday’s three-hour practice, most of the team’s big men could be seen working with San Antonio boxing icon James Leija in the weight training room, firing punch combinations that Leija caught with padded gloves.

Tim Duncan, in particular, looked as if he had the makings of a potential pro fighter.

Conspicuously absent from the boxing workouts: Matt Bonner, who spent his post-practice time getting up dozens of 3-point shots.

“No boxing for me,” Bonner said. “I grew up on the streets of Concord, New Hampshire. I’m quick with the fists. Quick with the one-two.”

Second and third opinions: Though rookie Nando De Colo’s floor game and slick passing prompted veteran teammate Stephen Jackson to declare that he was “another Manu Ginobili,” Parker and fellow French Olympian Boris Diaw were slightly more realistic about the young guard from Arras, France.

“In a sense, he is,” Parker said, “because he’ll do some crazy pass or go for crazy steals. But he’s got a long way to be like Manu. So we can say he’s like a poor Manu right now. But he definitely has the skills and that kind of flashy (style). I remember in a timeout Pop was joking, ‘I have one Manu. I don’t need two.’

“You’ll give him a heart attack with two Manus on the team.”

Diaw hadn’t heard about Jackson’s comparison and couldn’t quite believe he had made it.

“Jack said that?” Diaw said. “In some ways, the way (Nando) plays in the passing game. But Manu’s unique.”

Back to work: Backup center Tiago Splitter, who sat out Saturday’s preseason game against Italian team Montepaschi Siena with back spasms, was a full participant in Monday’s workout.

mikemonroe@express-news.net
Twitter: @Monroe_SA

Mike Monroe: No summit in sight in NBA mess

On Tuesday morning, Matt Bonner rose early at his home in Concord, N.H., and drove an hour to the base of 4,000-foot Mount Tecumseh.

After parking, the Spurs forward ran 2½ miles to the mountain’s summit, an elevation gain of roughly 2,000 feet.

As he neared the top, his lungs burning from temperatures in the 20s, he found a dusting of snow on the ground.

“It was pretty cool,” he said a few hours later. “Getting up there was worth the pain.”

As he ran, Bonner tried to focus on the conditioning that will help him when the Spurs’ season begins, but the NBA’s lockout dominated his thoughts. As vice president of the National Basketball Players Association, Bonner has seen the futility of negotiations aimed at reaching a new collective bargaining agreement with the league’s owners.

It has been an uphill climb with no summit in sight.

The talks blew up on Thursday. Cancellation of another chunk of games is expected any day. Bonner doesn’t know when the two sides will meet again but hopes it will be sooner than later.

Rumors have surfaced that there have been informal conversations since the finger-pointing news conferences that followed Thursday’s sudden end to negotiations that had been led for three days by mediator George Cohen.

Team executives on Tuesday took part in a video conference call and kicked around revenue-sharing ideas, hardly the sort of development likely to jump-start the process.

You can’t get to a deal without talking, and Bonner wonders why the process continually stalls.

“I keep thinking we’re going to get a deal eventually, and now we’re into what should be the (pre)season,” he said. “If there is a deal to be made, let’s make it. What the hell is the problem?”

The problem seems to be that the owners want a lopsided win on the split of revenue before even discussing changes in the money distribution system, in part because they underestimate player resolve.

“If you’re expecting the players to collapse, I don’t see that as probable at all,” Bonner said. “Social media has helped us stick together and stay on the same page. There’s other leagues. A lot of guys will play elsewhere.

“They should not expect the guys to cave, and that’s what scares me the most. Plus, everyone got their escrow check back. That helps us, too.”

Indeed, the league recently had to refund to each player the 8 percent of salary it withheld from 2010-11 paychecks under the escrow system in the old deal when the players’ revenue share fell short of 57 percent.

Tim Duncan’s check: Roughly $1.6 million.

Bonner heard the unsubstantiated rumor, proffered on Twitter after Thursday’s blowup, that Spurs owner Peter Holt told the players they hadn’t yet endured enough pain. Re-tweeted so often that it took on a life of its own, the quote was attributed only to an unnamed source but gained traction for a few hours, a veritable lifetime in cyberspace.

“I never heard Peter say anything like that,” Bonner said. “Peter’s a really good guy, and he never loses his cool, and he’s always respectful.”

The Spurs are often cited as proof a small-market team can thrive if managed well, but it was no rumor that Holt refuted the contention last week. The Spurs managing general partner, who is chairman of the owners’ labor relations committee, used the post-blowup news conference to say his franchise lost money each of the last two seasons.

Then he asserted the Spurs would have joined the list of money losers earlier without some luck.

“We just got there a little later because, fortunately, a fellow named Tim Duncan showed up and David Robinson before that, and we won some championships,” Holt said. “So we were able to go deep into the playoffs.”

Holt has been lumped among hawkish owners intent on a lopsided win in the talks, but it is hard to imagine he favors canceling the season, given that his luck with Duncan is near its end.

The uphill climb needs to resume, and soon.

mikemonroe@express-news.net

Unfortunately for Canada, Bonner still not Canadian

Canadian national basketball coach Leo Rautins really, really wants Matt Bonner to play for his team. One problem: Bonner is still not Canadian.

The Spurs forward has been trying for years to gain dual citizenship, and he would seem to have a cut-and-dried case considering he’s married to a Canadian, has a Canadian daughter and grandfather and lives most of the offseason in Toronto.

His nickname — “The Red Rocket” — is decidedly Canadian,  homage to Toronto’s public transit system.

But Bonner is still not Canadian, and thus ineligible to play for Canada in various Olympic qualifying tournaments. The feet-dragging has left Rautins almost apoplectic, (h/t to for the find).

“I see a lot of Canadians who are less Canadian than Matt Bonner,” Rautins told the Canadian newspaper. “His daughter’s Canadian. His wife’s Canadian. His grandfather’s Canadian. He’s got a home here. When he’s not playing for the San Antonio Spurs, he’s here (in Toronto).”

Bonner’s bid to become officially Canadian has been His motives go beyond basketball.

A native of Concord, N.H., who was granted permanent residency status in 2009, Bonner has requested citizenship in order to simplify his frequent border crossings.

A chance to perhaps one day play in the Olympics would be a pleasant side effect.

The main obstacle to Bonner obtaining citizenship, according to the London Free Press piece, seems to be the unfortunate fact that he spends most of his year in the United States. Considering he plays for the Spurs, that seems to be an unavoidable fact of life.

The Canadian basketball federation has pressed this point to the federal government, but so far unsuccessfully.

“Trust me, we’ve tried everything,” Rautins told the London Free Press. “I feel bad for Matt. I don’t know if there’s anybody who wants to play more (for Canada) than he does.”

If this seems like more hand-wringing than necessary over Matt Bonner, consider that Joel Anthony is the only player on Canada’s 17-man training camp roster with any NBA experience. The infusion of any amount of NBA talent would certainly be welcome.

For now, Rautins will have to be content to coach Cory Joseph, the Spurs’ first-round draft pick in June and Bonner’s soon-to-be NBA teammate. Joseph was born in Toronto. Bonner got there as fast as he could, but perhaps a bit too late.