Tag: Dallas

Green, Jefferson lead Spurs past Denver

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

Denver point guard Ty Lawson, 5-foot-11 with a head of steam, was loose in the open floor, the one place no opposing team wants to see him loose, and T.J. Ford knew what was coming.

“I thought it was going to be a dunk,” the Spurs’ backup point guard said Saturday.

Ford did not count on Richard Jefferson strapping on a Superman cape, likely lifted from Manu Ginobili’s locker, and stepping back in time. Nor did he count on the power of positive frustration.

Jefferson beat Lawson, one of the NBA’s fastest guards, in a 90-foot dash to one end of the ATT Center for a run-down block, then followed with a 3-point dagger at the other. That five-point swing squelched a last-gasp charge from the feisty Nuggets, keying a 121-117 victory for the Spurs.

Instead of Denver cutting what had been a 20-point deficit to three with less than two minutes to play, Jefferson’s superhero routine provided the Spurs an eight-point advantage and just enough juice to pull out their third consecutive victory without Ginobili, the injured All-Star guard.

Jefferson said the play was borne of pure annoyance. He was tired of watching Denver put on a layup parade.

“They had been running it down our throats all game long,” said Jefferson, who finished with 19 points and, continuing his torrid shooting, made 5 of 8 on 3-pointers. “The coaches had been talking about it for two days. I’m glad I was able to catch him.”

With Ginobili out, the Spurs (6-2) have been in nightly search of a hero to help them hold the fort. Jefferson had the game’s signature moment, but he was Robin to the Batman played by Danny Green, a 24-year-old journeyman guard.

Green, a 5.3-point-per-game scorer whose previous career best was 13, pumped in 24 points, lifting the Spurs at moments when it appeared nobody else could. He made 9 of his 13 tries, none bigger than back-to-back drives midway in the third quarter with Denver closing.

Green attributed his outburst to “luck, opportunity, a lot of things.”

Surely, the Nuggets (6-3) would agree. The book on Green in Denver’s pregame scouting report was like something out of Reader’s Digest.

“We didn’t know about Danny Green at all,” forward Corey Brewer said.

Green’s stealth was understandable. He didn’t log meaningful minutes until two games earlier, when Spurs coach Gregg Popovich stumbled upon him as a defensive answer to high-scoring Golden State guard Monta Ellis.

Nobody — on either bench — really expected Green to produce a stat line like Saturday’s, which also included seven rebounds and a key fourth-quarter charge drawn against Arron Afflalo.

“He did a little more than I thought he would do,” Nuggets coach George Karl said.

This is how Popovich knew his team would have to win after Ginobili broke his hand in Minnesota on Jan. 2 — everybody stepping up, with unexpected production from unexpected sources.

How’s this for stepping up? The Spurs have not trailed for a single second in any of the past eight quarters, beating Dallas and Denver wire-to-wire.

Green’s explosion helped offset another career-night — 31 points from Denver forward Danilo Gallinari, including 16 in a torrid third quarter that kept the Nuggets from capsizing.

Tony Parker scored nine of his 19 points in the fourth quarter to help steer the Spurs toward a 6-0 start at home.

Still the Nuggets had hope when Lawson broke free in the final two minutes, nothing between himself and a dunk but a few dozen feet of hardwood.

Lawson and his coach would dispute what happened next, when Jefferson tracked down the track-star point guard and slapped his shot away.

“He got away with murder,” Lawson said.

Crime or not, whistle or no, a dunk at one end became a 3-pointer at the other and for the Spurs, frustration gave way to victory.

Few practices in busy Spurs schedule

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

The Spurs will spend part of the first day of the new year in the air and the first night of 2012 on the road.

Aside from the Lakers, who played three games in the first three days of the lockout-delayed season, the Spurs have one of the busier early schedules. Tonight’s game at the ATT Center against the Jazz will be their fourth game in six nights. By the time they conclude their second set of back-to-back games — Golden State on Jan. 4 and Dallas on Jan. 5 — they will have played seven in 11 days, with six of those crammed into eight days.

With four travel days included among the 11 days, there is little likelihood they will have a single practice before Jan. 6, an off day between home games against the Mavericks and Nuggets.

Lack of opportunity is but one of the reasons the quality of play this season will suffer from the diminished practice. Because the Spurs have only 13 players on their roster, rather than the 15 they have carried each of the past three seasons, full five-on-five work in practices likely will be curtailed.

“Everybody’s got fewer bodies for a variety of reasons,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “It gives one a little bit of concern, injury-wise, but it’s going to be difficult to have very many really good practices during the season. The bodies that all of us used to have maybe aren’t quite as important in that regard, anyway. It’s going to be tough to do.”

If there is no opportunity for a full practice soon, Popovich said he will ask some of the young players to come to the team’s practice facility so shooting guard Gary Neal can get some full-contact work to prepare him for a return to action, likely next week.

Meanwhile, James Anderson is trying hard to shrug off the fact he won’t get to watch the Fiesta Bowl on Monday night, when the Spurs will be playing the Timberwolves at Target Center in Minneapolis.

“It should be a great bowl game,” said Anderson, who played at Oklahoma State. “I’ll just have to Tivo it.”

Career first: DeJuan Blair’s 22 points against the Rockets gave the third-year big man from Pittsburgh consecutive games with 20 or more points for the first time in his career, but not his best two-game total.

Blair last season scored 18 in a Feb. 8 road win over the Pistons and followed with 28 points in a road victory in Toronto the next night.

At 22, Blair is the youngest of the Spurs’ starters, so it’s no surprise he logged more court time than the rest of the starters on Thursday night, nearly 29 minutes.

Popovich’s decision to rest his older players in the second half of what would turn out to be a blowout loss didn’t surprise him.

“That’s how it’s going to go the whole season,” Blair said. “The whole season is going to hit us right on the head, really fast. So we’ve got to use every chance to be ready for it.”

Mike Monroe: Tears and some stark reality for Mavs

DALLAS — The Mavericks raised their 2010-11 NBA championship banner to the rafters at American Airlines Center on Christmas Day, and it was a little too much for Dirk Nowitzki.

The Finals MVP admitted he choked up and had to work hard to hold back a tear or two as he took in the emotional ceremony.

“There were a couple waiting to come out,” he said.

Dwyane Wade and Udonis Haslem understood the emotion. They felt the same way on banner night in Miami in 2006.

Then, the Chicago Bulls put a 108-66 humiliation on them that was far worse than the 105-94 blowout this season’s Heat handed the Mavericks in Sunday’s rematch of last seasons Finals.

To be sure, this was a Christmas Day massacre. Miami led by 35 in the third period, a margin big enough for Wade and LeBron James to laugh through serial miscues committed by the end-of-the-bench reserves in the fourth quarter.

The Heat on Sunday were a team with chemistry born of continuity taking maximum advantage of a team adapting to more than emotion. The Mavericks had two new starters, and by halftime, coach Rick Carlisle swapped out one of those for another newcomer.

“The Spurs ought to be feeling pretty good about now,” said Will Perdue, a member of their 1999 title team, who’s now a broadcaster. “There’s no team in the league that the 66-game season helps more than the Spurs. They’ve got all those guys back who have been in their program.”

Carlisle understands his team can’t be what it was last season when defensive standout center Tyson Chandler got most of the court time and backup Brendan Haywood logged just 18 minutes per game.

“I think it’s important to point this out and be very clear about it: Brendan Haywood is not Tyson Chandler,” he said.

Mavs general manager Donnie Nelson cut a smart deal when Chandler made it clear he intended to sign a free-agent contract with the Knicks. By negotiating a sign-and-trade deal, Dallas netted a trade exception that turned into former Laker Lamar Odom.

Odom’s Christmas debut was spotty. He made his first shot, missed his next five and got thrown out of the game in the third period after getting two quick technical fouls.

“This is a different system,” Carlisle said. “There are similarities with what we do with where he came from, but there are enough differences, so that’s going to be work — for us and for him. I see him being able to make the transition quickly because he’s a smart player, a skilled player and he can do a lot of things.

“But when you’re one of those kind of players and you’re playing all different positions on the floor, there’s more to digest.”

Odom’s reality-star wife, Khloe Kardashian, electronically voiced her objection to Odom’s ejection from a courtside seat. She didn’t see anything from her hubby that merited two techs, she tweeted to 5-million-plus followers.

Reality bites, Khloe. NBA refs don’t care what you think.

Odom, a versatile big man with exceptional skills, seems more optimistic than Carlisle that he can adapt quickly to a system that is less geometrically defined than what the Lakers played.

“At the end of the day, it’s just basketball,” he said. “From first grade to college to the NBA, it’s pick-roll on offense and help-recover on defense. Basketball is a universal language, so I’ll be all right.”

So will the Mavs, but Christmas Day gave the reigning champs an early clue that defending won’t be easy.

“The good thing is we’ve got a game tomorrow,” Carlisle said. “The bad thing is we’ve got a game tomorrow and Denver is going to come in here with a shot at the champs. It’s a situation where we’ve got to work to make quantum leaps as often and as quickly as we can as a team.”

mikemonroe@express-news.net