Tag: Danny Green

Spurs at the midway point

For every Spurs player not named Tony Parker, the All-Star break provided a welcome respite from the grueling grind of this blink-and-you’ll-miss-it lockout season. Before the games resume Wednesday against Chicago (8 p.m., KENS, ESPN), Express-News staff writer Jeff McDonald presses pause to gauge the state of the Spurs at the midway mark:

What went right

Playing like an All-Star and borderline MVP candidate, Parker is enjoying his best season with a team-leading 19.4 points and career-best 8.1 assists per game.

The Spurs’ bench, led by youngsters such as Tiago Splitter, Gary Neal, Danny Green and rookie Kawhi Leonard, has been a revelation. The Spurs wrapped up the first half by going 8-1 on the rodeo road trip, the second-best mark in the history of the annual trek.

Coach Gregg Popovich has been able to keep 35-year-old power forward Tim Duncan fresh by limiting his minutes to career-low levels.

What went wrong

The Spurs were kind of an injury train wreck for much of the first half, which makes their 24-10 record all the more impressive.

Manu Ginobili (hand, oblique) has played just nine games.

Backup point guard T.J. Ford (hamstring) has missed the past 24.

Splitter and Leonard (strained calves) also could open the second half on the injured list.

The Spurs have weathered the injury bug well so far, but it’s difficult to imagine them doing much damage in the playoffs if not at full strength.

What happens next

As payback for finishing the first half on a nine-game road trip, the Spurs get to open the second half with seven straight games at home, where they are 13-1.

Wednesday’s game against Derrick Rose and the Bulls will be the Spurs’ first at the ATT Center since Feb. 4. The remaining schedule does come with some trouble spots, including a stretch of five games in six nights at the end of March and a road-only back-to-back-to-back on the West Coast in April.

What happens next, Part II

Thanks to the lockout, the trade deadline has been pushed back to March 15. It still shouldn’t matter much to the Spurs.

Though team officials acknowledge the roster could use a fifth big man, the Spurs don’t appear to have the assets to land one via trade. A more likely scenario has the front office scouring the waiver wire after the deadline, when untraded veteran players typically achieve contract buyouts.

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Pop sees bright side to rout

By Mike Monroe

DENVER — After their 137-97 loss to the Trail Blazers on Tuesday night, most of the Spurs decided the less said about the game, the better.

“They made about 18 3-pointers in the first quarter,” guard Danny Green said. “That just about sums it up.”

In fact, the Blazers made 8 of 10 on 3-point shots in the first period and 15 of 28 for the game, but Green’s point was taken.

With coach Gregg Popovich sitting his top scorer and assist man, Tony Parker, and his top rebounder and No. 2 scorer, Tim Duncan, there was only one thing Popovich cared about Tuesday.

“The only expectation I have is to play hard,” he said after the most lopsided loss for a Spurs team since March 5, 1997, when the Chicago Bulls scored a 111-69 victory.

And his assessment of the effort given by the nine players who saw action?

“They busted their butts,” he said.

Spurs rookie Kawhi Leonard logged a season-high 43 minutes and scored a season-high 24 points, and Popovich was grateful for the experience he was able to give the player the Spurs traded George Hill to acquire on draft night.

Leonard’s ability to learn on the fly after a short training camp and a compressed scheduled that has minimized practice time has been one of the surprises of the season, according to Popovich.

“Absolutely, without a doubt, the young guys picked things up more quickly (than expected),” Popovich said. “Kawhi still has a long way to go as far as understanding what’s going on, but his willingness to learn, his effort level and his ability to focus have been impressive. Same with Danny Green.”

Dawson’s debut: Eric Dawson, the 27-year-old, 6-foot-9 forward had waited a long time to make his NBA debut.

When it finally came, he logged nearly 32 minutes and produced respectable numbers. The former Sam Houston High School star scored nine points and grabbed six rebounds. He missed four of his first five shots but made all three he took in the fourth period.

Rested and ready: Popovich opted to keep the Spurs in Portland after Tuesday’s game, traveling to Denver at midday after a good night’s rest.

The Nuggets played the Clippers on Wednesday night in Los Angeles, chartering back to Denver after a game that tipped off at 8 p.m. Mountain time.

Rodeo trip rank: Regardless of the outcome of tonight’s game, the Spurs already are assured the second-best rodeo road trip since the annual trek began when the club moved into a new arena for the 2002-03 season. A victory tonight would match the inaugural rodeo trip in 2003 at 8-1.

The Spurs never have had a losing rodeo trip. The worst trip was 4-4 in 2007.

mikemonroe@express-news.net

Ginobili’s injury hasn’t broken Spurs’ resolve

MINNEAPOLIS — As the Spurs’ charter flight lifted off from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport late on the night of Jan. 2, uncertainty was in the air.

In the back of the team plane, All-Star guard Manu Ginobili sat with his newly broken left hand in a splint. His fifth metacarpal had been fractured in a 106-96 loss to Minnesota hours earlier. A timetable for his return was unknown.

Meanwhile, the remaining Spurs braced for unseen turbulence ahead.

“Very pensive,” is how forward Matt Bonner described that flight back to Texas. “Obviously, there was that kind of unknown question mark.”

Tonight at the Target Center, the Spurs return to the scene of the incident for a rematch with the fast-rising Timberwolves. The nosedive many expected in light of Ginobili’s latest injury hasn’t happened yet.

The Spurs are 9-5 since Ginobili went on the inactive list after swiping a little too vigorously at Minnesota’s Anthony Tolliver.

Though their status in the standings remains a day-to-day, win-to-win proposition, they left home for Minnesota and the start of a rugged three-game road trip in first place in the Southwest Division and third in the Western Conference.

“We have confidence in each other, confidence in our coaching staff and our system,” Bonner said. “It was just a matter of having other people step up.”

What the Spurs (12-7) couldn’t have known as they left Minnesota broken and beaten earlier this month was that 24-year-old swingman Danny Green was a bona fide NBA rotation player.

That second-year center Tiago Splitter was a burgeoning playmaker on the Spurs’ second unit. That Kawhi Leonard, a 20-year-old rookie a month into his NBA career, could make an impact doing the unenviable — starting for Ginobili.

Yes, the whole thing still feels fragile, as if stitched together with bailing wire, and the Spurs could be one bad road trip away from a tailspin. But for now, they have survived the first three weeks with Ginobili in a sport coat.

Three down, and perhaps just three more weeks to go.

“I don’t know why, but I always thought things were going to work out,” said Green, a third-year forward who has been the surprise of the Spurs’ season so far. “We have a good team here, a pretty good foundation. When one guy goes down, another guy steps in.”

Point guard Tony Parker recalls a sense of urgency in the wake of Ginobili’s injury.

“We didn’t panic,” Parker said, before chuckling. “I’m not going to say I knew Danny Green was going to play like that, but we didn’t panic.”

Coach Gregg Popovich credits All-Star forward Tim Duncan, the team’s captain and, at 35, its oldest player, for helping keep the Spurs’ season together after Ginobili went down.

Bonner agrees.

“We all feed off his leadership and consistency,” Bonner said.

It is a role Duncan can fill even on nights his shot isn’t falling, or when Popovich is limiting his minutes.

“I’m still a big part of this team,” Duncan said. “I want to be a leader on and off the floor. I want Pop and the rest of the guys to count on me to do that.”

That’s not to say the Spurs don’t miss Ginobili. They do, especially on the road when the degree of difficulty gets exponentially higher.

Including a pair of road losses with Ginobili on the floor, the Spurs are 2-6 away from the ATT Center this season.

“Not having Manu is huge,” Popovich said. “He gives everybody a lot of confidence, especially on the road when things are not going well. Manu seems to have a knack for scoring at those times, or doing something else to change momentum.”

Though the future is still very much up in the air until Ginobili is back in uniform, the Spurs tonight hope to demonstrate how far they’ve come since last leaving Minnesota.

“I didn’t have any doubts,” Green said. “I figured we’d be fine. Everybody else doubted us, but I didn’t have any.”

jmcdonald@express-news.net