Tag: Gregg Popovich

Facing Grizzlies again motivation for Spurs

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

Tim Duncan swears he has not looked at the film. Not once since leaving Memphis after the Spurs’ stunning first-round playoff exit in April has Duncan felt the slightest need to dissect what went wrong, not even for the purposes of autopsy.

He doesn’t have to.

“It’s pretty crisp in my memory,” Duncan said.

For five months during the NBA lockout, the image of defeat played on a continuous loop in the minds of Duncan and the other Spurs who suffered through one of the most disappointing playoff losses in league history.

That is a long time to burn.

Tonight at the ATT Center, the Spurs open a new chapter, the start of a lockout-compressed season many thought would never happen. But first, they must close an old wound.

The Spurs begin their new campaign against the same team that unceremoniously shut down their last one. In stunning the Spurs in six games, Memphis became only the second No. 8 seed in the best-of-7 era to oust a No. 1.

“There’s definitely a lot of motivation there,” said point guard Tony Parker, who was outplayed in the series by his Memphis counterpart, Mike Conley. “I want to play them in the playoffs, but I’ll start with the first game of the season.”

Even Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, never one to play up the payback angle or any other made-for-TV storyline, sees a smidgen of added impetus in the opener.

Of course, beating Memphis in Game 1 of the regular season won’t erase the disaster of last season’s playoffs. But it could be a good first step toward cleansing the palate.

“People are people,” Popovich said. “I’m sure when the game starts, our people will be motivated because they got beat by a very good team last year.”

In a way, tonight might feel like a continuation of last April, a Game 7 without the pesky drama of win-or-go home. Though nearly eight months have passed since the last time the Spurs and Memphis met, little has changed with either team.

Zach Randolph, who averaged 21.6 points and 9.2 rebounds against the Spurs in the playoffs, is still a load. The Grizzlies do welcome back small forward Rudy Gay, the club’s perennial leading scorer who missed the postseason while recovering from shoulder surgery.

The Spurs, meanwhile, bring back a roster almost identical to the one that won a Western Conference-best 61 games last season before falling short in the first round.

The most significant addition since April — besides a two-armed Manu Ginobili — is first-round draft pick Kawhi Leonard, the small forward from San Diego State obtained in a draft-day trade that shipped reserve guard George Hill to Indiana.

The Spurs also will expect greater contributions from a pair of second-year players — guard James Anderson and center Tiago Splitter — than they got in last season’s playoffs.

“If we win, it doesn’t take back what happened last season,” forward Richard Jefferson said. “It’s just one game.”

For the Spurs, bigger challenges lie ahead after Memphis leaves town. Tonight’s game is the first of 66, overstuffed into 129 days.

Though the Spurs won a title in 1999, the last time the NBA staged a shortened campaign, Duncan said there is a smaller margin for error than in a full season.

“You don’t want to get yourself stuck in a hole and have to find a way to fight yourself back, especially with all these back-to-backs and all the games in not many days,” said Duncan, the only player on the Spurs’ roster active in ’99.

“You have to take care of stuff, especially when you’re healthy, especially when you’ve got everybody.”

The Spurs hope to start a new championship push tonight, against the team that ended the last one.

One door opens, but not before the other one closes.

“There’s no excuses, they beat us, congratulations to Memphis,” Parker said. “Now it’s a new season.”

Spurs take Monday off

After working twice on Sunday, the Spurs will rest today with no practices.

The veteran team has worked four times in the first three days since training camp began on Friday. Coach Gregg Popovich wants to give his team a chance to step back for a day before another surge this week.

With only two preseason games before the Dec. 26 season opener against Memphis, the Spurs will do the majority of their work at their practices. Their first preseason game is Saturday night at Houston.

It’s a good deal for the new players not to throw too much at them too quickly.

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