Tag: Gregg Popovich

Splitter, Hill have been bright spots in skid

Tiago Splitter has long since ditched the GPS he needed to find the Spurs’ practice facility back in training camp. He has discovered a few places in San Antonio for good Mexican food, though he admits he sometimes prefers to stay in for his wife’s home-cooked paella.

In an even more significant development for the prized rookie center, Splitter is beginning to feel at home in an NBA arena. And he no longer needs a GPS to find playing time.

For the first time, Splitter has begun to feel like a card-carrying member of the San Antonio Spurs.

“I’m getting more confident and feeling like I’m part of the team,” the 25-year-old Brazilian said.

George Hill has been a key member of the Spurs for two-plus seasons already. Unlike Splitter, who had been searching for a feeling he hadn’t yet experienced, Hill’s recent transformation has been about locating a feeling he once had but lost.

“It’s been in my head that I need to get back to being aggressive,” Hill, a 6-foot-3 reserve guard, said after totaling 57 points the past two games.

The downside of the Spurs’ recent four-game slide is evident in the NBA standings. The Los Angeles Lakers have crept within 31/2 games of the top spot in the Western Conference. Chicago looms within 31/2 games in the race for the NBA’s top overall record.

If there is an upside to a losing streak, it is this:

Awarded playing time he might not have found with Tim Duncan healthy, Splitter suddenly looks like a credible NBA big man. Given the freedom and confidence to seek out his own points, Hill again looks like the kind of incendiary bench spark that helps win playoff series.

Splitter had appeared in just 47 of the first 68 games and seemed ticketed for a string of postseason Did-Not-Plays, before Duncan went down with a left ankle sprain March 21 against Golden State. In the past five games replacing the Spurs icon, four of them starts, the 6-foot-11 Splitter has averaged 9.2 points and 8.4 rebounds in 27:50.

“You forget he was the best player in Europe the last couple years,” center DeJuan Blair said. “Now he’s finding his way.”

In Monday’s 100-92 loss to Portland, with Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker and Antonio McDyess also in street clothes, Splitter at last found his way onto the court in the fourth quarter of a tight game.

Spurs guard George Hill has scored 57 points over the past two games, with one or both star guards, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, on the bench. (Edward A. Ornelas/Express-News)

Splitter didn’t change the outcome — the Spurs, for the fourth game in a row, faltered late — but he almost did. With the Spurs down six in the final two minutes, Splitter unfurled a series of up-fakes on LaMarcus Aldridge that one overexcited courtside observer compared to a Kevin McHale move.

It resulted in a basket and a foul and would have brought the Spurs within three had Splitter not badly missed the free throw.

Splitter, coach Gregg Popovich said, “picks things up quickly.” That includes the tendencies of opposing players.

“Even though I watched a lot of NBA games before I got here, it’s not the same as when you can get on the court and see them work,” said Splitter, who had 14 points and nine rebounds against Portland.

Hill, the Spurs’ fourth-leading scorer and highest-scoring reserve at 11.5 points per game, had lately fallen into a pattern of deference and unselfishness. Those are good qualities for a Red Cross volunteer, but not so much for a sixth man Popovich envisions as sort of a Ginobili-lite.

With Ginobili out for the second half in Memphis, and he and Parker out for all four quarters Monday, Hill had no choice but to look for his own shots, creating them out of whole cloth when necessary.

The result: a 30-point game against the Grizzlies, equaling a career high, followed by 27 points against Portland.

It marks the most prolific two-game stretch of Hill’s career.

“We’d like to continue to see George continue to play with that kind of scoring mentality,” Popovich said. “He’s good at it, and we need it.”

If Hill and Splitter can keep it up, the Spurs might have just discovered two more players who can turn a playoff series.

No GPS required.

More Tiago could be on the docket

ATLANTA — With five games left in the regular season, it appears Spurs coach Gregg Popovich might be re-evaluating his big-man rotation.

In Sunday’s 114-97 win over Phoenix, rookie Tiago Splitter — not DeJuan Blair — earned the call when Tim Duncan was due for his first rest with 3:45 left in the first quarter.

Aside from the five games he started in place of Duncan in late March, Splitter hadn’t seen much action at all, much less in the first quarter.

“You have to be ready and be aware when they call,” Splitter said. “I didn’t expect it, of course, but I was ready.”

Splitter logged nearly 10 minutes in the first half, while Blair did not get off the bench. With the score out of hand in the second half, Blair played 16 minutes, 35 seconds, and appeared to be pressing at times. He finished with two points on 1-of-6 shooting and eight rebounds and also committed two offensive fouls.

Popovich would not say whether the rotation tweak would be permanent or if it would carry over to tonight’s game against Atlanta. Pairing the 6-foot-11 Splitter with Matt Bonner, however, would give the Spurs the size they’ve been lacking off the bench since Antonio McDyess’ elevation to the starting lineup 14 games ago.

Before Sunday’s game, Popovich said he had been satisfied with the Blair-Bonner combination. Afterward, he praised Splitter’s handling of the early call.

“He did a good job in battling,” Popovich said of Splitter.

“He’s a tough customer, and he does a good job with that.”

3-POINT REVIVAL: Popovich blames the Spurs’ 3-point shooting drought, which began in late March and bled into the first game of April, on the absence of a player who has attempted just four long balls all season.

With Duncan out for four games, Popovich said, open looks were harder to come by for the Spurs’ cadre of shooters, putting to the test the team-wide philosophy of passing up good shots for great ones.

“Without Timmy there for those games, I think those 3-point shots ended up being contested,” Popovich said. “That (good-to-great) principle became even more important, but we didn’t follow it very well.”

The Spurs made 15 of 29 3-pointers against Phoenix.

In the previous three games, two of them with Duncan on the floor, the Spurs hit just 20 of 73.

Overall, the Spurs have made 650 3-pointers this season, snapping the franchise record of 625 set in 2008-09. They have connected on a league-leading 39.8 percent, just off the club mark of 40.7 set in 2000-01.

POP’S MILESTONE: With one more victory, Popovich would match Boston legend Red Auerbach for second on the NBA’s all-time win chart with one team.

Sunday’s win over Phoenix was Popovich’s 794th, one shy of the mark Auerbach attained in 16 seasons with the Celtics.

Including postseason, Popovich has amassed 900 wins with the Spurs, but the NBA does not combine playoff and regular-season victories in its annals.

Notes on a scorecard: Whatever happened to San Antonio’s vaunted defense?

Remember back in the glory days of the San Antonio Spurs?

You recall that era don’t you? Back when “The Twin Towers” of David Robinson and Tim Duncan made shooting a nightmare for Spurs opponents.

Even after Robinson retired, the Spurs found serviceable replacements like Rasho Nesterovic, Nazr Mohammed, Francisco Elson  and Fabricio Oberto to make it tough inside.

And Bruce Bowen, of course, flashed the kind of legendary skills that enabled him to harrass the leading scorers of his era as one of the best on-ball defenders in NBA history.

Those days have never appeared farther away than over the last 20 games or so as the Spurs have evolved into their new order.

They are winning as much as any team in the NBA this season. But the defense had taken a big step back along the way.

In Monday’s 100-92 loss to Portland, Portland shot 52.3 percent from the field. It marked the third time in the Spurs’ four-game losing streak that opponents have topped 50 percent. Opponents have topped 50 percent in four of  six games and six of eight contests.

The strong recent shooting has been bad enough. But a more telling statistic can be found in the minimums that opponents have shot during the recent games. Since limiting Cleveland to 39.6 percent on March 2, the Spurs have allowed every opponent to shot at least 45.2 percent from the field — a span of 13 games.  

For the month of March, Spurs opponents are hitting 48.3 percent from the field. It’s a trend that a distinct retreat from most Gregg Popovich teams that traditionally improve defensively after the All-Star break.

It’s a vexing problem as the playoffs near, particularly as no jump-shooting team has been able to win an NBA title in recent history.

The Spurs will have to pick up their defense if they want to make a long playoff run this season. 

Here are a few other notes and tidbits from the first game where either Duncan, Tony Parker or Manu Ginobili wasn’t in the starting lineup since the final regular season game last season.

  • George Hill led the team in scoring for the second straight game, scoring 27 points. His two-game, 57-point scoring binge over the last two games is the largest two-game production in his career. He’s hitting 62.5 percent from the field and 76.2 percent from the line during that span.
  • Tiago Splitter had a strong game again, notching 14 points and nine rebounds in 28:21 — his longest playing stint of his career. It was his third-highest scoring game and tied for his second-highest rebounding game. During his last six games, he’s averaging 9.0 points and 8.0 rebounds while shooting 60 percent from the field.
  • Some nights shooters have the kind of game that Gary Neal struggled through Monday night. His 3-for-14 shooting effort — including 2-for-10 in the fourth quarter — represented one of his 10 worst shooting nights of the season.
  • The team could have used more of Neal after  he hit two of his first three shots to start the fourth quarter. From there, he missed his final seven shots. Neal matched his career high with two steals. And his shooting effort ended a recent spree where he’s hit 58.6 percent from the field, shot 62.5 percent from beyond the 3-point line and averaged 15 points in his last three games.
  • Danny Green showed some of the talent that made him one of the top players on North Carolina’s 2009 national championship team as he produced two dunks and a 3-pointer in his 3-for-3 shooting effort. His seven points and 20:15 in playing time both were career highs.
  • DeJuan Blair was limited to three points and five rebounds. His three points were his smallest scoring effort since scoring two points on March 18.  Blair has failed to score in double figures for the last seven games. It’s his longest streak of non-double figure scoring games since starting the season with seven games without double figures. But most significantly, his minutes played are up over last season, but his scoring, rebounding and shooting all have dipped from his rookie season.
  • The Spurs did  show  some defensive improvement during stages of the Portland game. After allowing 58 points in the paint against Memphis Sunday night, they permitted only 34 against Portland. And they limited the Trail Blazers to nine points in the third quarter — lowest production in any quarter by an opponent this season. But they then allowed the Trail Blazers to score 33 points — tied for second-most by an opponent this season — in the pivotal fourth quarter.
  • San Antonio had only three players with positive plus-minus scores with James Anderson at plus-7, Chris Quinn at plus-3 and Steve Novak at plus-2. Neal had the worst score at minus-16, Matt Bonner was at minus-10, Splitter was at minus-8 and Richard Jefferson was at minus-8.