Tag: Gregg Popovich

Duncan may return by April

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

DENVER — Though the Spurs have yet to release an official timetable for Tim Duncan’s return from an ankle sprain, coach Gregg Popovich said Wednesday the two-time MVP could be back on the floor by the beginning of April.

Asked before the Spurs’ game against Denver if two weeks sounded like a plausible prognosis for Duncan, Popovich sounded optimistic his captain might be back sooner.

“I’m hoping it won’t be that long, a good four or five games for sure,” Popovich said. “Beyond that, I really won’t know until we get back.”

Duncan, who injured his left ankle Monday against Golden State, did not accompany the Spurs on their three-game road trip, instead remaining behind in San Antonio in a walking boot. An MRI conducted Tuesday confirmed the sprain and revealed no structural damage in Duncan’s ankle.

“Once he gets back on the court in a couple of days, we’ll be able to tell more,” Popovich said. “But four or five games for sure.”

By that estimate, Duncan could be back for the Spurs’ ?? final seven regular-season games, beginning April 1 at Houston.

Asked again Wednesday if team doctors had given any indication Duncan might miss the start of the playoffs, Popovich said, “No, no, no.”

SPLITTER STARTS: With Duncan shelved, rookie center Tiago Splitter earned his second career start, earning the nod over DeJuan Blair, who started the first 63 games of the season before moving to the bench earlier this month.

The deciding factor was height. Splitter is 6-foot-11, while Blair is 6-7.

“We’re a pretty small team,” Popovich said. “We’ve got to have some size on the court.”

Blair came off the bench Wednesday after missing the Golden State game with a sprained left wrist.

THE RING LEADER: Spurs guard Danny Green doesn’t have so much as a job guaranteed past the end of the season, but he does have something nobody else in the Spurs locker room does: an NCAA championship ring.

Green started for the North Carolina team that won the 2009 title, along with fellow future NBA players Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Tyler Hansbrough. He keeps his ring in a lock box at home and knows better than to crow about his accomplishments on a team that features four players with NBA championship hardware.

“I can’t brag around these guys,” Green said. “They’ve got some big-time guys here.”

This year’s version of March Madness, meanwhile, has drawn battle lines in the Spurs’ locker room. Green’s Tar Heels will face Steve Novak’s former school, Marquette, in a Sweet 16 game Friday, while Richard Jefferson’s Arizona team will face assistant coach Chip Engelland’s Duke Blue Devils tonight.

“I feel like March Madness, even if you haven’t won a ring, is a fun time for guys,” Green said. “Guys like to fill out brackets and watch our teams play. We have our little battles and arguments and inside friendly bets. It’s a good time to watch basketball.”

The only other Spurs with alma maters still alive in the tournament are Matt Bonner (Florida) and assistant coach Jacque Vaughn (Kansas).

Spurs sweating defensive breakdowns

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

Before Spurs players could hit the court Wednesday for their longest practice of the season — a 2 1/2-hour marathon in preparation for Friday’s game at Dallas — they first had to sit through the horror film that was their 110-80 loss at Miami two nights earlier.

In between, players discussed summer vacation plans — namely, how long they hoped to put them off.

“The way we are playing now, it will be a quick exit in the playoffs,” point guard Tony Parker said. “We need to forget about our record and go back to playing good Spurs basketball.”

Throughout the franchise’s championship past, the term “good Spurs basketball” has been synonymous with “playing some semblance of defense.”

That was the emphasis Wednesday, and it will continue to be during the season’s final month for the Spurs, who are trending downward defensively at the precise moment they’d hoped to be hitting their stride.

With 15 games left, and a seven-game lead in the loss column on Dallas and the L.A. Lakers, the Spurs (54-13) appear a shoo-in for a No. 1 playoff seed. How far they go with the top slot, coach Gregg Popovich said, will be largely tied to the strides they make — or don’t — on defense.

During the past five games, the league-leading Spurs have allowed teams to shoot 47.7 percent and average 104.6 points, numbers that rank in the bottom third of the league. This month, the Spurs have posted three losses to probable playoff teams by a combined 62 points.

“We’re not as good in that area as we used to be,” Popovich said. “We’re still struggling and trying to get better.”

Of the past nine NBA champions, only one — the 2005-06 Miami Heat — finished the season worse than sixth in field-goal percentage defense. Coming into Wednesday, the Spurs were tied with Dallas and Philadelphia for 10th.

After Wednesday’s epic practice and film session, veteran center Antonio McDyess attributed the team’s defensive woes to “a lack of communication, getting back on defense, assignments where we’re supposed to be someplace and we’re kind of off.”

“Going into the playoffs you have to be more focused,” McDyess said. “In the last four or five games, like Pop said, we lost focus on a lot of things.”

Ironically, the Spurs’ communication breakdown could be rooted, at least partially, in a personnel move designed to improve defensive consistency.

Four games ago, Popovich installed McDyess, a 14-year pro, as his starting center in place of second-year big man DeJuan Blair.

“As we get closer to playoff time, theoretically, I want to start the games with a bit more experience on the defensive end of the court, a little bit more size,” Popovich said. “We’ve been saving McDyess’ minutes all year for the stretch run and the playoffs.

“It might work, it might not, but it seems logical.”

Not only did the lineup shift produce a new combination among the starting frontline, it left Blair and Matt Bonner — two players who haven’t spent much time on the court together this season — paired on the second unit.

In four games since the switch, the Spurs have surrendered 110, 107, 103 and 104 points. Monday, Miami’s Chris Bosh had a good deal of his 30 points at the expense of Blair and Bonner.

“Some of the guys are not in sync with each other,” McDyess said. “I don’t think we’ve seen Matt and DeJuan playing a lot with each other this year. We’re trying to get them used to playing together.”

In light of the lineup changes, perhaps the Spurs’ defense needed to take a step back to readjust before it could take a step forward.

Perhaps.

“That’s no excuse against Miami,” Parker said. “Our defense was terrible.”

The Spurs have exactly one month to iron out the kinks. The postponement of their vacation plans depends on it.

The numbers don’t lie: Spurs’ D has taken a dip

There’s no doubt the Spurs are coming off one of their worst defensive efforts of the season. They allowed Miami to hang 110 points on them in a convincing 110-80 loss that ranks as the team’s largest margin of victory of the season.

It continues a couple of noticeable trends. Miami hit 53.8 percent from the field, becoming the fourth consecutive team to improve the field-goal percentage from the previous game. A streak like that hasn’t happened for the Spurs’ defense all season.

The Spurs also have allowed their last four opponents all to score at least 100 points against them. That’s the second longest streak of the season, topped only by five straight 100-point performances allowed from Dec. 16-23.

But the best way to judge the effectiveness of a defense is to look at the number of points scored per 100 possessions.

Matt Moore of CBS Sports.com’s Eye on Basketball . And he found that the Spurs’ defense has taken a noticeable step back in its March games.

Moore  writes that the Spurs entered Monday night 7th in the league at defensive efficiency (which estimates points per 100 possessions, removing the element of pace and providing a more true image of defensive productivity). That’s not as good as Gregg Popovich’s defenses typically are, but it still ranks among the leaders in the league.

But they also entered Monday night’s game against Miami having averaged giving up 102 points per game in March, as opposed to their typical mark of 97. Their season defensive efficiency has been a solid 101.1.

In March games, the Spurs have averaged a 108.5 defensive efficiency, including marks of 117 to Memphis, 112 to the Lakers, 114 to Detroit and their worst score of 122 to the Heat Monday night.

Moore notes that the worst team in the league, the Cleveland Cavaliers, average a 110 defensive efficiency. So in a supremely small sample of the recent games, the Spurs are surrendering a defensive efficiency that would be the worst in the league if spread over the season.

And looking at the Spurs’ defensive efforts per game, there were some noticeably stolid efforts betrayed with huge breakdowns. Most notable was a two-possession series against the Heat capped by thunderous dunks by LeBron James and Dwyane Wade in the fourth quarter Monday night.

These defensive struggles are something that have rarely been seen around the Spurs franchise — especially in their championship seasons.

The Spurs will have their work cut out over the next several days to rectify those woes before facing Dallas, which ranks fourth in the NBA in field-goal percentage, seventh in 3-point percentage and 11th in scoring.

The Mavericks have had their own slumps in recent games, failing to score 100 in two of their last three games in losses to the Lakers and New York heading into their game Tuesday at Portland. But before that, the Mavericks had scored at least 100 points in 19 of their last 20 games.

The Spurs will get one more edge that should help their defense improve. San Antonio will be coming in on three days of rest for Friday’s game. And the Mavericks will be playing their third game in four nights Friday, after games against Portland on Tuesday night and Golden State on Wednesday.

The Spurs’ defense should improve. If not, Popovich might have some major worries heading into the playoffs.