Tag: In the News

Spurs notebook: Ginobili’s hand injury sped up Neal’s return

Had things gone according to the Spurs’ plan, Gary Neal would have played Thursday night for the Austin Toros against the Maine Red Claws in an NBA Development League game at Cedar Park Center, just northwest of Austin.

Instead, Neal was in the starting lineup for the Spurs at the ATT Center, going 3 for 3 on 3-point shots in the first quarter of a blowout victory over the Mavericks.

On his way back to NBA action after undergoing an appendectomy on Dec. 12, Neal had been assigned to the Toros so he could get some contact in 5-on-5 practices. Ideally, he would have played a couple of D-League games, including Thursday’s against the Red Claws, to be fully ready for NBA action.

What changed for Neal and the Spurs, of course, was the injury to Manu Ginobili’s left hand, a fractured fifth metacarpal that will have Ginobili on the sidelines for approximately six weeks.

“I was down there,” Neal said. “I practiced two days. I think they had me down there to play some games, but Manu got hurt. It kind of sped it up.”

Neal reports no lingering effects from his appendectomy.

“It actually stopped hurting about a week after the surgery,” he said. “I’d been working out on the bike and the treadmill for about two weeks now.”

Neal said his fitness level has been fine in his first two Spurs games. Getting reaccustomed to the pace and physicality of NBA games will take a while longer.

“My wind’s pretty good,” he said after scoring 12 points against the Mavericks. “I don’t think my wind is affecting my game. I just have to get used to playing with the contact again. There were a couple times I had shots and the close-outs were hard and I shot an airball, or the ball was short.

“I just have to get my rhythm and timing back. That will come. I’ll continue to work in practice with the coaching staff, and I’ll get my rhythm back and it will come in the games, sooner than later.

“The first (3-pointer) went in, the second one went in and the third one. They got a little harder when the close-outs got tougher later in the game. With game reps, my timing should be coming back.”

SETTING THE BAR: It’s not often that Matt Bonner is the Spurs’ leading scorer in a game, as he was on Thursday against the Mavericks, with 17 points. In fact, in four seasons in silver and black, Thursday’s high game was just his sixth.

What really set apart his performance was the fact he scored more than the combined output of a pair of future Hall of Fame big men, teammate Tim Duncan and Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki, 17-16.

That rarity was a perfect setup for Duncan’s dry wit.

“That’s what Matt Bonner is supposed to do,” said Duncan, who scored 10 points. “That’s what we brought him here for, and that’s what we expect from him from now on, night in and night out, I guess. That’s about right.”

Ginobili nowhere close to done

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

It’s hard to remember the first time Gregg Popovich declared one of his Spurs teams older than dirt.

An archive search brings up references as far back as 2006, when Tim Duncan was near his prime and Manu Ginobili was still in his 20s.

The assertion was more accurate when he made it before the start of the 2008-09 season, but the context was more instructive than the declaration.

Then, a visiting columnist asked Popovich why his team was being dismissed as a legitimate title contender by so many experts.

After all, the previous spring the team had returned for a second straight season to the Western Conference finals. But misfortune had struck the Spurs in Game 3 of their conference semifinals series against the Hornets when Manu Ginobili twisted his right ankle. Ginobili gutted out the final four games of that series, but by the time the Spurs got to Los Angeles to begin the conference finals, he was far from full effectiveness.

At the conclusion of a 4-1 ouster by the Lakers, Brent Barry famously avowed: “We had ‘Ma,’ but we didn’t have ‘Nu.’?”

It didn’t matter to the team’s critics. L.A.’s domination became reason to declare the Spurs’ long run as championship contenders had ended.

So the following fall, when a Houston columnist asked about this pervasive belief, Popovich explained the lack of faith: “That’s because we’re older than dirt. When we won it all in ’07, we were called a really experienced, savvy team. If you lose, you’re too old.”

Ginobili is 34 now, and by season’s end Tony Parker will be just three weeks shy of his 30th birthday, the last of the Big Three to hit the Big 3-0.

Tim Duncan, the three-time NBA Finals MVP, is 35.

But even as the Spurs stars reach ages that prompt comparisons to well-turned loam, they remain vital to the team’s chances of making another title run.

Ginobili is fresh off a performance at the FIBA Americas Olympic qualifying tournament that proved his game remains among the best in the world as long as both arms are fully functional.

He is happy to see players such as DeJuan Blair, 22, James Anderson, 22, Kawhi Leonard, 20, and Tiago Splitter, 27 on Jan. 1, available for significant court time that will help the team’s veterans make it through a 66-game schedule compressed into 121 days.

Yet he is hardly ready to concede that the team has begun the transition to a team with a youthful core.

“It is probably early to talk about that,” he said. “Probably next year, when T.D.’s contract is up and, the following year, mine is up we’re probably going to see a change. I don’t think until then it’s going to be something noticeable. I think the go-to guys are still going to be the same ones.

“Of course, when you start adding guys — Kawhi and James, who has been playing really well, and DeJuan and Tiago — well, it’s not something that happens overnight. You have to wait a little.”

Indeed, Duncan is in the final year of his contract, shrugging off any suggestion it may be his last season in silver and black. He has vowed to play as long as the game remains enjoyable or “until the wheels fall off.”

A contract extension before season’s end would be no shock.

Ginobili is under contract through 2012-13. He hasn’t allowed himself to think seriously about a career beyond that season, but admits there are days when he can’t imagine not continuing for another season or two.

“No, I haven’t thought yet about what I will do after next season,” he said, “and I don’t think I will until the moment comes. There are some days I’m tired and everything hurts, and I say to myself, ‘These two years, and that’s probably it.’

“Some other days, I’m scrimmaging, and I’m going crazy because I love it, and I want to win and I want to challenge my opponent, and I know, once I make the decision (to retire) I am going to miss it, because at that age, that high the pregame gives you is different.

“I don’t know how, or who, is going to win next year, so I will wait.”

Whether Splitter, Leonard and Anderson have shown the potential to be a new Big Three by the end of the 2012-13 season won’t factor into Ginobili’s thinking about where he will play if, in fact, he opts to keep playing.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I am almost 100 percent sure that if I keep playing, it is going to be here.

“If I had to start all over again in a different place I would call it a day. But here I went through so many things and appreciate everybody so much, if I decide I want to keep playing and want to keep feeling what I feel on the court, it doesn’t matter if we are the best team, but not the worst. And if I keep playing here, probably we are not going to be the worst team.”

Of that, Popovich has no doubt. In a moment of candor while discussing that disappointing Western Conference finals with the Lakers, the Spurs coach made clear Ginboili’s continuing role in the Spurs’ championship dreams.

“If Manu wasn’t out there playing hurt against the Lakers; if we have him able to play the way he has played in the past, then that’s probably a whole different series,” he said three years ago. “You have to have your horses. If Manu’s not whole, we’re not going to win. That’s all there is to it.”

It is a truth that applied in 2008, and it applied in April in Memphis, just as it will this season.

As long as Ginobili is healthy, at any age, he will remain one of the Spurs’ lead horses, pulling his weight and a whole lot more.

AS MANU GOES . . .

… so go the Spurs. It’s a familiar tune, although Manu Ginobili, who played on three Spurs NBA championship teams in his first five seasons, would be the first to say he’s but a part of that success. However, the games he has missed shows the value that once had Spurs coach Gregg Popovich saying, “If Manu’s not whole, we’re not going to win.”

In games where Ginobili sat because of injury or to protect his health in nine seasons, that statement bears some truth.

2010-11: 0-3
2009-10: 4-3
2008-09: 23-20
2007-08: 5-3
2006-07: 2-5
2005-06: 12-5
2004-05: 6-2
2003-04: 4-1
2002-03: 10-3
Overall: 66-45 (.594 winning percentage, translates to a 49-win team in an 82-game schedule)

Since last title: 32-29 (.525, translates to a 43-win team in an 82-game schedule)

With Manu: In 755 career games, including playoffs, the Spurs are 529-266 for a .701 percentage, which translates to a 58-win team over 82 games.

– Source: Douglas Pils, Express-News research

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.”