Category: In the News

Ginobili ready to rise from the ashes

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

These are dark days for Manu Ginobili.

A plume of volcanic ash has descended on most of Argentina since the June 4 eruption of the Puyehue volcano in neighboring Chile, darkening the winter skies, choking cattle in the Pampas and disrupting air travel.

The atmosphere has improved lately in Bahia Blanca, Ginobili’s home city, and the Spurs guard has begun a training regimen he expects will have him physically ready for the FIBA Americas tournament scheduled to begin Aug. 30 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

Ginobili has been in Bahia Blanca for a few weeks, carefully rehabbing the right elbow he injured in the final game of the Spurs’ regular season. This week, he began weight training; soon he will add running drills and take his first shots on a basketball court since April 29, when the Spurs were eliminated from their first-round playoff series against Memphis.

The physical pain from the sprained right elbow and tiny bone fracture, suffered on April 13, is nearly gone.

“The last time I did the MRI (in mid-May), they told me the bone edema that I had was controlling itself but still needed a little time,” Ginobili said. “The little fracture is almost healed, but I needed more time to get completely healed.

“I am not playing basketball now, but lifting carefully. Running, well, I don’t need my elbow to run. Soon, I will start shooting free throws … and see how it goes.”

Emotional pain from the Spurs’ first-round exit is another story. After a season that produced 61 victories and great postseason expectations, the early elimination sapped Ginobili’s interest in the remaining games.

Time spent watching the NBA Finals?

“None, zero,” he said. “I simply couldn’t take it. I would go online the day after to see what happened, but it hurt too much to watch the games.”

Though he stressed that the Grizzlies eliminated the Spurs “really fair and square,” he contends the Spurs were nonetheless title-worthy.

“I truly believe … if we could have beat them, and been healthy, we could have made it,” he said. “I don’t think we were that much less than OKC or the Lakers or Mavs or Heat. I think we had a shot. Memphis played really well and aggressively and just beat us.”

More importantly, Ginobili is convinced the Spurs remain a future NBA title contender.

“It’s hard to say when a team has its last shot,” he said. “Of course, the Bulls lost Michael Jordan and couldn’t make another run. But we’ve got the same core of players, and nothing changed dramatically, so why not? I believe in our players and our organization, so I believe we do have another shot.”

For now, Ginobili’s focus is the FIBA Americas tournament, where Argentina must finish first or second to qualify for the 2012 Olympics.

A key member of Argentina’s 2004 Olympic gold-medal squad, Ginobili eagerly has awaited the tournament from the moment he learned it would be contested in his home country.

“It is very, very important for me,” he said. “Not only because it gives me the opportunity to play in my last Olympic Games, but also the first time we have played in Argentina in a decade. After all we have accomplished, having the opportunity to play in front of our fans and our people is very important. It is going to be fun. It is just a short time, just nine games.”

Insurance issues must be resolved before Ginobili and other NBA players don their national team uniforms, with a looming lockout of NBA players adding to the confusion.

Would Ginobili play for Argentina, even if his contract weren’t insured against injury?

“That is a really tough decision to make if we arrived at that point,” he said. “We will have to dig down with teammates and friends and make a decision, a really difficult one, and I don’t think that many players are going to be able to play if we don’t find an option for insurance.

“I’m really hoping that the NBPA (players’ union) finds a good, solid insurance company; finds the money that is needed, and we can all think about playing.”

Like many NBA players, Ginobili anticipates a lockout will cost games next season, but he has no plans to play overseas unless the entire season is eliminated.

“If the lockout goes to January and the season is canceled, I might consider it,” he said. “If not, no I wouldn’t.”

An All-NBA choice last season, at age 34, Ginobili knows his NBA playing days are limited but has yet to consider his career’s conclusion.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “Of course, anybody can tell that I played very good last season, especially at the beginning, but I don’t know how I will feel next season or the next few years.

“Everybody knows I don’t have the same legs I once did, but I try to be decisive for my team, be a leader and provide ways for my team to win. I think I can do it for a few years more, but it depends on how I feel physically and mentally.

“If I am as motivated as I’ve ever been, I will keep going, but if not, I will say thanks to everybody and keep going on with my life.”

At the moment, he expects nothing less than a rise from the ashes.

Wade admits Heat simply ‘let one go’

By TIM REYNOLDS
Associated Press

DALLAS — After two days of intense film study and painstaking analysis of the final 14 possessions in their end-of-game collapse in Game 2 of the NBA Finals, the Miami Heat finally came up with the reason why.

It wasn’t a highly technical explanation.

“We let one go,” Dwyane Wade said.

And entering Game 3, the Heat will try to let Game 2 go again. The way Miami sees it, carrying over the stigma of that loss — one of the worst late-game collapses in Finals history — would only doom them again tonight when the scene shifts to steamy Dallas for the first of three games on the Mavericks’ home floor.

Dallas rallied from 15 points down in the final seven minutes to beat Miami in Game 2, outscoring the Heat 22-5 to finish the game and knot the series. Thanks to that win, Mavs fans still may see another NBA title celebration, only this time, by the Western Conference champions and not a Heat team that hoisted a trophy at Dallas after the 2006 finals.

“In the playoffs, it’s a win or a loss. However it comes by, it’s a win or a loss,” Heat forward LeBron James said. “We’ve moved on from Game 2, seen the mistakes we’ve made. Seen some of the great things we’ve done as well. It’s a win or loss. The series is tied 1-1. We never get too high or too low in the series. We haven’t gotten too high or low in the regular season as well.”

Game 3 is crucial for so many obvious reasons, like the Heat wanting not to deal with another stumble and the Mavericks wanting to keep momentum rolling and retain home-court advantage. Statistically, there’s proof that it’s a Texas-sized swing game as well.

Since the NBA went to the 2-3-2 format for the finals, teams have now split the first two games 12 times. In the previous 11, the winner of Game 3 has always gone on to win the championship.

Big whoop, both teams said in response to that one.

“We just can’t let up. We’re not good enough to just relax,” said forward Dirk Nowitzki, who led Dallas’ late-game charge in Game 2 at Miami. “We need to play with an edge at all times in every game. So hopefully (tonight), with the crowd behind us, we’re going to have a great game. Just looking at this one game.”

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra was more succinct.

“I think both teams have bucked a lot of those numbers and odds up to this point already,” Spoelstra said. “We’re a non-traditional team.”

Maybe that’s one of the reasons why the Heat were so loose Saturday.

Players arrived at the arena around noon, most with headphones on as they walked off the bus, bobbing heads in time with the music and nodding to people as they walked by. James and Wade were chatting and laughing, a few players checked out the turf that would host an Arena Football League game later Saturday night and some stretched their arms to tap the goalposts as they walked across the floor where a basketball court will be tonight.

The mood couldn’t have been more different from when they walked off the floor in Miami on Thursday, stunned by what just happened.

“We’re coming home, but we know that’s no guarantee of anything,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. “We’ve lost at home this year in the playoffs. Now Miami has as well. The venue has significance, but it never guarantees anyone anything. .?.?. The mistake that we’re not going to make is feel like coming home is going to be something that helps get us over the hump. It’s not going to be like that. Both these teams are too good of road teams.”

Including the playoffs, the Mavericks have won 34 road games this season, tops in the NBA. Miami ranks second with 32.

The Heat also haven’t lost consecutive games since early March, winning after all six of their most recent losses by an average of 11.7 points. And in their last 24 games away from home, they’re 17-7.

All good signs for Miami now, given that if it doesn’t win one of the next three in Dallas, the season will end here.

“We’ve been a pretty resilient bunch all year,” Heat forward Udonis Haslem said. “We’ve bounced back every time we’ve been knocked down. I’m expecting the same thing with this situation.”

Dallas has won 12 of the last 14 meetings at home, six of those coming in single-digit games.

Terry cashes checks mouth writes

By JONATHAN FEIGEN
jonathan.feigen@chron.com

DALLAS — Through three games of the NBA Finals, the Miami Heat had generally shut down Jason Terry. But they could not shut him up. Few ever do.

Terry openly doubted whether LeBron James could keep up with him through the series, saying he would wear James out. “We’re going to see if he can do it for seven games,” Terry said.

He sniffed that the Miami defense, then controlling the series, was not as strong as the defense Dallas conquered in the first round. “Portland, by far, has the best D,” Terry claimed. He pledged again and again that the shots that had been clanging would begin to fall.

By the time he drove the Mavericks past the Heat on Thursday, he seemed ready to declare that James’ muscles were fake and that, with Dallas leading the NBA Finals 3-2, Mark Cuban needed to pack just one T-shirt for the trip to Miami.

“We all know Jet is a confident young man,” Dallas’ Dirk Nowitzki said. “He always has a lot to say to us in the locker room. He’s always talking. He’s just an energetic guy. He loves to talk, and he loves to hear himself talk.”

Terry does not deny it. As the forerunner of the recent wave of Seattle-bred NBA talent, he comes from the Gary Payton school of on-court decorum.

“It’s something I grew up with, watching my idols like Gary Payton and guys like that,” Terry said. “Being from the inner city, it’s just a part of my game.”

It was not, however, part of the Mavericks’ style or an easy mix with Nowitzki. When Steve Nash, Nowitzki’s closest friend in the league, left Dallas for Phoenix, the Mavericks signed Terry to provide a needed jolt of backcourt scoring. He was never expected to coolly run the offense as Nash had, but through their first season together, Nowitzki struggled with the change in style.

“We have a kind of love/hate relationship,” Nowitzki said. “We ride each other a lot. We talk to each other a lot. We argue a lot, even during games, but it’s all because we want to win.”

At times they come off like a weird German television version of Shrek and Donkey, with Nowitzki the put-upon, stoical hero bouncing between annoyed and amused as Terry runs his mouth.

Terry, however, has come as close as anyone to becoming the Mavericks’ second star, Nowitzki’s co-closer and a key to the series. After Dallas’ Game 3 loss, their second in the series and the second in which James shut down Terry in the fourth quarter, Nowitzki challenged Terry every bit as much as Terry had called out James.

“Jet hasn’t really been a crunch-time, clutch player for us the way we need him to,” Nowitzki said. “He’s a big reason why we’re here, because he’s one of the great fourth-quarter players we have in this league. But they’ve been able to really take that away.”

That changed in both games since, with Terry twice bolting past James in the closing minutes of Game 4 and shooting over him in Game 5. On Thursday, he added six assists, including an outstanding pass to set up Jason Kidd for a late 3-pointer.

“If you look at the whole playoffs, he’s been playing terrific all-around basketball,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. “With a great player like .?.?. Dirk, a guy of that magnitude, everybody wants to try to find who the No. 2 scorer is. Jet is a great scorer, he’s a great shooter, and he’s a great player.”

More than anything, he thinks of himself as a player with too much confidence to be denied, especially by himself.

“Regardless of what’s going on throughout three quarters of the game, in the fourth quarter I know I’m depended on to come through,” Terry said. “It’s my job. All season long, ever since I’ve been a Maverick, I’ve been the guy in the fourth quarter they depended on to either make plays or make shots. I really relish in that role.”