Tag: Josh Howard

Parker v. Harris: A playoff rivalry renewed

By Jeff McDonald

It would probably be overstatement to say Tony Parker still has nightmares about Devin Harris.

But Parker does recall the playoff series Harris had with Dallas in 2006, and the way it ruined one of the  most promising of Spurs seasons.

Harris returns to the ATT Center as Utah’s starting point guard on Sunday, when the Spurs and Jazz open a first-round series. The last time Harris was here in the playoffs, he was carving the Spurs up in the 2006 Western Conference semifinals.

“With Dallas, he was like a young buck,” Parker recalled Saturday. “He was playing with a lot of energy. He, like, had no conscience. Now he’s like running the team. It’s a little different, but he’s doing a good job.”

Harris, then in his second season out of Wisconsin, averaged 12.7 in the Mavs’ seven-game series victory. He averaged nearly 21 points in Games 2, 3, 4, all of which Dallas won to take an insurmountable series lead.

Josh Howard, another key member of the 2006 Mavericks, is now on the Utah roster as well.

The Mavericks went on to the NBA Finals, where the lost to Miami. The Spurs went home in the second round after winning 63 games in the regular season.

That series was fresh in the Spurs’ mind in February of 2008, when Dallas traded Harris to New Jersey as part of the Jason Kidd deal. Then, Parker suggested he was happy to have Harris out of the Western Conference.

“To be honest with you, I’m really happy for that trade,” Parker said at the time.

Harris hasn’t quite lived up to that promise since, though he did earn an All-Star nod in 2008-09 with the Nets before coming to Utah in the Deron Williams trade.

Parker, meanwhile, has earned three more All-Star berths plus an NBA Finals MVP in 2007, and is playing perhaps the best basketball of his life this season.

Harris, 29, averaged 11.3 points and five assists in the regular season. As his 2006 run against the Spurs reminds, he still has the potential to cause problems for a playoff opponent.

“You have to slow him down, try to contain him and find him in transition,” Parker said. “We know if he gets going, he can cause us a lot of trouble.”

Spurs’ Leonard crams for NBA test

A month ago, Spurs rookie Kawhi Leonard was sitting in the bleachers at San Diego State’s Viejas Arena, watching his former teammates beat Southern Utah in their season opener.

He only wished it felt like he had never left.

“The lockout was tough, not just on me but on every rookie,” Leonard said. “I was ready to get started in the NBA.”

After 150 days of labor limbo, Leonard’s education as an NBA player began, finally, with the opening of training camp last week.

Between now and the Spurs’ Dec. 26 regular-season opener against Memphis, the 20-year-old small forward will be asked to cram nearly six months of NBA 101 into a little more than two weeks.

Obtained in a draft-night trade that sent popular guard George Hill to Indiana, Leonard — taken 15th overall — arrives as the Spurs’ highest-drafted rookie since Tim Duncan went No. 1 in 1997.

Though coach Gregg Popovich has sought to tamp down expectations for Leonard, the Spurs clearly did not part with a key rotation piece like Hill to bring in a player they did not think could contribute soon.

“Kawhi is what we expected, in that we knew he was a hard worker; that he was a committed player; that he responded well defensively, and rebounding-wise,” Popovich said. “Already he’s a little more explosive than we expected — the stops and starts, that sort of thing.”

Even without the benefit of summer league, offseason workouts with the Spurs’ player development coaches or even a full training camp, Leonard — 6-foot-7 with catcher’s mitt hands — can be expected to quickly work his way into the team’s muddled small-forward mix.

For now, 31-year-old Richard Jefferson is the apparent starter, with the Spurs still chasing at least one veteran — Washington’s Josh Howard — on the free-agent market.

In terms of learning curve, Leonard already is five days ahead of fellow first-rounder Cory Joseph, the Texas point guard the Spurs took 29th. A native Canadian, Joseph has yet to practice while clearing up immigration red tape.

With the Spurs hoping to get younger and more athletic — not to mention more defensive-minded — on the wing, Leonard should find a role relatively quickly.

“He has a knack for the ball, you can already see it,” said second-year guard James Anderson, who trained with Leonard in Las Vegas during the lockout. “His defensive tools will help us out. His youth, getting out and running the floor, it will bring us more firepower.”

Spurs rookie Kawhi Leonard (center) tosses the ball to Danny Green (left) as DeJuan Blair looks on at a recent Spurs practice. (Kin Man Hui / kmhui@express-news.net)

In two seasons at San Diego State, Leonard logged 40 double-doubles, second in school history behind Michael Cage. As a sophomore last season, he averaged 15.5 points and 10.6 rebounds as a second-team All-American.

The most daunting obstacle standing between Leonard and early playing time is the calendar.

One week after draft day, the NBA locked out its players. For the first five months of his professional career, Leonard couldn’t contact his new coaches, get into his new locker room or draw a paycheck. If he ever regretted his decision to leave school early for a lockout, Leonard would never admit it.

“I got drafted 15,” he said. “That was my dream growing up.”

In place of a proper offseason with Spurs coaches, Leonard worked out with future teammates such as Anderson and Jefferson, grilling them on the basics of the playbook. He also watched film of Spurs games, hoping to pick up pointers by osmosis.

“I’m just trying to learn the offense so once I get in the game, I won’t be clueless,” Leonard said.

His NBA career delayed for 150 days, Leonard is glad to at last be on the court for his first training camp. His college career is over, but for Leonard, the education is just beginning.

“I watched these guys growing up, and now I’m on the court with them,” Leonard said. “I just try to have fun and open my eyes and ears so I can learn a lot.”

Jefferson could survive Amnesty Day

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

Today is Amnesty Day across the NBA, the date by which teams must decide whether to exercise their so-called “amnesty provision” on a player for this season, or save it for a campaign to come.

For Richard Jefferson, long named near the top of every speculative “to-be-amnestied” list, today could mark the last day of his Spurs career. Or it could be the first day of the rest of his third season in silver and black.

A red-letter day indeed, except Jefferson didn’t exactly have it circled on his calendar.

“I didn’t even know until you told me,” a grinning Jefferson said after Thursday’s practice. “I could have gone to bed tonight a happy man.”

Judging by the way his head coach has been raving about him, not to mention the way the free-agent market has been drying up, perhaps Jefferson needn’t lose sleep anyway.

Though Gregg Popovich didn’t go so far as to rule out the prospect of amnesty for ? Jefferson, it certainly sounds as if the coach is preparing to open the season with the 31-year-old small forward still in the fold.

“It’s kind of interesting,” Popovich said. “Everybody’s always asking about amnesty, and I’m always wondering, ‘Why Richard?’ As if we didn’t advance in the playoffs because of Richard.”

Under the amnesty provision, teams are granted one “get-out-of-a-bad-deal” card, allowing them to waive one player and scrub his contract from the payroll for salary cap and taxpaying purposes.

Waiving Jefferson, who is owed $30.5 million over the next three seasons, would nudge the Spurs’ payroll below the luxury-tax line, allowing them access to the full $5 million mid-level exception in free agency.

With speculation swirling since the start of camp, Jefferson has deflected questions about his future.

“It’s one of those things where you just approach this game like a professional,” Jefferson said. “There’s trade rumors, things always happen. I respect the Spurs and whatever they decide to do, I’ll support.”

Absent a readily available replacement, however, the Spurs seem disinclined to part with their starting small forward. Josh Howard’s decision Thursday to accept a one-year deal in Utah made keeping Jefferson an even more attractive option, at least for this season.

It also helps explain Popovich’s impassioned — and largely unsolicited — Amnesty Day Eve defense of Jefferson’s two-season tenure in San Antonio.

“Each year, he’s understood the system more and done a better job,” Popovich said. “I think he wants to come back and have an even better year than he did last year. I think he was fifth in the league in shooting his threes, and he got better defensively. I think he’ll move forward from there.”

Though Jefferson’s scoring average dipped from 12.3 points to 11 last season, he was more efficient in his second year with the Spurs than his first. His 44-percent clip from 3-point range was not only the fifth-best in the NBA, but also a career high.

Jefferson became a lightning rod for criticism during the top-seeded Spurs’ disappointing first-round playoff ouster against Memphis, totaling 10 points in the final four games. He was benched for the second half of the Game 6 clincher.

Jefferson was not the only player to sag in that series, Popovich noted.

“I don’t think anybody played great,” Popovich said. “Maybe I should have coached better. Maybe three or four players should have played better, but everybody kind of singled out Richard, which was pretty unfair.”

The Spurs could opt to save their amnesty card until the offseason, when they will also have Tim Duncan’s $21.2 million coming off the books and a deeper free-agent pool to chase.

For now, signs point to Jefferson surviving to Saturday, when the Spurs open the preseason at Houston. Until Amnesty Day has come and gone, however, he will sleep with one eye open.

“I’ve had a great time here, and I’m looking forward for it to continue,” Jefferson said. “If something does happen, I’ll be the first to know.”