Popovich decides to cut losses against Rockets

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

HOUSTON — Two minutes into the second quarter of the Spurs’ first loss of the young season, Matt Bonner drilled a 3-pointer that capped a 13-2 run to tie things up with the Houston Rockets at 23-23.

It would be more than 30 minutes and eight straight misses before the Spurs would hit another from long range, and by then it did nothing but make a huge deficit slightly less embarrassing.

The Spurs came in with convincing victories over the Grizzlies — the team that ran them out of the playoffs last spring — and the Clippers, the biggest winners in post-lockout free agency. But Thursday, they were awful in a 105-85 loss that enabled the Rockets to celebrate their home opener in front of an announced sellout crowd of 18,267 at Toyota Center.

Houston was as sharp as the Spurs had been in their Wednesday night home victory over Los Angeles, making 50.6 percent of its shots. Rockets guard Kevin Martin scored 25 in the first three quarters and wasn’t even needed in the final period after Spurs coach Gregg Popovich elected to treat the second half like a preseason game.

In a post-lockout campaign that includes serial sets of back-to-back games and a few sets of three games in three nights, there will be plenty of peculiarities based on the reality of a brutal schedule.

On Thursday there was this: Spurs captain and future Hall of Famer Tim Duncan, willing and able to play, sitting the entire second half as his coach made a judgment based on the quirkiness of a 66-game schedule compressed into 120 days.

Popovich had a perfectly understandable explanation for limiting Duncan to just over 15 minutes of playing time and holding Manu Ginobili, who played only the halfway through the third period, to under 20 minutes.

The rationale came in bullet points:

“Down 18.”

“Third game in four nights.”

“On the road.”

“We weren’t playing well.”

Duncan exited the Spurs locker room without answering questions.

The ultra-competitive Ginobili wasn’t entirely pleased with throwing in the towel early, but understood the reasoning.

“(The Rockets) played a terrific game,” he said, “and after a back-to-back Pop never wants to risk going with everything to make our comeback because it gets dangerous and they just killed us.”

Ginobili predicted there will be more nights when Popovich holds Duncan, now 35, out of big chunks of games, perhaps holding him out of a few contests in their entirety.

“In a season like this one, I’m not going to say you’ll see it very often, but kind of often,” he said. “It’s really hard to send everybody to make a huge effort that you’re not sure is going to pay back. Then we have the (game on) Saturday, Jan. 2 and back-to-back (on Jan. 4-5).

“You have to be smart and just let it go and think about the next one.”

Popovich started thinking about Saturday’s game at the ATT Center against the Utah Jazz after the Rockets blitzed the Spurs in the final 4??1/2 minutes of the first half. With Martin leading the way by scoring 15 of his 25 in the game’s decisive stretch, the Rockets took a 34-31 advantage to 58-35 before the Spurs finished with a mini-flurry of their own and cut the lead to 18 at halftime.

“I’m not sure how many times I want to be down 18 in this shortened season and work Timmy, Manu and Tony (Parker) to work us out of that hole,” Popovich said. “Not this early in the season.

“Later on, depending on our situation, it might make more sense. But at this point, it was a great opportunity to treat it like training camp and get a lot of the younger kids out there and treat it like practice.”

Rookie Anderson keeps head up despite lost season

Rookie guard James Anderson earned his second career start Monday, replacing the injured Manu Ginobili in the Spurs’ 100-92 loss to Portland, but he knows not to make too much of it.

Someday soon, perhaps as early as Thursday’s game against Boston, Ginobili will be back in the lineup and Anderson will be back on his customary seat near the end of the Spurs’ bench.

“I’ll just wait for my name to be called,” Anderson said. “I’ll do whatever I can to support the team. If that’s standing on the sideline, cheering my guys on, that’s what I’ll do.”

For the player nicknamed “Big Game James” at Oklahoma State, this new role of glorified cheerleader takes some getting used to. Certainly, his first NBA season hasn’t gone as planned since the Spurs made him the 20th pick in last June’s draft.

Anderson has appeared in 23 games, averaging 3.7 points in 10:41 per outing. He scored five points Monday against Portland, going 2 of 4 from the field.

A stress fracture in his right foot, suffered in early November, cost Anderson 39 games. While he spent 10 weeks in rehabilitation, then another two on Development League assignment in Austin, the Spurs’ season went on without him.

Coach Gregg Popovich’s rotation took hold. Another sharpshooting rookie guard, Gary Neal, has enjoyed a breakout season off the bench.

Suddenly, Big Game James became No Game James.

“It’s a big adjustment, going from playing a lot of minutes to just playing every now and then,” said Anderson, a three-year starter and 2010′s Big 12 Player of the Year at OSU. “It’s just part of it. I’m just learning from sitting on the sidelines, picking up things here and there.”

In a way, third-year guard George Hill can relate to Anderson’s struggles. In another way, he can’t.

Hill remembers how difficult it was to learn the Spurs’ system as a 22-year-old rookie two seasons ago, and that was without a 21/2-month injury to overcome.

“That’s tough, especially with this system,” Hill said. “It takes you a year to really get it under your belt. I think James is coming along. He’s showing he wants to be here, working hard every day. That’s all you can ask from him.”

HOME OF THE FLOPPER: Finally, some of Ginobili’s best work has been officially recognized by a jury of his peers.

In this week’s edition of Sports Illustrated, the magazine anonymously polls NBA players on the question of, “Who is the best flopper in the game?”

Ginobili finishes second in the poll, drawing 18 percent of the vote, behind Cleveland forward Anderson Varejao. Houston forward Luis Scola, Ginobili’s teammate on Argentina’s national team, Lakers guard Derek Fisher and another Rocket, guard Kevin Martin, round out the top 5.

According to the magazine, 12 of the 32 floppers named in the poll played basketball outside of the United States before joining the NBA.

Spurs defense rises, better late than never

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

HOUSTON — There was a time that a game between the Spurs and Houston Rockets was likely to result in more bruises than points. The two teams would fight and claw and scratch and defend, and the first to 90 usually won.

“That was that damn Van Gundy guy,” said Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, referring to former Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy. “If he and I got together, we were lucky if both teams got over 50.”

On nights like Saturday, when the Spurs won a 115-107 shootout at the Toyota Center the likes of which have become the norm for these teams, those days seem like peach-basket ancient history.

The Spurs did not play the 48 minutes of championship-level defense they would like to, but they did play about two minutes worth in the fourth quarter.

In the end, that was enough.

Putting the brakes on a seesaw final frame, the Spurs (54-12) held Houston without a field goal for the last two minutes, got a tie-breaking basket from Tim Duncan and put the game away at the foul line.

“They were hitting big shots. We were hitting big shots,” said Spurs forward Richard Jefferson, whose team clinched its 14th straight season series against Houston. “At the end, it was just about getting stops.”

The arrival of coach Rick Adelman to Houston in 2007, as well as Yao Ming’s near-constant state of injury, has infused some offense into the I-10 rivalry.

Once upon a time, the Spurs and Rockets played 28 consecutive games without either eclipsing 100 points. After Saturday, both teams have surpassed triple digits in four of the past five meetings.

Tony Parker scored 21 points to lead a season-high eight Spurs players in double figures, Manu Ginobili chipped in 19, and Antonio McDyess, in his third start at center, logged 12 points and 12 rebounds.

But the Rockets, on the wrong end of the playoff bubble at 33-34, made sure the Spurs would not make it to Monday’s nationally televised rematch at Miami without a fight.

“We were right there with the best team in the league,” said Houston’s Chuck Hayes, whose team led 82-81 heading into the fourth. “One bounce, one loose ball, one basket in their advantage, and they were able to win.”

When the Spurs needed their biggest basket late in the game, they found it in a place both familiar and surprising: Duncan in the low post.

At times an afterthought in the Spurs’ offense this season, Duncan had just two field goals late into the fourth quarter, when Hayes tied the score at 107 on a pair of free throws. Duncan responded by posting the 6-foot-6 Hayes on the block, whirling and throwing in a jump hook straight out of 2005. On the Spurs’ next trip, Duncan made two free throws to extend the lead to 111-107.

“We know at any given time, T.D. is a threat on the low post,” guard George Hill said. “We just have to feed him sometimes.”

Of course, Duncan’s late points — which pushed him into double figures — wouldn’t have mattered if the Spurs hadn’t found a way to get, in Ginobili’s words, “the stops we weren’t getting in the third quarter and earlier in the fourth.”

Particularly, they had to find a way to slow Rockets guard Kevin Martin, who finished with 28 points on 9-of-23 shooting.

Before Duncan’s basket on Hayes, there had been three lead changes and six ties in the fourth quarter. The Spurs’ defense tightened just enough to ensure there would be no more of either.

Houston went 0 for 4 in the final 2:02, with Martin and Courtney Lee — another thorn in the Spurs’ side with 16 points — each missing twice.

“Everybody would like to keep teams in the 90s, but it doesn’t always happen,” Popovich said. “I thought we made a lot of good stops when we needed them against a team that really penetrates well.”

It was enough to make Popovich almost miss that Van Gundy guy. Almost.