Tag: Manu Ginobili

Spurs notebook: Bad shooting doesn’t concern Duncan

MINNEAPOLIS — Spurs captain Tim Duncan seemed amused Saturday to learn about Raptors coach Dwane Casey’s new motivational tool. Casey had a 1,300-pound boulder placed in the locker room at Air Canada Centre to reinforce a “pound the rock” theme in his first season as Toronto’s coach.

Duncan adopted Gregg Popovich’s hammer-the-rock philosophy as a rookie, and he continues to lean on it through a tough start to his season. His playing time has been limited through the first four games for a variety of reasons: three first-quarter fouls in the season opener and Popovich’s decision to sit him during the second half in Houston on Thursday. Playing time aside, Duncan also has struggled with his shot.

Heading into tonight’s game at Minnesota, Duncan has made only 14 of 41 shots (34.2 percent). A career 50.8 percent shooter, Duncan said there is little to do but keep firing away until his accuracy returns.

“I finally got one to drop late,” he said of his 4-of-13 shooting against the Jazz on Saturday. “I’m getting just about every shot I want. I just can’t seem to put them in the hole.

“Hopefully, down the stretch here in the next couple of games, I can finally get some to go.”

SHORT-TIMERS: Popovich’s plan to limit the playing time of his veteran players — especially the Big Three of 35-year-old Duncan, 34-year-old Manu Ginobili and 29-year-old Tony Parker — is off to a good start.

Richard Jefferson’s average of 29.0 minutes per game is tops among all players. Of the Big Three, Parker’s 28.8 minutes per game is tops. Ginobili averages only 25.8 minutes per game and Duncan just 22.3, less than backup center-forward Tiago Splitter’s 24.8.

Ten Spurs average at least 14.8 minutes per game as Popovich has gone to his bench early and often, mindful of the grind of 66 games in 120 days.

Except for the opener, when Duncan left early with three fouls, Jefferson has been the first starter to come out, replaced each time by rookie Kawhi Leonard. He has been getting significant time with the second unit, even late in games.

“Over the course of 10-plus seasons, I’ve played 42 minutes a night (but I’ve also) played 31 minutes a night,” Jefferson said. “It doesn’t really matter. It’s a matter of getting in that group.

“The second unit is without Manu and Tony and Tim, so I’m able to get a few more looks, a few more shots. I feel comfortable in that group. But in whatever Pop needs, whatever position he puts me in, I’m going to try my best.”

THREE-FICIENCY: With the notable exception of the loss in Houston, the Spurs have been remarkably efficient from long range. Their 10-for-16 shooting beyond the arc in the victory over Utah pushed their season percentage to 37.6. Without their 2-for-17 performance against the Rockets, they are 30 for 68 (44.1 percent).

Ginobili made his first five 3-pointers against the Jazz. Utah’s C.J. Miles got a finger on his sixth attempt, deflecting it enough that it fell short of the rim.

“First two games I felt pretty good, but in Houston I couldn’t make one,” Ginobili said. “(Saturday) it felt great. I’m not the kind of shooter who will go 5 for 5. It was different (Saturday). We moved the ball. I didn’t force the shots. I was open, and I made them.”

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

Spurs drill Mavs in 3-point no-contest

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

The first sign something had gone awry came when Matt Bonner — not typically a point guard nor a ball-handler — dribbled away about 12 seconds of the shot clock before finding himself trapped between a pair of 7-footers in Dallas blue.

Bailed out by a timeout with 4.8 seconds left on the shot clock, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich drew up a play that almost certainly didn’t include Richard Jefferson milking about 4.4 of those seconds before hot-potatoing the ball to backup point guard T.J. Ford about 5 feet behind the 3-point stripe.

After his Hail Mary found the bottom of the net, one of 11 3-pointers the Spurs would make in the first half of Thursday’s 93-71 rout of the defending NBA champion Mavericks, Ford offered the only reaction that seemed appropriate.

He shrugged.

“I didn’t give a you-know-what,” Ford said. “I just threw it up there, and it went in.”

That was the first half in a nutshell for the Spurs, who used a red-hot opening to their first 5-0 start at the ATT Center since 2007-08.

Gary Neal earned his second career start in place of injured All-Star guard Manu Ginobili and set the tone early, burying a pair of 3-pointers in the game’s first 89 seconds.

By halftime, the Spurs had hit 11 of 18 from beyond the arc, equaling both the number of total field goals Dallas had made and turnovers the Mavs had committed.

At that point, the Spurs had outscored the Mavs from 3-point range by a startling margin of 33-0. Bonner had outscored Dallas’ starting five 11-8. Not surprisingly, the Spurs led convincingly at half, 55-29.

“It’s always like that,” said Bonner, who made five 3-pointers en route to 17 points, out? scoring Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki combined. “Misses are contagious, and makes are contagious.”

In the second half, an epidemic case of clank-itis broke out at the ATT Center.

With Dallas (3-5) playing its fourth game in five nights, and the Spurs (5-2) playing their third in four, the final two quarters were played on fumes. The third quarter, in which the teams combined to miss 33 of 41 shots, was lockout ball at its not-so-finest.

The Spurs scored just 11 points in the frame, yet saw their halftime lead of 26 shaved by just two points heading into the fourth.

“Neither team was very sharp,” said Popovich, whose team finished 16 of 33 from 3-point range. “We’re thrilled to have the win. We’re not going to give it away.”

Nowitzki, who came in averaging better than 22 points, struggled through a 3-for-11 night on his way to six points. For the reigning Finals MVP, it was the worst scoring night since Dec. 18, 2009 when he notched six points in 10 minutes in a loss to Houston, a game Nowitzki left early after a collision with the Rockets’ Carl Landry.

“You didn’t see the real Dirk tonight, that’s for sure,” Popovich said.

The list of Spurs who outscored Nowitzki included Jefferson (16 points, seven rebounds), Neal (12 points), Tony Parker (11 points, eight assists), Danny Green (eight) and Ford (seven).

Dallas coach Rick Carlisle refused to let the rugged schedule take all the blame for the dinosaur egg the Mavs laid.

“San Antonio’s energy was better to start the game,” said Carlisle, whose team made just 1 of 19 3-pointers. “We struggled, but their competitive level was higher and that was the difference in the game.”

And sometimes, as Ford proved with a prayer and a shrug early in the second quarter, the difference is in catching a team on the right night.

Ford’s clock-beating bomb, which inflated a 14-point lead to 17, was his only field goal until the fourth quarter.

“That was nothing that you can practice,” Ford said. “Just great timing.”

In a lockout-compressed season like this one, sometimes timing is everything.