Tag: Manu Ginobili

Popovich: Hill to start if Manu can’t

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

Manu Ginobili continues to be listed as doubtful for Sunday’s game with a sprained right elbow, but he was hard at work at the team’s practice facility on Friday.

While his teammates prepared for Game 1 of the Spurs-Grizzlies first-round playoff series, injured guard Ginobili worked on cardiovascular conditioning and strength training.

Some of his strength training included lifts with his injured right arm.

While reiterating that there is no change in Ginobili’s status for Sunday’s game, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich expressed confidence he would return to action during the series.

“He will be back at some point for sure,” he said.

If Ginobili does not return on Sunday, George Hill will start in his shooting guard spot.

“George Hill will probably take his place as a starter, if, in fact, Manu doesn’t play, and right now, it looks that way,” Popovich said. “We’ve got a day and a half to see if (Ginobili) heals any more, see what’s going on, but at this point George Hill would be the guy who starts.”

It will be important, Popovich said, for Hill to play the aggressive, purposeful game that makes him, in Popovich’s words, “Indiana George.”

“Pop means Indiana George from back in Indianapolis, from college and high school,” Hill said, “being a freak of nature on offense with defense coming first or second. But just having fun out there. Being aggressive at all times.”

Popovich said Hill will be important even if Ginobili suits up.

“With or without Manu, George Hill is important to us,” he said. “He’s a fine, young player and does a good job at both ends of the court. Manu’s injury has nothing to do with George, in that sense. Even with Manu, he’s got to play well for us.”

BRING IT: Convinced the Grizzlies rested key players in their final two games to ensure they would land in the No. 8 seed and face the Spurs, rather than the No. 2 seed Lakers, the Spurs have mustered up a sense of mild outrage.

“Let’s play basketball,” Hill said. “I can see them going through those steps. Who cares what they did, if they sat, or if the coach coached or didn’t coach. The playoffs are different though. I don’t know why they want us so bad. We’re 2-2 against them. Fifty percent. But if that’s what they want, to take their chances against us, then bring it, I guess.”

ZZ TIM: Spurs captain Tim Duncan hasn’t shaved in a while, a scraggly beard getting a tad shaggy in recent days.

Is it a traditional playoff beard, the sort favored by some pro athletes who vow not to shave as long as the playoffs continue?

“It’s more of a laziness beard,” he said, “but we’ll call it a playoff beard. I’ll take that. It won’t last for long, though. My wife’s already disowned me.”

Spurs’ subs trouble L.A.

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

LOS ANGELES – As soon Antonio McDyess walked into the Staples Center, the memory came flooding back.

The last time he was in the building, back in February, his tip-in at the buzzer helped the Spurs claim a one-point victory.

“I’ll probably remember that play for the rest of my life,” McDyess said.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich ensured McDyess would not get a chance to re-enact it Tuesday night.

Wary of the toll a season-ending back-to-back would take on his older players, Popovich rested four starters during a 102-93 Lakers victory, saving them for tonight’s game at Phoenix.

Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker joined the 36-year-old McDyess on the bench. Instead, Popovich started George Hill, Gary Neal, DeJuan Blair and Tiago Splitter alongside usual starter Richard Jefferson.

The Spurs nearly won anyway.

Kobe Bryant had 27 points and Lamar Odom scored 21 of his 23 in the second half, as the Lakers snapped their season-worst five-game losing streak in unsatisfying fashion. Not only did they struggle to pull away from the shorthanded Spurs until the fourth quarter, they might have lost oft-injured center Andrew Bynum for the start of the postseason with another knee injury.

“We came in with the mindset that we wanted to win,” Hill said. “We just came up short.”

Hoping to rest his regulars at some point during the season-ending road trip, but not wanting them to fall out of rhythm before the playoffs open Saturday or Sunday, Popovich made the choice to save 80 percent of his starting five for tonight’s finale at Phoenix.

It didn’t matter to Popovich that Tuesday’s defeat allowed Chicago to pull even in the race for the NBA’s top overall record (61-20), opening the door for home-court advantage in a potential Finals matchup to be decided by a 50-50 coin flip. The loss also ruined any chance the Spurs had of matching the franchise record of 63 wins, set in 2005-06, a pursuit that mattered even less to Popovich.

His focus, as always, remained on health and freshness, for the first round of the postseason.

“It makes more sense to play tomorrow than today,” Popovich said before the game. “Even if it was Phoenix tonight and the Lakers tomorrow, we’d end up sitting them.”

That explanation probably won’t satiate the conspiracy theorists, who will note Tuesday’s win ensured the Lakers (56-25) will finish no worse than third in the Western Conference, keeping the defending champions on the opposite side of the playoff bracket.

Before the game, Lakers coach Phil Jackson assumed all the normal Spurs would play to some extent.

“That’s what I would do,” Jackson said.

Instead, Popovich ran out a collection of subs, got double figures from six of them led by 16 from Neal, and nearly sent the Lakers to the depths of despair.

Popovich certainly looked wise to rest his stars early in the second quarter, when Bynum hobbled off with a hyperextended right knee. Bynum is scheduled for an MRI today, and will not accompany the Lakers to Sacramento for their season-ender.

The Spurs entered Tuesday’s game believing the Lakers’ problems to be overblown. Before tipoff, Popovich again called them the team to beat in the West.

“No one believes they suck,” Spurs forward Richard Jefferson said.

By trotting out a JV lineup, the Spurs gave the Lakers little opportunity to prove as much.

The Spurs led briefly in the fourth quarter, and the game was still tied at 83 with 5:55 to play.

The Lakers couldn’t begin to breathe easy until Bryant’s deep 3-pointer with 2:56 to go gave them a 96-88 lead. Moments later, Odom converted a bucket-and-a-foul, pushing L.A.’s edge to 11, its largest of the night.

“The Lakers were the Lakers at the end,” said Blair, who had 12 points and 11 rebounds for the Spurs.

The Lakers were not the Lakers for 3 ½ quarters, and that should add to the concerns about them more than the victory subtracts them.

“It got us out of our losing spin,” Jackson said. “So that’s OK.”

Popovich was proud enough of his team.

“We’re playing better than we were when we lost six in a row,” Popovich said, referring to a season-long losing streak that ended April 3. “That’s a good thing, I guess.”

Popovich still isn’t buying the latest rumors of the Lakers’ demise. They slumped before the All-Star break, only to win 17 of 18 after it. Last season, they went 12-10 after March 1, and still won the title.

Whatever is troubling the Lakers, Popovich said, “will fade away the very first night of the playoffs.”

On Tuesday, with the playoffs still in the future, the Lakers’ struggles were still front and center, compounded by Bynum’s injury. If all eyes were on the postseason, the Spurs won even in defeat.

Maybe this one wasn’t quite as fulfilling, or quite as memorable, as McDyess’ February tip-in. But it was close.

More than No. 1 seed, Spurs seek momentum

ATLANTA — Sunday’s slump-busting 114-97 win over Phoenix brought laughter back to the Spurs’ locker room.

Players joked and cut up, basking in the end of a six-game losing streak that had begun to wear on all of them.

Leave it to Tim Duncan, the team’s captain and emotional touchstone, to bring the room back down.

“This,” he said, “was a good start.”

Translation: Hold the champagne shower. There is work to be done.

Now that the worst losing streak of Duncan’s career is over, the Spurs must set about the business of the rest of the season.

More than simply holding onto the No. 1 seed in the Western Conference, the Spurs hope to use their final five games, beginning tonight in Atlanta, to establish momentum heading into the playoffs.

“We’re just going to play out the season, and whatever happens happens,” Duncan said. “We want to start playing like we want to play. That’s what matters.”

Having already secured their second Southwest Division championship in three seasons, and no worse than a No. 2 seed in the playoffs, the Spurs hold a 2 1/2-game lead over the L.A. Lakers for the conference’s top spot.

Though home-court advantage seems like an attractive carrot, winning for winning’s sake should be enough to drive the Spurs. They are 9-9 since the start of March, with six losses coming during the historic skid that began after Duncan went down with a sprained left ankle March 21.

“You don’t want to go into the playoffs losing,” guard George Hill said. “You want to go in with a happy mind.”

For the Spurs, the next five games are less about seeding and standings, and more about confidence-building.

Coach Gregg Popovich says Duncan’s injury, which cost the All-Star power forward four games, threw the team “off balance.” Sunday’s win over Phoenix was the first step in regaining equilibrium.

“Now, the most important game is Atlanta, because we have a chance to get better,” Popovich said. “That’s what all teams are trying to do — to get their execution down as the playoffs approach.”

Whether a team’s late-season momentum, or lack thereof, carries over to a playoff run remains a subject of debate.

In Duncan’s first 13 seasons, the Spurs won 74.4 percent of their games in March and April. Their worst close came in 2008-09, when they finished 15-10, then lost to Dallas in the first round of the playoffs.

Last season, Boston dropped seven of its final 10 games, then blasted a Miami team in the first round that had won 12 of its last 13.

Conversely, Phoenix went 17-4 over the final two months last year, a string of success coach Alvin Gentry believed helped propel the Suns into the Western Conference finals.

“When we went into the playoffs, we felt like we were playing better than anybody in the league,” Gentry said. “I think there’s a confidence about it. You get to the point where you think you’re going to win every series.”

Gentry, however, doesn’t think the playoff-tested Spurs, who boast four players with NBA championship rings and two others who have played in the Finals, need a strong finish to make a playoff run.

“These guys have been together eight, nine years,” Gentry said, referring to the Spurs’ core of Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili. “They’re not going to go in thinking, ‘Oh no, we’re not playing well, we may lose.’”

Now in Atlanta and off of cloud nine, the Spurs would prefer not to take that chance. A powerful closing kick doesn’t guarantee a title, but it also couldn’t hurt.

“Going into the playoffs with a winning streak and playing the right way,” Hill said. “That’s going to be motivation for us.”