Tag: Oklahoma City

Pop wants Spurs to remember ‘nasty’ feeling

By Jeff McDonald

Four months later, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich is still asking for some nasty.

His players say they are ready and willing to oblige.

“A lot of people still see us as the nice Spurs,” point guard Tony Parker said. “This year, I think we need to play like we’re hungry and we want it.”

It is a question of attitude and a question of identity, which Popovich believes the Spurs surrendered in the final four games of last year’s playoff ejection against Oklahoma City.

That “nasty” Popovich asked for and received during a memorable timeout in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals is what the Spurs aim to channel into a full 82-game slate this season.

“Everybody needs to eat some gunpowder before every game,” said forward Stephen Jackson, who often plays as if he’s ingested an entire arsenal. “We need to be more fired up, a tougher team.”

It would be overkill to suggest tonight’s preseason opener against Italian team Montepaschi Siena at the ATT Center represents the opening salvo of the Spurs’ own personal hunger games.

But it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Siena to practice a duck-and-cover drill beforehand, just to be safe.

Popovich’s intent from the start of training camp — which began with a film-session flashback of last summer’s collapse against the Thunder — has been to nurture a growing chip on the shoulder of his players.

“We have to stop saying, ‘Oh, we won a lot of championships and we’ll come back,’?” Parker said. “We have to play with more attitude — like Pop said, more nasty — all season long.”

Nasty lasted for about two games of last year’s series with OKC, as the Spurs watched their 2-0 lead dissolve into a six-game ouster that propelled the Thunder to the NBA Finals for the first time.

“There was an identity theft that took place in that playoff,” Popovich said. “We played like the Spurs the first couple of games. Oklahoma City, I believe, learned from that and they played like we did offensively, sharing the ball and trusting their teammates, and we lost our identity.

“I want to make sure we understand that and get that back.”

Popovich hopes that nasty attitude will manifest itself most often on the defensive end this season. For the 16th consecutive fall, he opened training camp vowing to improve the Spurs’ mercurial ability to guard people.

As the Spurs have transformed into a more offensive-oriented team in recent years, their defensive standing has declined.

In 2011-12, they ranked second in the NBA by scoring 103.7 points per game. Defensively, they were below the league average in both points allowed (96.5 per game) and field-goal percentage defense (44.8 percent).

“We’ve got to do our best to become a better defensive team,” Popovich said. “That’s easy to say, but it’s more about a consistency that we didn’t have.”

A fair question: How can a team that made limited personnel changes, bringing back 13 players from last year’s squad, expect to make those strides?

“It’s just an all-around team focus on being a defensive ballclub,” power forward Tim Duncan said. “I think the last couple years, our focus has kind of been on offense, trying to up our tempo and be more of a scoring team. We want to keep that, obviously. But defensively, we’re going to have to be better.”

As the Spurs proved for a brief shining moment last June, there’s no problem an attitude adjustment can’t fix.

Their season of nasty begins tonight.

jmcdonald@express-news.net
Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Spurs on the verge of collapse; Game 5 a major statement for Thunder

The San Antonio Spurs went into Game 5 knowing that the game that night was a “must win” though no one in the Spurs organization would actually say those words.  What followed was a convincing win over the elder statesmen of the NBA and more praise from Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich who earler called OKC Guard Kevin Durant the “argubly the best player on the planet.”

“It’s not like we’re playing the Sisters of the Poor,” Popovich said. “I don’t care who you are, you can’t turn the ball over 21 times for 28 points,” Gregg Popovich

For the Spurs to salvage this series, there is only one thing to do and that is win.

“In a nutshell, we have to go win one on the road. There’s not really nothing else to say,” Guard Stephen Jackson

Game 6 is set for Wednesday, 8pm in Oklahoma City.

 

NBA will try, but can Manu be caught?

Column by Buck Harvey

If NBA officials went to the archives, they would likely find Manu Ginobili with a flop or four worth a fine. He’s been guilty.

But that’s over a decade in the league, with thousands of falls and groans and whistles. Ginobili has stuck his sizeable nose into the breach as consistently as anyone in the game, and he’s been clever 99.9 percent of the time.

That’s why calls have often gone his way, and why a replay won’t reveal much more than what a ref sees live.

To Ginobili, this is art.

That wasn’t the reaction from most players Wednesday after the NBA officially announced its new anti-flopping policy. While Ginobili said, “I don’t think it’s going to change much,” others around the league saw this as a positive step.

“It’s good,” Oklahoma City’s James Harden said, for example. “Guys can’t be flopping and get away with it anymore.”

Those who watched last spring’s Western Conference finals might remember Harden. He’s the one whose head snapped backward on nearly every jump shot he took, as if violently fouled.

But Harden excels, in part, because he understands this game within the game. It’s subtle, and it’s not going away. It didn’t in 2008, either, the first time the league thought it could curb flopping with fines.

Ginobili’s name came up then, too.

“There goes half of Manu’s salary,” Brent Barry joked.

But Ginobili kept his money, and he kept doing what he does. He didn’t change, but maybe others have.

Now, amateurs try what players such as Ginobili and Shane Battier have perfected. Blake Griffin’s clumsy attempts have been laughable, and LeBron James has sometimes been a king of comedy, too. The strongest man on the court has occasionally collapsed as his confidence once did.

Then there was the worst acting performance of this era. Shaquille O’Neal once said “Cowards flop,” yet there he was at the end of his career, helpless against Dwight Howard, opting to fall to the floor as if he weighed 150 pounds instead of 350.

Howard dunked, and the announcer that night screamed, “Shaquille O’Neal flops!”

Last spring brought more of the same. Indiana coach Frank Vogel accused the Heat of flopping before their playoff series began.

“Nobody does it better than the Heat,” Vogel said, and Memphis’ Zach Randolph disagreed.

Randolph said his playoff opponents, the Clippers, were the NBA’s best floppers “by far.”

But even those who agree there is too much flopping aren’t sure how easy it is to define. Ginobili is Exhibit A. After all, shouldn’t they have figured him out years ago?

He’s been the face of the fake foul. The Mavericks dedicated a scoreboard video to him, and the Onion, the satirical news organization, said this in a headline:

“Overacting Manu Ginobili Takes Charge, Plays Dead.”

More telling, a newspaper recently presented Ginobili with “The Vlade Divac Lifetime Achievement Award.” The writer called Ginobili the “Olivier of the NBA.”

But that’s just it. Ginobili is better than the rest. Among his basketball gifts — along with toughness and skill and vision — is anticipating contact.

Sometimes there is considerable contact. Ginobili didn’t become El Contusión by pretending to be hit.

Sometimes, too, there isn’t much contact. But Ginobili is usually in position and ready to react to what is there. It’s smart, and it changes games, and it has driven opposing players and fans mad.

But this season, they say they are going to clean this up. They are going to use replays to see if fines are necessary.

So they will look closely when an elbow touches Ginobili’s chest, or maybe it’s a forearm. They will see Ginobili fall, and they will try to determine why, and they will come to the same conclusion referees came to long ago.

The guy’s good.

bharvey@express-news.net
Twitter: @Buck_SA