Spurs notebook: Neal know his role as reliable Parker backup

In a perfect world, Gary Neal would prefer to do what he does best.

A scoring guard by trade, he would love to be given the green light to fire away whenever he is in the game.

With the Spurs in search of a point guard to back up All-Star Tony Parker last season, Neal often found himself in the unaccustomed position of having to run the second-unit offense instead of supplying it.

Entering his third NBA season, the 27-year-old Baltimore native is steeled to fill a similar role for the Spurs in the campaign to come.

“That’s pretty much how it went for me last year,” Neal said. “Unless an injury or something occurs, or I get beat out for the spot, I’ll probably be the backup point guard again.”

The 6-foot-4 Neal has plenty of competition for the job, starting with Patty Mills, the lightning-quick Australian who turned heads after his late-season arrival last year and at the London Olympics.

Rookie Nando de Colo and second-year UT product Cory Joseph will get a crack, too.

In a snapshot of how the race stands now, Neal started at point guard for the silver team in Wednesday night’s intrasquad scrimmage, while Mills backed him up.

Neal admits he heard the criticism last season that he is not a natural point guard.

“You hear lots of things about the backup point guard and me playing it,” Neal said. “Last year we went on a 20-game winning streak and won 10 games in a row in the playoffs with me as the backup point guard.”

Though Neal admits he was uncomfortable at his new position at first, he believes he grew more confident by season’s end.

His final numbers were almost identical to the season before, when he earned first-team All-Rookie honors. In 56 games in 2011-12, Neal averaged 9.9 points and shot 41.9 percent from 3-point range.

His assists nearly doubled, to 2.1 per game, while his turnovers remained static at 1.1 a game.

Up for debate: Ever the political animal, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich gave his team a unique bit of homework Thursday.

Before practice, he handed each player a DVD of Wednesday night’s presidential debate to take home and watch.

“Of course, we have so many foreign guys on our team, they were quick to point out they can’t vote, so they shouldn’t be obligated to watch the debate,” forward Matt Bonner said. “Regardless, they live here, so it’s good for them to be aware.”

Bonner, who plans to vote for incumbent Barack Obama over challenger Mitt Romney in November, said Popovich’s message was well received.

“Basketball isn’t everything,” Bonner said. “There are bigger things going on in the country we live in.”

Splitter limited: Center Tiago Splitter, hampered by back spasms, participated only in the non-contact portion of Thursday’s practice.

jmcdonald@express-news.net

Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN

Key dates

Saturday: First preseason game — vs. Montepaschi Siena, 7:30 p.m., ATT Center

Oct. 31: Regular-season opener — @Hornets, 7 p.m., KENS, NBA TV

Nov. 1: Home opener — vs. Thunder, 8:30 p.m., TNT

Olympic recap, quarterfinals

The Spurs’ Olympic contingent took a huge hit in Wednesday’s quarterfinals, with only Manu Ginobili advancing to the semifinals. (His “reward?” The opportunity to play, and possibly lose, to the United States for the third time in a month.) Patty Mills at least went down shooting, while Tony Parker and his French teammates simply went down in a meek loss to Spain.

Patty Mills: 26 points (9 for 20 shooting), 6 rebounds, 2 assists in to the United States. Mills did what he’s done for most of the Olympics – carry an Australian squad lacking its only elite international player. Against a different team, it might have made a difference. Against the U.S.A., all it did was delay the inevitable. It was impressive nonetheless, capping another strong Olympics for Mills and propelling him into his first full season in San Antonio with some momentum.

Manu Ginobili: 16 points (5 for 11 shooting), 8 rebounds, 3 assists in over Brazil. Ginobili has had better games in these Olympics. But he was still hugely impactful, doing a little bit of everything while playing 36 of a total 40 minutes. (His best play, a 360 spin move followed by a tomahawk dunk after being fouled on the floor, didn’t even count!) It’s entertaining in general to watch Manu hurtle across the court, but never more than when suiting up for his native land. The way he, Luis Scola, Carlos Delfino and Andres Nocioni play off of one another is a thing of beauty.

Tiago Splitter: 6 points (2 for 5 shooting), 4 rebounds, 4 assists in Brazil’s 82-77 loss to Argentina. Splitter had some nifty moments, most surprisingly with a series of deft passes. But he didn’t do nearly enough in a game Brazil was starving for anything of note to support Leandro Barbosa and Marcelinho, who combined for 22 points apiece.

Tony Parker: 15 points (6 for 20 shooting), 6 rebounds, 1 assist in to Spain. As Parker went, so did France, withering down the stretch in the face of Spain’s steady, methodical play. The beginning of the end came early in the fourth, when Parker blew a layup that would have given Les Bleus a five-point lead. They instead scored a paltry two points over the next seven minutes, a stretch in which Parker was powerless to avert another painful loss to Spain.

Boris Diaw: 15 points (6 for 11 shooting), 8 rebounds, 5 assists. The full Boris Diaw Experience in a single game. He was the best player on the court during the first half, at which point he was on pace for a triple double. But he went from homeless man’s Magic Johnson to regular homeless man in the second, registering five points, two rebounds and no assists over the final two quarters as France threw away a prime opportunity to avenge its loss to Spain in the 2011 EuroBasket final.

Nando De Colo: 2 points (0 for 3 shooting), 2 rebounds. De Colo has been inconsistent throughout the Olympics, but he still managed to show flashes of competence and potential in most of his games. Not so against Spain, amassing as many turnovers and personal fouls as points. France doesn’t expect or need him to be great, but even average would have been a huge help.

Spurs embarrassed the right amount

Column by Buck Harvey

OKLAHOMA CITY — The Thunder plugged into energy, desperation, and a man named Thabo.

James Harden stared at Tiago Splitter, and the Spurs stared at the floor. About the time Patty Mills checked in, the winning streak looked so wobbly, it needed one of Tim Duncan’s knee braces for support.

The flow of energy is sometimes mysterious in the NBA, but sometimes it is predictable, too. And while Thursday it was the Thunder’s turn, the Spurs got what they wanted from their first loss in 50 days.

Getting embarrassed can be a good thing.

All of it is new to the Spurs, who forgot how these things feel. But this wasn’t the streak of Wooden’s UCLA that was broken Thursday. It was an NBA streak, and they never last too long.

They never last long, either, when the energy divide is as severe as it was. And something Scott Brooks said afterward told of that.

“That was as well,” he said, “as you can play against the best team in basketball.”

The best team in basketball? The Thunder wanted to prove that wasn’t true.

“We never thought these guys had an advantage over us,” Kevin Durant said Thursday, “even though we lost a few.”

It’s an attitude based on more than bravado. The Thunder played well in the opener, taking a nine-point lead in the fourth quarter, then made Game 2 interesting with a late surge.

The Thunder are exactly what the Spurs coaches thought they were before the series began — scary good. And scarier for the Spurs is to let this series become tied heading back to San Antonio for a Game 5.

But the Spurs, no matter how hard they tried, couldn’t create this same kind of fear in their locker room, not after 20 straight wins. Maybe, too, they began to believe this best-team-in-basketball stuff.

So they were overwhelmed, and Gregg Popovich summed up how it happened. “I think they played smarter than we did,” he said of the Thunder, “and I think they played harder than we did.”

Smarter and harder usually wins, and sloppy never does. The Thunder ended with just seven turnovers, and one of those came at the end when Derek Fisher dribbled out the clock to be sportsmanlike.

The Spurs? They are supposed to be the smart, veteran team, and they looked closer to a team that had lost 20 in a row, with 21 turnovers.

A signpost of how much this series had reversed itself came in the third quarter. Then, Manu Ginobili made a slick behind-the-back pass to Tony Parker, who hit a three. The same sequence happened in Game 2, also in the third quarter, also with a behind-the-back pass for a Parker three.

The difference: The three put the Spurs up by 20 on Tuesday, and after this one, the Spurs trailed by 19.

Brooks moving Thabo Sefolosha to Parker helped OKC, and Sefolosha thought his length bothered Parker. But Parker has been defended by taller players before, and Brooks didn’t see that as the difference.

“I thought Thabo did a good job,” Brooks said, “but I thought the biggest adjustment — we played better.”

It’s that simple? Sometimes, in the NBA, it is. At home, where they hadn’t lost this postseason, facing a 0-3 deficit if they had lost, shouldn’t the Thunder have been breathing fire?

The Spurs couldn’t recreate that, no matter how many I-want-some-nasty speeches Popovich gave. And so now comes a telling moment in the series.

The Spurs lost only one game, but it felt like more than that. The Thunder so swarmed them, so took them out of what they do, that the Spurs were emotionally slapped.

This is what Popovich is leaning on: After Harden was staring and Patty playing, the energy for Game 4 should be equal.

bharvey@express-news.net
Twitter: @Buck_SA

SPURS VS. THUNDER
Western Conference finals
(Spurs lead best-of-7 series 2-1)

Game 1:

Game 2:

Game 3:

Game 4: Saturday – Spurs @ Thunder, 7:30 p.m. TNT

Game 5: Monday – Spurs vs. Thunder, 8:00 p.m. TNT

*Game 6: Wednesday – Spurs @ Thunder, 8:00 p.m. TNT

*Game 7: Friday – Spurs vs. Thunder, 8:00 p.m. TNT

– All times Central
*If necessary