Tag: San Antonio Spurs

Miami ‘D’ hangs on in fourth

By JONATHAN FEIGEN
jonathan.feigen@chron.com

DALLAS — All those days in the gym, Dirk Nowitzki has worked on all those moves and launched all those shots just for these moments.

The spins. The fadeaways. The impossibly high release. They were all there as the final seconds of Game 3 of the NBA Finals slipped away. And Nowitzki had been on a roll, scoring 12 consecutive points to give Dallas a chance.

But Udonis Haslem wasn’t at any of those workouts. With the game in Nowitzki’s hands, the Miami Heat put Haslem on Nowitzki, and he never let him loose. Haslem forced a turnover, then masterfully contested the shot Nowitzki missed at the buzzer as Miami held on for an 88-86 win Sunday at American Airlines Center to take a 2-1 series lead.

“The look with four seconds to go, I think it was as good as you can get it,” Nowitzki said.

Added Miami coach Erik Spoelstra: “That was a very similar situation to what we saw the other night. Had a different matchup. That’s a makeable shot. But (Haslem) did a great job keeping his chest in front of him and forcing him into a fadeaway. Nowitzki is a tough player.

“That shot hung up in the air about as long as it was in between Game 2 and Game 3. It was a good offensive play and a good defensive play. And he happened to miss.”

Of the 11 previous Finals in which the teams split the first two games in the current 2-3-2 format, the team that has won Game 3 won the series.

“This is a total win,” said Dwyane Wade, who led Miami with 29 points. “You want to win the game on the defensive end of the floor, and we got a stop.”

The Heat were burned in Game 2 after letting the ?Mavs erase a 15-point lead in the final seven minutes. Sunday, they were again up with seven minutes left, this time by seven.

And just as he had at the same point of Game 2, Nowitzki went to work. He scored the Mavericks’ next 12 points including when he cut to the rim for a slam with 2??1/2 minutes left.

“He knows he’s going to have to carry a certain load, not just a scoring load,” Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle said. “He’s going to have to make plays. We’d like to make it easier for him.”

After Wade hit a jumper, Nowitzki dropped in a fadeaway to tie the game with 1:40 remaining, giving him 34 points — 15 in the fourth quarter.

The Heat found a way to win partly because of a big shot from a struggling member of their Big 3.

Chris Bosh had made just 15 of 51 shots in the Finals, but he took a pass from LeBron James and swished a baseline jumper from 16 feet, giving Miami an 88-86 lead with 39.6 seconds left.

“That’s fundamental basketball at its best,” Spoelstra said. “You see an open man. You hit an open man.

“The important thing we did we didn’t necessarily do in Game 2 was trust. The ball moved. The play wasn’t designed for him. The ball moved, and we hit the open guy. I don’t care what happened to that point. He makes winning plans. He made a big one for us.”

In Game 2, Spoelstra had Bosh on Nowitzki during his string of clutch shots. This time, Haslem locked down Nowitzki as Bosh could not. After Bosh’s jumper, Haslem closed so quickly that Nowitzki looked for Shawn Marion in the corner, but threw his pass away with 30.2 seconds left.

The Mavericks, however, had a last chance after James missed a 3-pointer with 4.9 seconds left.

Nowitzki created enough space to get his fadeaway off cleanly from 16 feet out. But the ball bounced harmlessly off the rim at the buzzer.

“He’s a great player, 7 feet, so he’s going to shoot over me,” Haslem said. “I’ve got to make it tough on him.”

Jason Kidd had nine points and 10 assists for the Mavericks, but also four turnovers. Giveaways haunted Dallas throughout the game, especially the first half, helping keep Miami comfortably ahead.

“We have to have somebody step up besides Dirk,” Kidd said. “We have to figure out how to get up front and play up front. The big thing is we’ve got to be able to make plays late in the game. Game 2 we made the plays, Game 3 we just didn’t.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Nowitzki chastises Heat stars’ antics

By Jonathan Feigen
jonathan.feigen@chron.com

MIAMI — Dwyane Wade laughed and explained that he and LeBron James were merely toying with the media.

They were not caught on camera seeming to mock Dirk Nowitzki and the fever he battled in Game 4 by feigning illness. They were setting up the media to blow another Heat story out of proportion.

Nowitzki was not amused.

“I just thought it was a little childish, a little ignorant,” Nowitzki said. “I’ve been in this league for 13 years. I’ve never faked an injury or an illness before. It’s over to me. It’s not going to add anything extra to me. This is the NBA Finals. If you need an extra motivation, you have a problem.

“We’re one win away from my dream, what I’ve worked on for half of my life. This is really all I’m worried about. This is all I’m focusing on.”

That was enough, however, to spark another Heat wave of scrutiny on James and Wade. Getting called “childish” and “ignorant” was just the latest accusation in an unceasing run since they joined forces 11 months ago. But for James, who said the improv was not an issue or worth discussing, there are greater concerns heading into tonight’s Game 6.

After his offensive no show in Game 4 and late-game disappearance in Game 5, a team that celebrated last July as if it won a championship trails the Mavericks 3-2 with James facing different sorts of questions.

In five Finals games, he has just 11 fourth-quarter points — just two in the fourth of the Mavs’ wins in Games 4 and 5. He has yet to score a point when the teams have been separated by five or fewer points in the final five minutes. Nowitzki has 26 in those situations.

Though James has generally said he was playing well and wisely deferring to Wade’s hot hand, he also referred to his “absence offensively.”

“I’ve seen myself being less aggressive at times,” James said. “(Tonight) is another opportunity for me to make an imprint on this series in the fourth quarter and help our team win.”

This is not, however, entirely new.

James’ scoring has decreased, sometimes dramatically, at the end of his playoff runs in five of his six postseasons. This season, he averaged 25.3 points per game in the first three rounds of the playoffs, but just 17.2 in the Finals.

“He will be more aggressive, and we will work to get him aggressive,” Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “The important thing that he needs from us is to remind him he doesn’t have to play a game that everybody else is expecting. He does not have to answer to other people’s opinions or the critics or the expectations, whatever the storylines may be. He has to help us win.”

Before he became the player most responsible for the Heat’s predicament this season, Nowitzki might best relate to James’ fate, having heard criticism for not playing well enough despite playing well.

“Sometimes when you don’t win, criticism comes with it,” Nowitzki said. “That’s just a part of the game if you’re the star or the face of the franchise. If you win, it’s great for you, and everybody looks at you. And if you lose, you’re going to get hammered. It’s just part of the business. I think we understand that. We’ve been around long enough.

“I got hammered the last 13 years, basically. So hopefully this year I can make the hammering go away for one year.”

James insisted that he has ignored the outside critics.

“Of course, I get on myself,” he said. “I’m hard on myself about wanting to play well, because I feel like that’s what I need to do for my teammates. But to answer questions about what’s written about me or anything like that, I don’t really feed into it. It’s going to be written no matter what, no matter if I play well or not.

“I had a triple-double (17 points, 10 rebounds, 10 assists) last game. I had a bad game in a lot of people’s eyes. I understand that. That’s just the situation I’m in. That’s the bowl I’m in right now.”

And that has been James’ predictament long before he and Wade feigned sniffles in Dallas.

Ginobili ready to rise from the ashes

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

These are dark days for Manu Ginobili.

A plume of volcanic ash has descended on most of Argentina since the June 4 eruption of the Puyehue volcano in neighboring Chile, darkening the winter skies, choking cattle in the Pampas and disrupting air travel.

The atmosphere has improved lately in Bahia Blanca, Ginobili’s home city, and the Spurs guard has begun a training regimen he expects will have him physically ready for the FIBA Americas tournament scheduled to begin Aug. 30 in Mar del Plata, Argentina.

Ginobili has been in Bahia Blanca for a few weeks, carefully rehabbing the right elbow he injured in the final game of the Spurs’ regular season. This week, he began weight training; soon he will add running drills and take his first shots on a basketball court since April 29, when the Spurs were eliminated from their first-round playoff series against Memphis.

The physical pain from the sprained right elbow and tiny bone fracture, suffered on April 13, is nearly gone.

“The last time I did the MRI (in mid-May), they told me the bone edema that I had was controlling itself but still needed a little time,” Ginobili said. “The little fracture is almost healed, but I needed more time to get completely healed.

“I am not playing basketball now, but lifting carefully. Running, well, I don’t need my elbow to run. Soon, I will start shooting free throws … and see how it goes.”

Emotional pain from the Spurs’ first-round exit is another story. After a season that produced 61 victories and great postseason expectations, the early elimination sapped Ginobili’s interest in the remaining games.

Time spent watching the NBA Finals?

“None, zero,” he said. “I simply couldn’t take it. I would go online the day after to see what happened, but it hurt too much to watch the games.”

Though he stressed that the Grizzlies eliminated the Spurs “really fair and square,” he contends the Spurs were nonetheless title-worthy.

“I truly believe … if we could have beat them, and been healthy, we could have made it,” he said. “I don’t think we were that much less than OKC or the Lakers or Mavs or Heat. I think we had a shot. Memphis played really well and aggressively and just beat us.”

More importantly, Ginobili is convinced the Spurs remain a future NBA title contender.

“It’s hard to say when a team has its last shot,” he said. “Of course, the Bulls lost Michael Jordan and couldn’t make another run. But we’ve got the same core of players, and nothing changed dramatically, so why not? I believe in our players and our organization, so I believe we do have another shot.”

For now, Ginobili’s focus is the FIBA Americas tournament, where Argentina must finish first or second to qualify for the 2012 Olympics.

A key member of Argentina’s 2004 Olympic gold-medal squad, Ginobili eagerly has awaited the tournament from the moment he learned it would be contested in his home country.

“It is very, very important for me,” he said. “Not only because it gives me the opportunity to play in my last Olympic Games, but also the first time we have played in Argentina in a decade. After all we have accomplished, having the opportunity to play in front of our fans and our people is very important. It is going to be fun. It is just a short time, just nine games.”

Insurance issues must be resolved before Ginobili and other NBA players don their national team uniforms, with a looming lockout of NBA players adding to the confusion.

Would Ginobili play for Argentina, even if his contract weren’t insured against injury?

“That is a really tough decision to make if we arrived at that point,” he said. “We will have to dig down with teammates and friends and make a decision, a really difficult one, and I don’t think that many players are going to be able to play if we don’t find an option for insurance.

“I’m really hoping that the NBPA (players’ union) finds a good, solid insurance company; finds the money that is needed, and we can all think about playing.”

Like many NBA players, Ginobili anticipates a lockout will cost games next season, but he has no plans to play overseas unless the entire season is eliminated.

“If the lockout goes to January and the season is canceled, I might consider it,” he said. “If not, no I wouldn’t.”

An All-NBA choice last season, at age 34, Ginobili knows his NBA playing days are limited but has yet to consider his career’s conclusion.

“I really don’t know,” he said. “Of course, anybody can tell that I played very good last season, especially at the beginning, but I don’t know how I will feel next season or the next few years.

“Everybody knows I don’t have the same legs I once did, but I try to be decisive for my team, be a leader and provide ways for my team to win. I think I can do it for a few years more, but it depends on how I feel physically and mentally.

“If I am as motivated as I’ve ever been, I will keep going, but if not, I will say thanks to everybody and keep going on with my life.”

At the moment, he expects nothing less than a rise from the ashes.