Tag: San Antonio

Spurs well positioned to endure the lockout

San Antonio’s unique position as the strongest NBA market in terms of fan interest should make the Spurs less susceptible to fallout from the lockout than other league franchises.

Bill Nielsen, vice president of sales for the Scarborough Sports Marketing Group, said the Spurs have traditionally dominated his company’s measurements of fan awareness and support in the NBA.

And because of that support, Nielsen doesn’t believe that a lengthy lockout will erode local support and interest for the team.

Scarborough’s most recent list indicates that 61 percent of thousands of fans interviewed in the San Antonio area have either watched a Spurs game at the ATT Center, listened to a Spurs game on radio or watched a Spurs game on television in the last year.

That figure is the best of the 29 NBA American markets the company surveys. Toronto isn’t included in the Scarborough list.

“That’s a very healthy number when three out of five persons in San Antonio have that kind of contact with the team,” Nielsen said. “In layman’s terms, it indicates that if you live in San Antonio, you are going to be a Spurs fan.”

Because of that broad-based community awareness and support, Nielsen said the Spurs shouldn’t feel a lockout-related pinch that might be inflicted on other NBA teams once the league’s labor differences are settled.

“It bodes well for them,” Nielsen said. “I wouldn’t expect there to be a hangover (after the lockout) because of that traditional support they have.”

The Spurs ranked at the top of Scarborough’s most recent list of NBA franchises, which was generated for the first half of 2011.

Cleveland is second at 58 percent, followed by Boston (50 percent), Utah (47 percent) and Phoenix (45 percent) among the top five franchises. New Jersey (11 percent) is the lowest.

Scarborough has analyzed sports teams, leagues and markets among other consumer research for more than a decade. The Spurs have traditionally ranked at the top of the NBA’s “watched on television/attended/listened on radio” rankings during that time.

The NBA’s top numbers in that category don’t match those of other teams in other major sports in Scarborough’s “WAL” rankings. The NFL’s New Orleans Saints lead all professional sports franchises at 87 percent. The St. Louis Cardinals in Major League Baseball have a “WAL” ranking of 73 percent to lead franchises in that sport.

But the Spurs’ traditional number at 60 percent is a solid one for any sports franchise, Nielsen said.

“I’m impressed with that number considering they haven’t won a title in several years,” Nielsen said. “When you win a title, it traditionally pushes your numbers to the top. Look at New Orleans. But the Spurs have held solid.”

Buck Harvey: The way Leonard can beat a lockout

The founder and president of Impact Basketball began his business with low overhead.

“It used to be me and the ball,” Joe Abunassar said.

Now his one-stop training school has dozens of employees operating in four states. So he’s busier. But Abunassar still works the gym, and he did this spring. Then, he oversaw the pre-draft training of Kawhi Leonard “every day” for two months.

Abunassar thinks Leonard showed both improvement and promise. Then again, Abunassar should say that; Leonard is a client, after all.

But Abunassar says something else, and this fits into what the Spurs’ intel told them before the draft.

It’s a quality that means more this season than any other.

Leonard has been in San Antonio this week getting acquainted and getting in some work. But when the lockout begins Friday, as most expect it will, Leonard will have to find someplace else to go.

He won’t be able to talk to Spurs coaches. He won’t have access to the Spurs’ practice facility. He won’t play in a mini-camp or a summer league. He also might miss his first NBA training camp and even the first three or four months of his rookie season.

Congratulations on being a first-round draft pick — and see you when we see you.

Most NBA players will create a workout regimen in the vacuum, and many will have the best intentions. But some will do more, because that’s who they are, and Abunassar has seen this firsthand.

He was once a student manager for Bob Knight at Indiana, and he worked his way to an assistant’s position at the University of Wyoming in the mid-1990s. Then, about the time he failed to sign a Denver schoolboy named Chauncey Billups, he realized he liked recruiting less than player development.

Among his first clients, coincidentally, was Billups. Through that relationship he built others; Kevin Garnett has worked with him before, as have Matt Bonner and James Anderson.

Prepping players for the draft is a major part of his business. Last year, 17 of his clients were drafted, and this year 12. One of them, paying the $1,000 weekly fee like everyone else, was Leonard.

“I’ve had a lot of top-10 picks in my day,” Abunassar told a newspaper before the draft, “and I’d be really surprised if he’s not one.”

So when Leonard fell to No. 15?

“I still think he is a top-10 talent,” Abunassar said over the telephone this week.

Two hours before the draft, reflective of their partnership, Abunassar told Leonard not too worry too much about how high he was drafted. “It’s about what comes next,” he told him.

Abunassar sees a lot coming, and he thinks Leonard’s jumpshot is a simple fix. He says the ball rotation and footwork is fine. In drills, he tried to shorten his stroke and get the basketball on his fingertips and out of his huge hands.

It’s likely something the Spurs tweaked this week, too. Abunassar thinks it’s easily correctable when Leonard returns to work with him in a few weeks.

“It’s just a repetition thing,” Abunassar said.

But repetition isn’t always fun. Leonard turned 20 on Wednesday. How many guys that age, finally free of school and with some money, really want to spend summer sweating in a gym?

Leonard appears to be one. “If his workout was scheduled for 9 a.m.,” Abunassar said, “then he was in at 7:45 a.m.”

Sometimes he stayed until 11:30 p.m. Sometimes they had to tell him he had to leave.

“Kawhi is one of the most focused and serious,” Abunassar said, “I’ve ever had.”

It’s a profile the Spurs always target. But maybe it’s never been more important now.

As the lockout begins.

bharvey@express-news.net

Leonard’s long road reaches S.A.

By Jeff McDonald
jmcdonald@express-news.net

In basketball, the difference between winning or losing can often come down to a single centimeter. That’s what Kawhi Leonard’s college coach always told him.

It could be a loose ball, a coin-flip rebound, a tip-in, a charge taken, a shot denied.

“You can’t take any play off,” said Leonard, the Spurs’ soon-to-be rookie forward. “Getting that loose ball could be the play that helps us win the game.”

The every-possession-counts approach that coach Steve Fisher preached at San Diego State helped transform Leonard from under-recruited high school prospect from Riverside, Calif., into one of the country’s best college players in two short years.

It helped Leonard transform SDSU from college basketball wasteland into a top-five NCAA program.

Thursday, it helped make Leonard the 15th pick in the NBA draft, completing a journey from the schoolyards of Southern California that had been potholed with hardship and tragedy.

In the time it took Leonard to finish shaking commissioner David Stern’s hand, he learned something else about the vagaries of life and sport.

Just as a few centimeters can change a basketball game, a few seconds can change a life.

Leonard, 19, walked up the stage at the Prudential Center in Newark, N.J., an Indiana Pacer. He came down a San Antonio Spur.

The draft-night trade sent popular guard George Hill home to Indiana, and essentially made Leonard — a 6-foot-7 small forward with a race car’s motor and tennis racket hands — the Spurs’ highest draft choice since Tim Duncan went first overall in 1997.

On Saturday, Leonard sat at an interview table inside the Spurs’ practice facility, sandwiched between general manager R.C. Buford and former Texas point guard Cory Joseph, the team’s other 19-year-old first-rounder.

“I’m happy to be in an organization that really wants me,” Leonard said.

Though still only a teenager, Leonard has learned the hard way not to take life for granted.

As a high school freshman in Moreno Valley, Calif., Leonard didn’t play basketball because he couldn’t find a ride to tryouts. In 2008, Leonard’s father, Mark, was shot and killed at the Los Angeles carwash where he worked, and where young Kawhi had spent countless afternoons helping scrub exteriors.

For Leonard, it was a brutish lesson in how the world can change in an instant. Fast forward to Saturday morning in San Antonio.

“I woke up on an NBA team,” Leonard said.

From the day Leonard arrived at SDSU, Fisher knew his stay would not be long.

“When he first came to us, I knew he’d be an NBA player,” Fisher said. “He’s NBA tough, and he has NBA skill.”

Fisher should know. At Michigan, he coached Chris Webber, Jalen Rose, Juwan Howard and Glen Rice.

Buford said the Spurs coveted Leonard from the early stages of draft preparation. He was one of the prospects they interviewed at the Chicago combine in May, though they did not work him out privately.

Heading into the draft, the Spurs knew they would trade up from No. 29 to take Leonard if they could.

“He’s a multi-skilled type player who has good size and good length and good strength,” Buford said. “As we saw some of the teams we were going to have to face in the future, size at that position wasn’t one of our strengths. I think he addresses that issue.”

Leonard averaged 15.5 points and 10.6 rebounds as a sophomore last season at SDSU, where he dabbled at all five positions. He posted 40 career double-doubles, second in school history to Michael Cage, who went on to enjoy a 15-season NBA career.

Those numbers mean little to the Spurs. More important are the school-record 34 wins Leonard helped the Aztecs accrue, as well as his leading role in the school’s run to the NCAA Sweet 16.

Leonard’s forte is defense and rebounding, a skill set that dovetails with Spurs coach Gregg Popovich’s stated goal of restoring the team’s defensive edge.

“It’s not like they’re going to have to tell me to play defense,” Leonard said. “I already take pride in it.”

Leonard is blessed with catchers’ mitts on the end of his arms, and those hands have helped him become, in Fisher’s words, “the best rebounder I’ve ever coached.” They also might have impaired his shooting ability — he hit just 25 percent of his 3-pointers in college.

If Leonard’s shooting stroke can be corrected, it will be, Fisher says.

“He’s a gym rat’s gym rat,” Fisher said. “He’ll be there until you turn the lights off and tell him to leave. In that respect, he’s already a pro.”

What kind of impact Leonard might make as a rookie remains to be seen. In the nightly battle over centimeters, however, Fisher has learned never to count him out.

“He’s going to have a long, long NBA career,” Fisher said. “How good? I don’t know. But I’m not going to be surprised if he plays in the league for 10 or 15 years.”