Tag: Toronto

Few practices in busy Spurs schedule

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

The Spurs will spend part of the first day of the new year in the air and the first night of 2012 on the road.

Aside from the Lakers, who played three games in the first three days of the lockout-delayed season, the Spurs have one of the busier early schedules. Tonight’s game at the ATT Center against the Jazz will be their fourth game in six nights. By the time they conclude their second set of back-to-back games — Golden State on Jan. 4 and Dallas on Jan. 5 — they will have played seven in 11 days, with six of those crammed into eight days.

With four travel days included among the 11 days, there is little likelihood they will have a single practice before Jan. 6, an off day between home games against the Mavericks and Nuggets.

Lack of opportunity is but one of the reasons the quality of play this season will suffer from the diminished practice. Because the Spurs have only 13 players on their roster, rather than the 15 they have carried each of the past three seasons, full five-on-five work in practices likely will be curtailed.

“Everybody’s got fewer bodies for a variety of reasons,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “It gives one a little bit of concern, injury-wise, but it’s going to be difficult to have very many really good practices during the season. The bodies that all of us used to have maybe aren’t quite as important in that regard, anyway. It’s going to be tough to do.”

If there is no opportunity for a full practice soon, Popovich said he will ask some of the young players to come to the team’s practice facility so shooting guard Gary Neal can get some full-contact work to prepare him for a return to action, likely next week.

Meanwhile, James Anderson is trying hard to shrug off the fact he won’t get to watch the Fiesta Bowl on Monday night, when the Spurs will be playing the Timberwolves at Target Center in Minneapolis.

“It should be a great bowl game,” said Anderson, who played at Oklahoma State. “I’ll just have to Tivo it.”

Career first: DeJuan Blair’s 22 points against the Rockets gave the third-year big man from Pittsburgh consecutive games with 20 or more points for the first time in his career, but not his best two-game total.

Blair last season scored 18 in a Feb. 8 road win over the Pistons and followed with 28 points in a road victory in Toronto the next night.

At 22, Blair is the youngest of the Spurs’ starters, so it’s no surprise he logged more court time than the rest of the starters on Thursday night, nearly 29 minutes.

Popovich’s decision to rest his older players in the second half of what would turn out to be a blowout loss didn’t surprise him.

“That’s how it’s going to go the whole season,” Blair said. “The whole season is going to hit us right on the head, really fast. So we’ve got to use every chance to be ready for it.”

Shootaround notes: Joseph finally on the job

HOUSTON — Nobody was happier to be on the  Toyota Center court for this morning’s shootaround than Spurs rookie Cory Joseph.

After missing the first eight days of his first NBA training camp while clearing up immigration issues with his native Canada, the former Texas point guard was finally able to slip on some workout gear for his first practice as a professional.

He might even play tonight, when the Spurs open the preseason against the Rockets.

“You get anxious to get out there on the court and start playing,” said Joseph, the 29th pick in the June draft. “I’m happy it’s over and I’m on the court again.”

Joseph, 20, filed paperwork to receive a work visa as soon as the lockout officially ended Dec. 9. It took a little more than a week for his request to be processed by Canada’s Citizen and Immigration department.

“It was just slow,” Joseph said. “I couldn’t tell you why. I guess it was just taking a little bit longer than we  thought.”

On Thursday, Joseph flew to Toronto to pick up the visa. He met the Spurs in Houston on Friday afternoon, at long last signed his rookie-scale contract, and was on the floor at the Toyota Center this morning.

Joseph is expected to be in uniform for tonight’s game. With Tony Parker not on the trip, the rookie could be in line to see some minutes backing up T.J. Ford at the point.

“I’m excited,” Joseph said. “This is what every kid waits for.”

Some, it seems, just wait longer than others.

Other bullets from this morning’s shoot:

* , Parker and fellow All-Star Tim Duncan are at home in San Antonio and will skip tonight’s game. Between Les Bleus and ASVEL Villeurbanne, Parker has been playing more or less non-stop since late August. Duncan, apparently, is just old.

* Rockets forward Luis Scola and Spurs guard Manu Ginobili, teammates on the Argentine national team, met for dinner in Houston on Friday night. Spurs center Tiago Splitter, Scola’s old Spanish League compadre, joined them. “We broke a rule and invited a Brazilian,” Scola joked.

* Speaking of Splitter, Scola says Spurs fans didn’t get a chance to see every tool in the Brazilian’s arsenal during a forgettable rookie season. “He’s got great post moves,” Scola said. “He’s great around the basket.”

* Rendered jobless by the lockout, Joseph said he split workout time between his old college campus in Austin and Houston, where he worked out with former NBA point guard — and former Spurs coach — John Lucas.

At UT, Joseph’s workout partners included a bevy of former Longhorns such as Kevin Durant, Tristan Thompson and T.J. Ford, who would soon become his teammate with the Spurs. Joseph said he gained the most out of his sessions with Lucas.

“He was a great point guard back in the day,” Joseph said. “He taught me a lot – coming off the screens, decision-making, a whole bunch. Just the pace of the NBA game, as a point guard.”

Joseph expected to meet Spurs in Houston

By Mike Monroe
mikemonroe@express-news.net

When the Spurs arrive in Houston late Friday afternoon on their first road trip of the 2011-12 NBA preseason, they expect to be joined by their newest official teammate, Cory Joseph.

Having missed all of training camp to date while clearing immigration issues, Joseph traveled Thursday from San Antonio to his native Toronto to pick up a work visa. His return flight to the U.S. was booked to land in Houston, where he was to meet the rest of the Spurs in advance of Saturday’s preseason opener against the Rockets.

Joseph, the former Texas point guard the Spurs took 29th in the June draft, was unable to begin the process for obtaining his work visa until the NBA’s new collective bargaining agreement was ratified Dec. 8. He has been in San Antonio awaiting a resolution since camp began last Friday.

Barring a last-minute snag, Joseph’s first official Spurs practice would be at shootaround in Houston on Saturday morning. He would need to sign his rookie-scale contract before taking the court.

NOVAK BACK: Forward Steve Novak, who played 23 games with the Spurs last season, was back at the practice site Thursday awaiting formal approval of a contract. He wasn’t able to practice until the contract was signed, which occurred later in the day. He will be with the traveling party for the trip to Houston.

A 6-foot-10 sharpshooter from Marquette, Novak has played parts of four seasons in the NBA for the Rockets, Clippers, Mavericks and Spurs. He came to the Spurs on a 10-day contract on Feb. 8, was re-signed to a second 10-day deal on Feb. 18 and then signed for the remainder of the season. He averaged 4.0 points per game and made 23 of 42 3-point shots.

SPECIAL CAMARADERIE: Antoine Hood, the 6-foot-4 guard added to the training camp roster on Tuesday, hopes to follow a path to the NBA similar to that of his head coach.

Like Gregg Popovich, Hood graduated from the U.S. Air Force Academy and served five years in the Air Force before looking to make basketball a career.

Popovich acknowledges the bond all Academy graduates feel for one another.

“Whenever you see an Academy grad, you feel a special camaraderie with him or her,” he said. “It doesn’t matter which Academy it is, because everybody respects what each other went through. He’s done his service and he wanted an opportunity to come out and display his talents, so it’s fun for me to bring him out here and let him go.”

Hood was part of an Air Force Academy team that made it to the NCAA tournament in 2006 under the guidance of former Nuggets head coach Jeff Bzdelik.

During his senior season at Air Force, Hood said Popovich’s career provided motivation that he might someday get a shot at playing in the NBA.

“Coach Popovich is the epitome of what the Air Force Academy stands for,” Hood told the Express-News in a 2005 interview. “And it’s something to look forward to. Knowing that Gregg Popovich wound up in the NBA, maybe I could do that some day.”