Category: San Antonio Spurs Blog

Spurs blog – San Antonio Spurs blog, with news, rumors and more

Manu Ginobili out with injury

Here’s the San Antonio Express-News blog, on the Spurs:

Manu Ginobili out with injury

Spurs guard Manu Ginobili played the NBA Finals with a slight stress fracture in his right fibula, an injury that now casts his availability for Argentina in this summer’s FIBA Basketball World Cup in doubt.

The fracture was discovered during a routine postseason physical, according to a league source, and began bothering the 36-year-old guard at some point during the Spurs’ run in Western Conference playoffs. By the end of the Spurs’ march to a championship, Ginobili could often be seen limping noticeably after games.

Yahoo! Sports first reported news of Ginobili’s condition.

Ginobili, who turns 37 later this month, will visit with a foot specialist for a second opinion on the injury, which otherwise could keep him off the court for up to two months.

Tim Duncan exercises player option to stick with Spurs next season

tim duncan

The San Antonio Spurs today announced that forward Tim Duncan has exercised his player option for the 2014-15 NBA season.

The 6-11 Duncan was selected by San Antonio with the first pick in the 1997 NBA Draft. In his 17 seasons, Duncan has led the Silver and Black to 11 division titles and the playoffs every year. After helping guide the Spurs to the 2014 NBA Championship, Duncan became one of only five players in NBA history to win five championships and five MVP awards (regular season or NBA Finals). Other players on the list include Michael Jordan, Magic Johnson, Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.

Over the 17-year span San Antonio has posted a 950-396 regular season record, giving the team a winning percentage of .706, which is the best winning percentage in all of professional sports over that span and the best winning percentage over any 17-year span in NBA history. Over the span, the team has accumulated four 60-win seasons and currently owns an NBA-record 15 consecutive campaigns of 50-plus victories.

The 38-year-old Duncan, who leads all active players in career wins (898), has captured the NBA’s MVP Award two times (2002, 2003) and has earned NBA Finals MVP honors three times (1999, 2003, 2005). Duncan has appeared on both an All-Defensive Team and an All-NBA Team in the same season an NBA-record 14 times. The 1998 Rookie of the Year, Duncan has been an NBA All-Star 14 times and has been named the NBA Player of the Week on 22 occasions over the course of his career.

In 1,254 regular season games Duncan has averaged 19.9 points, 11.1 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 2.23 blocks in 34.8 minutes. He is the Spurs all-time NBA leader in games played, points (24,904), field goals made (9,651) and attempted (19,074) and rebounds (13,940). He ranks second in blocks (2,791), fourth in assists (3,832) and sixth in steals (915). Duncan leads all active players in career double-doubles (796) and this past postseason passed Magic Johnson for the most career double-doubles in NBA playoff history (158).

Duncan has appeared in 234 playoff games, averaging 21.3 points, 11.7 rebounds, 3.1 assists and 2.33 blocks in 38.0 minutes. His 234 games played in the postseason ranks first among active players and fourth all-time in NBA history. After winning the 2014 title, Duncan joined John Salley as the only players in NBA history to win a championship in three separate decades.

San Antonio hosting 2014 Spurs NBA championship parade

spurs championship parade details

San Antonians are invited downtown this Wednesday, June 18 to help the San Antonio Spurs and the City of San Antonio celebrate a fifth NBA Championship.

A river parade community celebration begins at 6 p.m. on the River Walk. Following the river parade, the celebration will move to the Alamodome for a special ceremony beginning at 9 p.m.

“The City is proud of our Spurs,” said Mayor Julián Castro. “This fifth championship cements the Spurs’ legacy as one of the greatest sports franchises in history.”

The river parade will begin at 6 p.m. at the Arneson River Theater, travel through the River Center extension past the Convention Center and Rivercenter Mall and end at the Navarro Street Bridge. Barges will carry Spurs players and coaches, Spurs officials, former Spurs players, City and Bexar County officials, live musical entertainers and others down the San Antonio River.

– Fans will not be allowed to claim a spot on the River Walk to view the parade until 4 p.m. the day of the parade.
– Only those individuals with credentials will be allowed to view the parade from Arneson River Theater.
– Due to security precautions, no ice chests, alcoholic beverages, glass containers, chairs, shopping bags, packages, Silly String or similar items will be allowed on the River Walk.

Tim Duncan keeps racking up NBA accomplishments

Here’s the South Florida Sun Sentinel reporting on Spurs great Tim Duncan:

Tim Duncan keeps racking up NBA accomplishments

After the Spurs’ 107-86 Game 4 win over the Heat gave San Antonio a 3-1 edge in the best-of-seven NBA Finals, Tim Duncan was more interested in looking forward than reflecting on his own personal accomplishments, even if those accomplishments linked him to two of the game’s greats — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Magic Johnson.

Duncan passed them in two different statistical categories during the Spurs’ victory on Thursday. He played 31 minutes to total 8,869 career playoff minutes and edge Abdul-Jabbar’s total of 8,851 for first place on the NBA career list. Duncan’s 10 points and 11 rebounds gave him his 158th career playoff double-double, moving him ahead of Johnson (157) for the all-time NBA playoff lead.

Duncan is already the all-time playoff leader in blocked shots and is fourth all-time in games played, but for him, all of those individual numbers pale in comparison to what can come Sunday if the Spurs close out the Heat to bring home their fifth championship.

If that happens, it will be Duncan’s fifth title as well, putting him in even more elite company. Only 13 players in NBA history have won more championships than that while 12 players have won five titles.

Spurs play amazing first half in NBA Finals Game 3

The Spurs beat the Heat 111-92 Tuesday in Miami to take a 2-1 lead in the 2014 NBA Finals. San Antonio got off to an incredible start, and were able to keep the Heat at bay to secure the victory. Here’s the New York Daily News:

After starting the game by making 19 of their first 21 shots, the Spurs finished the half shooting 25-of-33 (76%), setting a Finals first-half record. Their 41 points in the first quarter were the most in a Finals game since 1967, while their 13-of-15 shooting in the first quarter (87%) also set a Finals record.

The Heat did cut the lead to seven points in the third period and was down only 10 with 8:54 to go in the game. But the Spurs, who are still smarting from their epic Game 6 collapse last June, didn’t come close to buckling this time.

Remember how Gregg Popovich complained after Game 2 on Sunday that the ball stuck to his team’s hands way too much in the critical fourth quarter, when it scored only six points in the final 4:40? For the first 19 minutes of this game, once the ball left the Spurs’ shooters hands, the only thing it stuck to was the nylon nets.

“I don’t think we’ll ever shoot 76% . . . ever . . . in a half . . . again,” Popovich said, looking amazed.

If you watched the Spurs score only 18 points in the fourth quarter of Game 2, you wouldn’t have thought that it was the same team. At the height of their blitz, they led 55-30.

Quiet Kawhi Leonard lets Game 3 play speak for itself

Here’s the South Florida Sun Sentinel reporting on NBA Finals Game 3:

Quiet Kawhi Leonard lets Game 3 play speak for itself

On the night he put together the best playoff performance of his career, Kawhi Leonard opted to pass up the spotlight and the post-game press conference that typically comes on a night like his.

Instead, the soft-spoken Spurs forward stood in San Antonio’s locker room, still in his uniform, and answered questions from a media contingent the likes of which he hasn’t seen all NBA Finals.

“I was just in attack mode trying to be aggressive early and knocking down a couple shots got me going and my teammates found me,” he said simply when describing his career high 29 point-performance that helped the Spurs take a 2-1 series lead with their 111-92 win over the Miami Heat in Tuesday’s Game 3. “We were just running the same offense. I was able to play tonight. I didn’t get in foul trouble early, I got in a rhythm and my teammates got me involved.”

Things didn’t exactly go so well for Leonard through the first two games of the NBA Finals.

The third-year player had a combined 18 points and four rebounds in the first two games of the series and fouled out for the first time in 243 NBA games on Sunday during Miami’s Game 2 win.

Spurs back in Miami as NBA Finals continue

Here’s the Los Angeles Times reporting on the Spurs-Heat NBA Finals. Game 3 is tonight in Miami:

The Spurs are back for Game 3 of the Finals on Tuesday, intent on forgetting as much as they can about the last time they were here on this stage.

“For me personally, I’m definitely not going to think about that the next two games,” San Antonio guard Tony Parker said after the Spurs fell, 98-96, in Game 2 on Sunday night. “I’m going to focus on what I can do to help the team win. Going to be big games coming up.”

The Heat and Spurs are in a similar spot to where they were last year, the series tied after two games. The difference is that the next two games will be in Miami as part of the new 2-2-1-1-1 series format instead of in San Antonio for three games as part of the old 2-3-2 alignment that ended last year.

It seemed pretty clear what fixes the Spurs needed to make after another unhappy ending doomed them in Game 2. They led by a point after Parker made a three-pointer with 2:26 remaining before their final four possessions went like this: missed Manu Ginobili three-pointer, Ginobili turnover, Ginobili missed jumper and meaningless Ginobili three-pointer with 0.3 seconds left.

San Antonio’s demise was not solely a one-man operation, though.

The Spurs missed eight of 20 free throws in the game, including four in a row in the fourth quarter.

Spurs say improvement must come from offense

Here’s the Miami Herald reporting on the Spurs vs Heat 2014 NBA Finals, which are currently tied at 1-1.

Spurs say improvement must come from offense

Even after a Game 2 in which LeBron James scored 35 points and the Heat shot 52.9 percent from the field, it was notable that the Spurs pointed to the offensive end as the area of their shortcomings on Sunday.

Guard Danny Green said the Spurs can live with the shots they gave James: “They were contested jumpers. You’re not going to block his jump shot. We didn’t expect him to shoot that well, but he got hot.”

Tim Duncan said he “thought we were pretty decent” defensively.

What wasn’t acceptable, coach Gregg Popovich said, was the lack of ball movement. “The ball stuck,” he said. “We didn’t do it as a group. We tried to do it individually, and we’re not good enough to do that. You move it or you die.”