Posts Tagged ‘Warriors’

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Spurs-Grizzlies Means No Apologies

May 18, 2013  ·  4:59PM

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SAN ANTONIO — Tim Duncan sat down heavily and breathed a sigh of someone who had just been asked to lift the back end of a school bus off the ground.

“It’s not going to be pretty,” he said. “Sorry.”

But the playoffs mean never having to say you’re sorry.

So when the Spurs and Grizzlies open the Western Conference finals on Sunday night, there will be no apologies offered.

Only elbows and hips, pushes and shoves, pulls and grabs and tugs and slaps and takedowns that could turn seven games into one gigantic bruise.

Having already dealt with the front-line size of the Lakers Dwight Howard and Pau Gasol and the aggressive play of the Warriors’ Andrew Bogut, Carl Landry and Festus Ezeli, the Spurs realized it was all just a warmup to the tandem of Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol, for whom grit and grind is more than a slogan.

“If you thought (the Golden State series) was physical, it’s going to turn up about 10 notches,” Duncan said.

It’s possible the Spurs might still have a few black and blue marks left over from their run-in with the Grizzlies in the first round of the 2011 playoffs. San Antonio entered that series as the prohibitive favorite and wound up becoming only the second No. 1 seed in history to lose to a No. 8 seed in a best-of-seven series.

By the time the series was over, the Spurs were as bludgeoned as they were beaten by Memphis’ inside game. Duncan, who played with a sprained ankle, and Manu Ginobili, who played with a fractured elbow, were exhausted and exposed.

Now though, the Spurs are feeling like a team that is much more equipped to deal with the Grizzlies’ size and force, having added Tiago Splitter to their starting lineup and Boris Diaw to their bench.

“It’s going to be a big-man series,” Duncan said. “I think the size definitely helps us. We’re a different team than when we faced them a couple years ago.”

The 6-foot-11 Splitter was a rookie in 2011 and Spurs coach Gregg Popovich did not feel confident using him two seasons ago, choosing to go with 6-9 veteran Antonio McDyess in his final NBA season. Splitter played just 51 minutes in the entire season and did not set foot onto the court until Game 4.

“Of course, you always want to play, because you believe that you can help,” Splitter said. “That’s the part of you that is the competitor. But that is the past and now I feel good.”

In the four regular season meetings this season, Splitter averaged 10.3 points, 7.8 rebounds and was able to stand his ground against the low-post relentlessness of Randolph.

“Its just nonstop fighting,” Splitter said. “He’s a warrior over there with the rebounding and positioning.”

The experience two years ago gave the Spurs a head start on the rest of the league in recognizing the Grizzlies as powerful, growing championship contenders.

“I’ve seen them as a major threat for years now,” Duncan said. “Obviously, they beat us in the first round when we were the top seed. They’ve been a very solid team, a very good team. They have always played us really tough. We respect them and their capabilities and we’re not surprised they’re here.”

Popovich rates the Grizzlies with Miami and Indiana as the top defensive teams in the league. But the Spurs themselves turned around the battle against the Warriors and put the clamps on the backcourt of Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson with a defensive job that was aggressive, thorough and a throwback to their old championship ways and days.

Now it’s toe-to-toe, elbow-to-elbow, hip-check to bump-and-grind with the Grizzlies at a time when the 37-year-old Duncan can see the finish line.

“This run this year is extremely special to me,” he said. “People continue to count us out, year in and year out, and we continue to make runs deep into the playoffs. This is a special one.”

And certainly no reason to say you’re sorry.

– Series hub: Spurs vs. Grizzlies

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Posted in 2013 NBA Playoffs, HT News / Comments (2) /

Spurs Stand Tall Despite Sitting Duncan

May 17, 2013  ·  6:33AM

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OAKLAND, Calif. — Gregg Popovich manages Tim Duncan’s minutes all season long as if he were a pastry chef baking a souffle. Too long in the oven and everything can fall flat.

“It’s what we do,” says the Spurs coach.

Except how many coaches would do it with a two-point lead in the final 4 1/2 minutes of a close-out game in a playoff series that always seemed on edge?

But there were a couple of weak jumpers that seemed to come off tired legs and then an absent-minded crosscourt pass that nearly took the bald head right off the shoulders of referee Joey Crawford and wound up in the stands.

So that’s how Duncan came to watch the final scenes of his 200th career playoff game, a 94-82 win over the Warriors that put his Spurs back into the Western Conference finals.

“I don’t think he was giving me a break,” Duncan said, ruefully smiling and shaking his head. “I think I had played three or four pretty bad minutes in a row and he decided to go with something else.

“It is what it is and we were able to finish the series. I wish I could be out there, but honestly the way we playing and the way we finished it was the right move. So I’m happy for it.”

It is what it is and the Spurs are what they are, which is a more experienced, more mature, just plain better team than the one that bolted to a 2-0 lead over Oklahoma City in the conference finals in 2012 and then was steamrolled out in four straight defeats.

They’re a team that could have Tony Parker make only 1 of his first 13 shots and survive. They’re a team that could have Manu Ginobili go 1-for-6 and still advance. They’re a team that could have their 14-time NBA All-Star Duncan get the hook in the clutch and still go into the next round against the rugged Grizzlies as the team to beat.

“Oh, it won’t be pretty,” Duncan said looking ahead to the mud-wrestling match with Zach Randolph and Marc Gasol. But then again, neither was this and yet the Spurs somehow made it look like a work of art.

Maybe nobody but Popovich could have gotten away with sitting Duncan down at that critical point in the game. After Stephen Curry hit a jumper from the key to cut the Spurs’ lead to 77-75, Duncan made his wildly inaccurate pass and the Oracle crowd rose for one last deafening roar.

“I just made that choice,” Popovich said.

Probably no superstar of his stature would have accepted the seat on the bench with Duncan’s aplomb.

“Of course, as a player you want to be in there competing,” he said. “But you had other guys in there getting the job done, so it was obviously the thing to do.”

It is that union of coach and star, that steadiness that has enabled the Spurs to advance to the Conference finals for the eighth time — with four championships already — in Duncan’s career.

There was a time — just two years ago — when the Spurs were the No. 1 seed in the West and were unceremoniously run out of the playoffs by the No. 8-seeded Grizzlies. It was a series when Duncan limped in on a bad ankle, Ginobili played with what was later found to be a fractured elbow and the Spurs’ bench faltered. So Popovich chose to roll the dice with last-gasp veteran Antonio McDyess over a rookie named Tiago Splitter.

Two seasons later, Splitter was hitting 6 of 8 shots, scoring 14 points, grabbing four rebounds and holding his own on the inside of the defense while Duncan became a spectator.

Duncan and Ginobili are older now, but the Spurs are deeper with Splitter, Danny Green and the quietly deadly force of Kawhi Leonard stepping up. They’re a team that can see the in-full-bloom Parker miss 12 of his first 13 shots in the game and be confident that he’ll make the right choices and hit the big shots when needed.

Ginobili won the incredible double-overtime Game 1 of the series by hitting the game-winning shot on a night when he was 5-for-20 from the field. And even though he could hardly find the basket in Game 6, twice in the last three minutes, he drove toward the hoop, drew the defense to him and delivered perfect passes into the left corner that produced treys from Parker and Leonard.

The Spurs’ core that looked old and tired the last time they faced Memphis in the playoffs is older now, yet playing spryer because Popovich is so diligent about managing those minutes. However, there is also fresh blood running through those veins in Leonard, Green and Splitter that makes much of what’s happening this season possible.

Even stunning things like Duncan watching from the bench in the close-out stretch of a close-out game and nobody thinking twice.

It’s what they do.

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Posted in 2013 Conference Semis: Spurs-Warriors, 2013 NBA Playoffs, HT News / Comments (40) /

Fighting The Odds But Keeping The Faith

May 16, 2013  ·  3:09PM

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OAKLAND, Calif. — After spending the last four weeks pushing credulity to the limits with some of the shooting performances by Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson, now the Warriors stand at the brink.

For the first time in the playoffs, Golden State’s Cinderella story approaches the stroke of midnight with the Spurs holding a 3-2 lead going into tonight’s Game 6 at the Oracle.

But that doesn’t mean the Warriors are thinking that their time has run out.

“This is one of those games where you win or you go home, almost like an NCAA tournament game,” said forward Carl Landry. “We have to go out there and not take any possessions off, and after the game, we shouldn’t have anything left. We shouldn’t be able to walk to our cars. It should all be left on the court.”

The cold, raw numbers say that in all previous best-of-seven NBA series that were tied at 2-2, the team that took Game 5 went on to win 83.3 percent of the time. The Spurs, of course won Game 5 in a 109-91 rout.

The last time the Warriors franchise faced an elimination game at home was in the first round of the 1994 playoffs. That’s a generation ago and it means nothing to this bunch that coach Mark Jackson says has “been touched by the hand of God.”

These Warriors have not lost back-to-back games so far in the playoffs, showing an ability to regroup every time they’ve been knocked down. So even with the mobility of Curry and center Andrew Bogut limited by injured left ankles, they’re believing.”

“I’m not worried about my guys,” Jackson said. “If you would have rewound this thing all the way back to Day 1 and said we’d have a Game 6 at home in the second round of the playoffs against the San Antonio Spurs after defeating the No. 3 seed (Denver), we would have taken it.

“So we’re thrilled about where we are. We don’t want our backs against the wall, but this is where we are today. It’s as simple of putting together 96 minutes of our brand of basketball.”

– Series hub: Spurs vs. Warriors

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Spurs’ Leonard Making Own Splash

May 15, 2013  ·  2:33AM


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SAN ANTONIO – Sometimes young players make a splash in the playoffs.

That was Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson — the Splash Brothers — in their postseason baptism, doing jack knives, double flips and triple twists off the high board.

It was the kind of how-did-they-do-that act that left you shaking your head when you weren’t picking your jaw up off the floor as you figured you were maybe getting a glimpse of the way basketball should be played in the 21st century.

Sometimes young players have to wade into the deep end of the pool.

That was Kawhi Leonard, whose next splash will be his first, easing into the water from his ankles up to his knees up to his hips, the old-fashioned way.

A year ago, Leonard wasn’t ready. Not when the Spurs reached the Western Conference finals against the Thunder and suddenly he was swimming with the sharks. There were critical plays that he was physically capable of making, but the rookie who did not have the benefit of a training camp in the abbreviated lockout season, wasn’t sure enough to assert himself on a veteran-laden roster.

Warriors coach Mark Jackson has called Curry and Thompson “the best shooting backcourt in the history of the game” and anyone who saw them practically set fire to the AT&T Center in the first two games of this series had little ammunition to argue otherwise.

However, since Game 1, neither Curry or Thompson has made better than 50 percent of his shots. In the past four games, Curry has shot 7-20, 5-17, 7-15 and 4-14, while Thompson has hit on 13-26, 7-20, 5-13 and 2-8. That’s a combined 50-for-133 (.375), as the Splash Brothers haven’t been able to throw it in the ocean.

San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich raised a few eyebrows last summer when he said that Leonard would eventually be “the face of the Spurs.”

That would seem to be a heavy lift on a roster that still includes three likely Hall of Famers in Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker. Yet here are the Spurs holding a 3-2 series lead after a 109-91 thumping of the Warriors on Tuesday night and there was Leonard up to his neck in all of it.

At one end of the floor, Leonard is as efficient and deadly as a shark, connecting on 7 of 8 shots — 3-for-4 on deep balls — to ring up 17 points to go with his seven rebounds. He can hit impossible-looking corner 3s from behind the backboard and finish with a thunderbolt dunk over Harrison Barnes. At the other end, his defense on Thompson (and occasionally Curry) couldn’t be more smothering if he used a wet blanket.

“He made some big shots for us,” Duncan said. “When they made runs, he made some huge 3s for us. Defensively, he was great. His length is just huge for us and being able to contest from the side and from behind those, it makes them uncomfortable.”

Leonard fits in so comfortably on the floor and in the locker room that there are times when it’s easy not to notice him. He usually dresses and bolts after games before the media even arrives at his locker. On the occasions when he is hemmed in by the notebooks and cameras, he squeezes out words as if he is expected to pay for each one.

But there was a reason why Popovich was able and willing to cut veteran Stephen Jackson from the team just a week before the regular season’s end. Yes, Jackson’s play had taken a dive. He was shooting just 28 percent on 3s, which did not gibe with Capt. Jack’s opinion of himself.

The question was whether Popovich and the Spurs would miss Jackson defensively when they ran into a red hot scorer or two, the kind that needs to be jostled, rattled and knocked off his rhythm.

This time last spring, Popovich was hoping that Leonard could one day grow into that dependable game-changer. Now he is there. Leonard might not yet be “the face of the Spurs,” but he’s a got a nose for the ball. On a team where managing the playing time of the thirtysomething crowd is as much a part of the game as dribbling and shooting, it is no coincidence that Leonard topped out in minutes on the Spurs’ box score with 37 in Game 5 and is averaging more (38.2) than anyone on the roster. He is also the legs of the Spurs.

Jackson, of course, concedes nothing has thrown the Splash Brothers off their game.

On Curry: “Didn’t play well.”

On Thompson: “Didn’t play well.”

Since the first two games of the series, the Spurs have been getting up in the face and the space of the Warriors’ shooters. They have been running them off the 3-point line. They have been doing it with double-teams that come at different times and from different angles.

They have been doing it by turning more responsibility over to the taciturn Leonard, who has grown into the role and grown comfortable in the deep water of the playoffs.

Seems there is more than one way to make a splash.

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Golden State Wins Also Building Blocks

May 13, 2013  ·  4:48PM

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OAKLAND – They stood in the locker room on a victorious Sunday and talked about what it meant for this series and the entire playoffs — and also about what it really meant.

A 2-2 tie against San Antonio is an accomplishment to be sure, overcoming body parts that seem ready to come unhinged and a lack of experience at this level of the playoffs, but this has just become about something bigger than the Western Conference semifinals for Golden State. Doing more than surviving, in particular grinding out an overtime win Sunday as bad health and a gasping offense and foul trouble threatened to doom them, and a comeback win at that – that’s about years.

Some Warriors’ veterans delivered the message in the aftermath of the 97-87 victory at Oracle Arena, and they were right. That was the kind of win, and now the kind of series, that could end up being a big-picture moment for something much larger than Game 5 on Wednesday in San Antonio.

For all the experience in the locker room – Andrew Bogut, David Lee, Carl Landry, Jarrett Jack, Richard Jefferson with a smaller role on the court, even Stephen Curry in his fourth season – youth is everywhere. Klay Thompson is in his second campaign, Harrison Barnes, Festus Ezeli and Draymond Green in their first, and another rookie ordinarily out of the rotation, Kent Bazemore, was used late in regulation and the second overtime of Game 1.

The Warriors believe that, in some way, overcoming adversity to grind out a tie against the Spurs counts for something beyond 2012-13. It has all become so unlikely that there must be some carryover effect that will become a benefit in future seasons. The wins may be more than wins.

Sunday, Curry went from game-time decision to laboring through the first half to playing 39 minutes and contributing 22 points, six rebounds and four assists, his second such miracle recovery of the playoffs. Lee, likely headed for surgery on a torn hip muscle that was supposed to have ended his season after Game 1 of the first round, went eight minutes and said he felt noticeably stronger than two days before. Bogut is less than 100 percent.

“You saw the way he was moving there early in the first quarter,” Lee said of Curry. “The biggest thing is him being on the floor. It’s the same thing I’m trying to accomplish. Him being on the floor is an inspiration to the team. It keeps the defense honest in a lot of situations. This isn’t going to be the last year this team is going to be together. Other guys are seeing that Steph goes out when he’s hurting and plays, seeing that I go out and try to give our team what I can. Guys notice that. It’s not only building for right now and helping us win now, but it’s building for the future as well.”

Not only that, but the Warriors won while shooting 38 percent. The Warriors. The team that has ditched its reputation. If finishing fourth in the league in field-goal defense wasn’t enough, winning playoff games in the trenches is a convincing point.

“That’s something we’ve been preaching the whole season, and it’s come at the right time,” Bogut said. “When we can shoot below 40 percent, that’s probably unheard of in Warriors’ basketball history and win a game. That’s a very important step for us.”

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Warriors Score A Win That Defies Description

May 12, 2013  ·  9:30PM

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OAKLAND, Calif. – The crowd let go for good, in appreciation and probably in exhausted release, with about 40 seconds remaining. It was after Draymond Green corralled the defensive rebound of Tim Duncan‘s miss and the final Spurs threat had been denied. They cheered loudly through the final possessions as the clock drained to zero and fans inside Roar-acle Arena realized this actually would happen.

The Warriors really would use limping Stephen Curry … and hobbling David Lee … and have starting bigs Andrew Bogut and Carl Landry pick up three fouls in the first quarter … and need a loudspeaker to reach Andris Biedrins at the end of the bench to use him in the second quarter of the biggest game in at least six seasons … and come back to beat the Spurs 97-87 in overtime Sunday. All while shooting 38 percent.

Pick a description that fits.

Unlikely? For sure, but maybe too understated. That makes it seems like the Warriors had to overcome an obstacle. This was the day when everything went wrong — health, fouls, offense — until it went so right and they had a 2-2 tie in the best-of-seven series that shifts to San Antonio on Wednesday.

Improbable? That works. Golden State grinded enough and the Spurs also shot poorly enough, at 35.5 percent, that the Warriors were able to stay close. But to say it was clear they had that passing gear in them, not a chance. And yet, they went eight down with 4:49 remaining in the fourth to overtime to outscoring the Spurs 13-3 in overtime as San Antonio went 1-for-10 from the field.

Impossible? Too strong. Because this has become the season, as evidenced again Sunday, when nothing is impossible for the Warriors.

“I don’t know a good adjective to use,” Lee said after thinking for a moment. “But it’s definitely satisfying. That’s a good way to put it.”

Satisfying at the very least. The Warriors couldn’t hit a shot in the first half and had 37 points at the break, but didn’t give in to frustration. They knew they were playing hard and with a sharp focus, unlike the lacking effort two days earlier in the Game 3 loss, and that it was just a matter of getting the same good looks to fall. Eleven players had already been used in the patch job by coach Mark Jackson, including Biedrins, who delivered a hold-the-fort three minutes at center in his first appearance since April 12.

The end result was much more than a victory, as if that wasn’t enough at a time like this. The Warriors didn’t get swamped under by adversity, so they grew some more late in what had already been a season of maturation. Curry went from game-time decision (because of the sprained left ankle) to generating all of three shots in the first half to finishing with 22 points while making 5-for-10 from behind the arc and 7-for-15 overall. So, he had survived. Jarrett Jack went from taking local heat for his decision making as the backup point guard to contributing 12 points in the fourth quarter and overtime and 24 overall. He had endured, too.

“It’s because of who we are,” Jackson said. “This is what these guys have been. This is how hard they’ve worked. This is how they’re committed. It’s a special season for this basketball team and this group of guys, this entire organization and its fan base. We’ve done things that show us when we do ‘em how good we can be. I’m not surprised by anything. One thing I know, this team will not lay down, this team will not quit. It looked dark. It looked awfully dark. But we found a way to get stops and make plays.

“I’ve been talking about this group all year long. I’m just so glad that a national TV audience had an opportunity to see exactly what’s been taking place in this area. Like I said, this is the greatest group of guys I’ve been around. … I [have] a young basketball team that’s got incredible heart. I’m so, so proud of those guys, from the first guy to the last guy. You look at a guy like Biedrins. Called upon, gave us great minutes. I mean, we got an incredible group. People beat up Jarrett Jack. ‘Why is he pounding the ball? Bench him.’ I’m going to go with this group until I’m not here. This is a great group and I’m committed to them, they’re committed to me. Just a big-time win. This is a heck of a series.”

It still is, at 2-2 rather than 3-1 with the Spurs heading home and the Warriors afraid to wonder what else can go wrong because then they would find out. It is a heck of series because only almost everything went bad for Golden State on Sunday. It is because Game 4 actually did happen.

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Stephen Curry A Game-Time Decision

May 11, 2013  ·  6:40PM

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OAKLAND – Another game, another Stephen Curry ankle injury, another uneasy day of waiting for the latest pivotal medical bulletin.

This has become about hours for the Warriors. Not the time that remains in the season – they still have at least Game 4 at Oracle Arena on Sunday and Game 5 back in San Antonio on Tuesday. But the difference between Curry playing, or at least playing with enough movement for a genuine impact, and Golden State taking the court without its best player could come down to the schedule turn of the playoffs.

“It could,” coach Mark Jackson said Saturday, as the Warriors waited. “But nothing we could do about it now. The clock is ticking. One way or another, we’ll be ready for Game 4.”

A Game 4 that will begin at 12:30. A matinee when the extra hours of the usual night tip off, whether 7:30 p.m. on most occasions or 6 on Sundays, could have helped. All with the knowledge that a loss Sunday will put them behind 3-1 to the tested Spurs.

X-rays on the left ankle, after Curry rolled it with about five minutes left in San Antonio’s Game 3, were negative. He is scheduled for constant treatment, did not practice Saturday and will be re-evaluated Sunday.

The good news for the Warriors is that they have been through this and worse before. Curry sprained the same left ankle – not the one that ruined his 2011-12 and eventually required surgery – in Game 2 of the first-round series against the Nuggets, missed a practice and was a game-time decision after that. And then he played 38 minutes and had 29 points, 11 assists against three turnovers, and six rebounds and made four of seven three-pointers. Jackson insisted afterward the talk of Curry possibly sitting out was not a drama play.

“Once again, we’re back to trusting the process, treatment around the clock and seeing how he is tomorrow,” Jackson said. “Unfortunately, we’ve become veterans at this. But he’s a gamer and no matter what, we’re looking forward to tomorrow.”

Curry was not available during the media session Saturday while getting treatment, but he told a pool reporter that the early start is a “little bit” of a concern. “It’s just a shorter turnaround, literally 36 hours from last night. That’s the main concern compared to having three days like I did last time. Just gotta expedite the treatment and stay as consistent as possible.

“If I can give the team anything, I will play. I feel like if I can get to a point where I’m not hobbling and I can cut how I want to. It doesn’t have to be 100 percent, as long as I can be confident that it won’t do any further damage. I have a feeling I’ll be at that point tomorrow, no problem.”

Asked if he thinks he will play, Curry said: “I think so. You never really know how it’s going to feel the next day. You just keep up with the treatment. Same ‘ol story. I have the same answers. I hope it feels good enough to go tomorrow. But until I wake up and see, you just hope for the best right now.”

Tony Parker skipped Spurs practice at about the same time in San Francisco because of a bruised left calf that he said, according to the San Antonio Express News, had swelled to the size of a baseball. The star of Game 3 on Friday with 32 points, including 25 in the first half, said he will play Sunday.

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The Other Point Guard Shines For Spurs in Game 3

May 11, 2013  ·  2:51AM

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OAKLAND, Calif. – Oh, yeah. The other guard.

Tony Parker – the name is slightly familiar – made his presence known in the Western Conference semifinals Friday night after two games of talk of Stephen Curry as the new force at the point and Klay Thompson as the perfect backcourt running mate.

Big deal.

Parker has been to the playoffs once or twice before and insisted the Curry-Thompson chatter, practically a glow that followed the Warriors from San Antonio back to Oracle Arena, did not inspire him. The other talk, that he listened to.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich told Parker to be more aggressive with his shot, and that seemed like a pretty good time for Parker to start caring about a reaction to the first two games and a 1-1 series. Popovich spoke, Parker responded, the Spurs won Game 3, and the Warriors had a new problem on their hand. One of the best point guards in the world is dialed in again.

Parker went from 43 shots and 41.9 percent the first two outings to 25 points in the first half alone while making 11 of his 14 attempts and, finally, to a game-high 32 points in all while going 13-for-23 from the field to lead the Spurs to a 102-92 victory and a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven series that continues Sunday afternoon at Oracle. More importantly, he went from the Parker the Spurs played to the Parker the Spurs need to offset the play of Curry and Thompson.

“I think sometimes he gets a little bit obsessed about driving it, getting to the rim,” Popovich said. “When he does that, he turns down jumpers and he forgets to play with teammates. But when he’s like tonight, like he’s played most of the season, he’ll stop, shoot the open jumper, he’ll get his share of assists, and that’s what we need him to be. He’s a scoring point guard, but he has to do it with a jump shot as well as a drive. He did that tonight.”

It was a potential turning-point night on several fronts for the backcourts. Cory Joseph delivered solid minutes at backup point guard that proved important with Parker staying fresh while logging 35 minutes, and especially important because Popovich thought Parker got tired two days before in San Antonio. Curry sprained his left ankle again, with five minutes to play in the fourth quarter, and stayed in, but was clearly limited as the “Curry Ankle Watch” begins anew, with no immediate prognosis after the game and an update expected at practice Saturday.

Parker, though, was the most significant development of all.

“I was just trying to be aggressive, watch film of the first two games,” he said. “They always try to push me left. That’s the shot they were giving me. In warmups, that was almost the only shot I practiced, going left. Make sure I knocked down that shot. Once I make that shot, it opens up everything. I was just determined to make sure I take good shots and be aggressive the whole game.”

Thompson said Parker was doing the same thing as before, “just taking shots at a higher rate.” Which was partly true. More shots, yes, but also a different attitude going in, instructed by Popovich more than inspired by some perceived slight against the Curry-Thompson limelight.

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Mark Jackson: A Man On A Mission

May 10, 2013  ·  5:31PM

OAKLAND – This goes back about 3 ½ months, to when coach Mark Jackson said of his Warriors, “This is a team I believe God has his hands all over.”

And that was before, you know, everything: Stephen Curry going from braces on both ankles and a game-time decision in the first round to a playoff star, the Warriors going from losing All-Star David Lee to winning five of the next seven, Andrew Bogut going from an ankle injury so maddening that he began to consider the possibility of retirement to resuming his starting role, the entire roster going from little postseason experience to beating the favored Nuggets and now in a 1-1 Western Conference semifinals against the favored Spurs heading into Game 3 tonight inside rocking Oracle Arena.

Jackson, naturally, does not alter his statement from late January that the Warriors have higher powers at their back. He is not one in general to back away from bold comments, he believes deeply as a man of faith and a pastor at a Southern California church, and now it is mid May and his team continues to do the improbable. Backing off is the last thing that would happen.

“I’m a man of faith,” Jackson said. “I believe in God. Some folks may say God doesn’t care about basketball. My Bible tells me He cares about everything that has to do with me. This team is tied together. I’ve said it before. Spiritually, this team is absolutely tied together. There’s a call on these guys’ lives. I said from Day 1 in my press conference, if I won games and didn’t change lives I’d be a failure. If I won a championship and guys left here the same I’d be a failure. It’s more important to me to leave here leaving these guys better husbands, better fathers, better teammates, better players, better men. That’s what it’s all about, and we’ve done that. With that, the victories will come.”

He said he believed right away that the belief includes knowing the Warriors would become winners “when I had no business believing it,” which is, which is some long-range vision. He couldn’t have seen this coming. The Warriors did not look anything like the current model when owner Joe Lacob made Jackson the surprising and gutsy hire in June 2011 as a coach without any previous experience on the bench, in the NBA or college, as an assistant or in the No. 1 chair. Seven of the top nine players – everyone except Curry and Lee – weren’t on the roster at the time. Bob Myers hadn’t yet made the quick ascension from front-office newcomer, with any team, to general manager.

“We all make mistakes,” Jackson said. “But at the end of the day, I’m going to be led by God and there were jobs I would not have taken if they were offered to me. I believed in my heart that this was the job for me and this was the group of men, the group owners, the group of management people and this was the time. Some people don’t think that’s cool. Some people don’t believe that. I have nothing against them. I’m going to walk this walk and my Bible tells me the steps of a good man are ordered by God. So I believe that my steps are ordered. I’m just following orders.”

We all make mistakes.

Jackson does not hide from his most public of setbacks, an affair of nearly one year that became public when the woman and one of her acquaintances blackmailed Jackson to keep the relationship quiet. The coach and the team contacted the FBI, Jackson cooperated with the investigation, and the matter became open conversation.

Hide from it? Jackson said he brought the incident up to players himself. He turned it into basketball and the Warriors.

“That I’m not going to allow one moment to identify who I am,” he said. “We may lose a game, we may lose a quarter, we may lose a season. But at the end of the day, I’m not going to stop. I’m not going to stop the call on my life and I’m not going to quit doing God’s work. Ultimately it’s get back up on the horse and pick up where you left off and don’t make the mistake again.”

Which, in an outcome that has not been lost on the coach, is exactly what the Warriors have done. This team that he believes God has his hands all over.

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Posted in 2013 Conference Semis: Spurs-Warriors, 2013 NBA Playoffs / Comments (30) /

Thompson Gives Spurs A Dilemma

May 9, 2013  ·  8:02PM

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SAN ANTONIO – First it was Stephen Curry practically setting fire to the AT&T Center in Game 1 with his 44 points. Then along came Klay Thompson with his 34 in Game 2.

“I thought it was polite of them to at least take turns and not both be on fire on the same night,” cracked San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich.

Good one-liner, but a real problem for San Antonio. As the series shifts to Oakland for the next two games, it seems the Spurs are either a defender short or woefully lacking enough firepower to keep up with the Golden State Warriors’ back court.

“I was just trying to do my best to keep up with Steph,” Thompson said. “I’ve seen him do it enough times, so I thought I’d try to see if I could keep up.”

He hardly could have anticipated a 29-point first half, setting a franchise record for a playoff game with eight buckets from behind the arc and the first double-double of his career with 14 rebounds. And let’s not forget the physical, smothering defense that he used all night to throw a wet blanket on Tony Parker.

For Thompson, there was only one thing worse than playing a part in the grand collapse of the Warriors in Game 1. That was not playing a part, which was his burden because he had fouled out and had to watch from the bench.

So, while the rest of his teammates tried to put on a happy face and act unfazed by the double-overtime loss, Thompson wore his disappointment as a hair shirt. He let it irritate him, bother him and prod him on.

“It was tough losing Game 1, because I felt like I was barely out there due to foul trouble, even I did play 32 minutes,” Thompson said. “Watching from the bench is one of the hardest things to do. But I learned from it and I think I showed I learned from it.”

The one he was most proud to show his lessons learned to was his father, ex-NBA star Mychal Thompson, who constants tell him to avoid cheap fouls.

“My dad is my biggest critic,” Thompson said. “Every game he tells me to stay out of foul trouble, so I probably gave him a hemorrhage the other night. I thought I did a good job of not making dumb fouls like I did in Game 1 and I just tried to play hard.”

If Thompson had played any harder, he’d have loosened the floorboards in the court. He made every kind of shot from every spot and every angle imaginable and he was a wrecking ball on defense. He not only disrupted Parker as the initiator of the Spurs offense, but also took turns on wing men Manu Ginobili and Kawhi Leonard. Toss in those 14 rebounds and it was enough to make you shake your head.

“Your stat line,” Curry marveled to his buddy, “is amazing.”

It was the kind of prolific game that his team needed to pull the series into a 1-1 tie, the kind of redemptive effort that Thompson needed personally to feel good about himself again and the kind of display that will have the Spurs scrambling for a solution by Game 3.

Curry blowing up one night, Thompson leaving a mushroom cloud the next.

“I have the greatest shooting backcourt that’s ever played the game,” said Warriors coach Mark Jackson. “Call my bluff.”

The Spurs might not know how.  That’s their dilemma.

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Posted in 2013 Conference Semis: Spurs-Warriors, 2013 NBA Playoffs, HT News / Comments (39) /

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