San Antonio Spurs

[tackielarla]

---

^ Hahaha unya na surrender oi naa pay mga 18 games +-.

[tackielarla]

Spurs' rotation in flux, but Thomas finds his place
Jeff McDonald

Kurt Thomas was one of the last players to walk out of the Spurs' locker room after Sunday afternoon's victory over Phoenix. The fact that he was actually able to walk — instead of limp or hobble — was a pleasant surprise.

After enduring a four-quarter bout with NBA heavyweight Shaquille O'Neal, Thomas would typically expect to leave the arena feeling as if he'd just been used as a punching bag.

“Normally, I'm real sore,” Thomas said. “This time, I didn't bang with him that much. I had one stretch there where I caught a couple elbows, but it wasn't that bad.”

Thomas, 6-foot-9 and undersized for a center, has made a lengthy career of catching elbows and trading punches with some of the league's biggest big men.

A little more than a year after the Spurs acquired him in a trade from Seattle, Thomas has established himself as the tough-guy enforcer on Gregg Popovich's bench. Since he began earning steady minutes in mid-December, Thomas has averaged 5.1 points and 5.5 rebounds per game — numbers that don't begin to quantify his value to the Spurs' frontline.

His presence means Tim Duncan doesn't always have to guard an opponent's best big man, which aids in keeping the Spurs' All-Star captain out of foul trouble.

“We've been getting good minutes out of Kurt for quite a while now,” Popovich said. “He's been playing great basketball, and been really important.”

Thomas, who signed a two-year deal with the Spurs during the summer, says he's at last grown comfortable with his role in San Antonio.

“I've got a good feel of the offense, the defense, the coaching staff, my teammates,” he said. “I don't have to do much thinking. I just have to play and react. I'm comfortable with my role and what's expected.”

However, there is a complication on the horizon in the form of newly signed 6-foot-10 power forward Drew Gooden.

Gooden will receive playing time eventually. In all likelihood, his minutes will come from either Thomas or from starting center Matt Bonner, a sweet-shooting big man ranked second in the league in 3-point percentage.

Thomas said he hasn't begun to contemplate what the arrival of Gooden might mean to his own minutes.

“We leave that to Pop,” Thomas said. “He's the one who gets paid to deal with that stress.”

Traditionally, Popovich prefers to have his playoff rotation finalized — or close to it — by now. With Gooden poised to join that rotation and injured guard Manu Ginobili set to rejoin it soon, that task has been thrown off schedule.

With 20 games to go, including tonight's contest against surprisingly surging Charlotte, there are too many moving parts and too many variables for much to be set in stone.

“It is a concern,” Popovich said. “We still have to work Manu back in. We have to work Drew in. It's a little later than you'd really want to do that.”

If past tendencies are any guide, Popovich will still find a way to carve minutes for Thomas.

Back-alley scrappy and tougher than overcooked skirt steak with 13-plus seasons of big-game experience under his belt, Thomas is just the sort of player Popovich likes to rely on during the postseason.

Thomas admits that he has been miscast as a center for much of his career.

“I'm really a power forward, but I've been a center for seven years,” he said. “Whatever pays the bills.”

Widely regarded as one of the best low-post defenders in the league, Thomas has paid those bills by banging with players who might have three or four inches on him.

In his latest outing, Thomas teamed with Duncan to hold O'Neal to 14 points on 6-of-16 shooting.

Over the years, Thomas has learned to compensate for his lack of size with brains and guile. In a way, he is to low-post defense what Duncan is to low-post offense.

“It's not always about the physical attributes,” veteran forward Michael Finley said. “It's about footwork and positioning. He's kind of mastered it in a way that he gets an advantage over an offensive player.”

Says Thomas: “Any trick I can pull out, I'm going to use.”

[footlose]

OT...

we did suck big time lol

[tackielarla]

Manu works up a sweat
By Jeff McDonald

Manu Ginobili worked up a sweat at the Spurs shootaround this morning. It just didn't come on the court.

As his teammates finished up final preparations for tonight's game against Charlotte, Ginobili was on the treadmill, enjoying -- or, perhaps, enduring -- a brisk jog. Earlier this week, Ginobili received good news on some follow-up test results on his injured right ankle.

"It showed that healing is going on," coach Gregg Popovich said.

Ginobili's Tuesday morning jog was an important step in his recovery from a stress reaction in the distal fibula. He has missed the past 11 games, over which time the Spurs are 7-4.

The prognosis for Ginobili's return remains nebulous. Popovich's latest guess had Ginobili returning in "a week or two."

Meanwhile, Drew Gooden — who has not played since signing a free-agent deal with the Spurs on Saturday — continues to test his strained groin. Gooden again went through a full walk-through with the Spurs this morning, and appears to be getting close to his Spurs debut.

"The last thing we want to do this close to the playoffs is get him out there and make it a bad injury, and then we don't have him," Popovich said. "I want him to rehab it and make sure it's strong before he goes, and he didn't argue."

[tackielarla]

Spurs 100, Bobcats 86.

[tackielarla]

http://blogs.mysanantonio.com/weblog...u-no-good.html


By
Jeff McDonald
on Mar 10, 2009 7:06 pm

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich confirmed Tuesday night what most of us had already come to suspect: Manu Ginobili's triumphant return to the active lineup will not come Thursday against the L.A. Lakers.

When Ginobili was initially shelved after the All-Star break, suffering what what was later diagnosed as a stress reaction in his right ankle, team doctors put a prognosis of two to three weeks on his return. Thursday's game would come three weeks to the day.

Ginobili has begun a rehab regimen consisting of weight training, pool work and time on the stationary bike and treadmill, but has not yet been cleared to return to practice. So Popovich's announcement that Ginobili would in no way, shape or form be available against L.A. came as no surprise.

Meanwhile, Popovich says he doesn't expect Drew Gooden will be making his Spurs debut against their biggest Western Conference rival, either. Gooden has been nursing a calf strain since before signing with the Spurs on Saturday.

Popovich hinted Gooden might see his first action on the two-game road trip to Houston and Oklahoma City that begins Saturday.

"When he came, I told him he wouldn't play against Phoenix, or here or probably not even L.A., and we'd assess it then," Popovich said. "He had a week of rest. Now he'd have a week of strengthening that area and just see what he feels like at that point."

[tackielarla]

[menderouv]

kanindot ni iwallpaper oi!

[tackielarla]

Spurs vs. Lakers: Western showdown
Jeff McDonald

The Lakers visit the AT&T Center for the final time in the regular season tonight, providing a foretaste of what many prognosticators believe could be a rematch of last season's Western Conference finals.

Since winning that series in five games, the Lakers have reinforced their status as the best in the West, piling up the NBA's best record (51-13) and running away with the conference race.

Can the Lakers' run to another Finals be stopped? Express-News staff writer Jeff McDonald looks at five reasons the Spurs could be the team to do it:

The Mason factor

No offseason free-agent acquisition has provided the bang for the buck that Roger Mason Jr. has for the Spurs. The ex-Wizard is averaging 12.1 points, shooting 43 percent from 3-point range and has sunk four game-winners this season — including one to beat the Lakers in January. If a playoff rematch does happen, Big Shot Rog could be the missing piece.

The Gooden factor

The Lakers supersized their frontline last season with the addition of Pau Gasol, and the Spurs had little answer for it. This season, the Spurs upped the ante by signing Drew Gooden. He isn’t an All-Star like Gasol, but Gooden should give the Spurs what they’ve lacked for a long time — a second post-up player alongside Tim Duncan. Once he’s healthy enough to play, of course.

The Manu factor

The Spurs aren’t necessarily saying a healthy Manu Ginobili would have changed the outcome of last year’s playoff series. They just know that with their Argentine catalyst hobbled, they stood no chance. Ginobili is injured again, this time with a stress reaction in his “good” ankle that has caused him to miss the past 12 games. It could be a blessing in disguise, however, if the downtime enables him to be fresh for the postseason.

The bench factor

With rookie George Hill (above) coming along, Bruce Bowen still doing his lockdown thing, Kurt Thomas supplying valuable minutes as an enforcer and Gooden rehabbing in the wings, the Spurs’ bench should run deeper this postseason. One caveat: The Lakers’ reserve brigade, led by Jordan Farmar and noted headhunter Trevor Ariza, might be the best in the league.

The Bynum factor

L.A.’s oft-injured big man Andrew Bynum is out again with a torn ligament in his right knee. Even if he returns to the floor in April, it remains to be seen if he can shake off the rust in time to be a significant factor in the playoffs. Another word of warning, however: The Lakers outlasted the West without Bynum last season, too, and have gone 14-4 since his latest injury.

[tackielarla]

We're getting raped by the rapist right now...