The San Antonio Spurs look to extend their best stretch of the season on Friday when they host the Orlando Magic at the A####mp;T Center. The Spurs have rattled off a season-high six straight wins and owns the third-best record in the Western Conference. The Spurs are averaging 100.7 points during their winning streak while holding opponents to 83.5. San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich thinks his team is peaking at just the right time with the postseason approaching. Orlando's Brian Hill better start seeing some improvement from his own squad or it won't even be in the playoffs.
Tim Duncan emphasizes the importance of winning at home. "We've lost some really bad ones here and we just want to re-establish the fact that we need to be a good home team...". The Magic is the only team in the NBA to have never won a season series against the Spurs. San Antonio would do well to reestablish their dominance at home by continuing their recent success and their mastery of Orlando with another win over the Magic.
Don’t Sleep on the Spurs It seems a foregone conclusion that the NBA Finals will be Dallas or Phoenix and some poor, unfortunate Eastern Conference team, right? Not so fast. Didn’t you ever hear the cautionary warning about counting your chickens while sitting at the table? Maybe I’ve mixed messages, but let me make this one clear: Don’t sleep on the San Antonio Spurs.
How can that be, you ask? Surely I can’t be serious? Haven’t I been watching hoops at all this season? And haven’t I seen the Mavs and Suns so clearly dominate the West through the first two-thirds of the season.
Yes, in all seriousness, I’ve witnessed the Spurs struggles, but I’ve also seen them in this position before. San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich is well known for not being overly concerned with his team’s regular season record, but rather using it as an 82-game tune-up for when the real action gets underway. As long as his team continues to improve, well, it seems just fine by Pop if his team isn’t leading in the win-loss column when the calendar still reads February. And who am I to second guess one of the game’s top decision makers, seeing as how he’s led his team to the Larry O’Brien trophy by kicking in the front door as well as slipping in the back.
“I think what is important is a group of men understanding that the real job is to get better as the season moves along and to be at your best at the end,” Popovich told USA Today’s David Dupree earlier this month. “Houston did it from behind, L.A. has done it both ways, we've done it both ways.”
During the 2002-03 season, the Spurs were a mere 38-17 before going on a late tear to finish the season with an NBA-best 60-22 record. They then marched through the field of 16, beating the Suns, Lakers, Mavericks and Nets, all in six games apiece, to win their second championship in the Tim Duncan era.
Two seasons later, the Spurs found themselves staring up at the Suns in the standings after Steve Nash and Amare Stoudemire led a remarkable 33-game turnaround to finish with a league-high 62 wins. The teams met in the Conference Finals and, weathering an impressive 37 points and nearly 10 rebounds per game from Stoudemire, the Spurs cruised to a 4-1 series win before being stretched to a seventh game by the Pistons in the Finals.
If this year’s Spurs (38-18) are to hope for more hardware this year, they may have to do so in the role of underdog. It seems unlikely the team is going to finish the season 22-4 to hit the 60-win mark as in 2003, but, even if it did, that might not be enough as the Mavs could notch 70 Ws with the Suns tight on their heels.
As the Spurs start to steam down the homestretch of the long NBA season, the way they share the ball will be one of the factors by which to gauge their success. In last Saturday's home win over Seattle, the Spurs dished out 32 assists, and only four were credited to their starting point guard. The reserves also spread the wealth, with 18 assists coming from the bench. On one of the more memorable fast breaks of the season, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker raced up the floor exchanging passes, and then -- almost out of nowhere -- came the trailer, Bruce Bowen. Ginobili saw Bruce to his right, and quickly scooped a pass to him, and then Bowen finished with a two hand dunk, much to the delight of his teammates and the sold-out crowd.
Spurs aim to feel more at home
By Johnny Ludden
Shortly after returning from the Spurs' annual rodeo trip, coach Gregg Popovich made it clear to his players that their back-to-back victories in New Jersey and Detroit wouldn't mean much if the team didn't improve its play at home. While such a message would have seemed unnecessary in previous years — the Spurs entered training camp having won 85 of their past 95 regular-season games at the A####mp;T Center — that wasn't the case this season. By the time the Spurs reached the All-Star break they already had eight home losses, one more than all of last season.
Tim Duncan said "...we need to be a good home team. "This needs to be somewhere where people come in here and know they are going to lose games." The Spurs have restored some of that identity over the past week, routing Denver, Seattle and Toronto while leading by at least 30 points in each of the games. They will try for their fifth consecutive home victory Friday against Orlando before departing on a four-game trip. Before the current streak, five of the Spurs' previous 10 home games were losses, two of which came against Houston, a team that had not won in San Antonio since April 20, 1997. During one of those games, Rockets fans could be heard chanting "M-V-P!" for center Yao Ming.
After the Spurs' struggles in back-to-back games last season, some in their basketball operations department welcomed this season's 7 p.m. starts because they gave the team an extra half-hour for travel following a game. But the earlier start time might have contributed to a less-than lively environment this season, as the A####mp;T Center has sometimes been only half- or three-quarters filled at tipoff. Team officials have discussed moving the start time back to 7:30 p.m. next season to give fans more time to go home from work before attending the game.
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