The San Antonio Spurs are healthy and playing their best basketball of the season as they gear up for the playoffs. They sit atop the Western Conference by percentage points, and a win tonight would provide a 1/2 game lead over the idle Oklahoma City. However, the team has been unable to solve one team in their recent meetings: the Los Angeles Lakers, who they play again in Tuesday’s best game. The Spurs (43-16) hope to avoid a fourth consecutive loss to the
April is supposed to be the time of the NBA season when the best teams gear up for the playoffs and head into it playing their absolute best basketball. The Heat must have missed that memo. And the Bulls’ starters, too. With the NBA regular season slowly but surely winding down, two of the top teams in the Eastern Conference are heading into the postseason with plenty of uncertainty and several important questions to still resolve. For the Chicago Bulls, the team with
As the truncated season winds down, teams are jockeying for playoff positioning and home-court advantage. One of those teams should be the San Antonio Spurs. But coach Gregg Popovich is playing a different game. Popovich, the silver-haired, long-tenured guru who is among the frontrunners for Coach of the Year Award, decided to sit out three of his top three players – Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili – for the second time this season. The result was the same as the last time
We could drone on and on in today’s roundup about what a huge victory it was yesterday for both Carmelo Anthony and the New York Knicks, being that this Web site is based out of the Big Apple. But we shall spare you. You know why the Knicks won Sunday in overtime? Three words: Derrick Rose choked. By my count, Rose is now 0-for-4 on game-deciding free throws in the final minute of the fourth quarter of Sunday afternoon ABC games, having gagged similarly
By Andy Roth Following the San Antonio Spurs’ first-round elimination in the playoffs last season, most NBA observers, including myself, thought their days as championship contenders were behind them. But Gregg Popovich’s team is firmly entrenched atop the Southwest Division with a 7 1/2 game lead over the Dallas Mavericks, and their 36-14 record is the fourth-best in the league. San Antonio has accomplished all this despite the fact that former All-Star Manu Ginobili has missed 29 games, and was the team’s leading
Blake Griffin was a human highlight film with 27 points, 14 REB, 5 AST and a trio of emphatic dunks in the fourth to seal the deal as the Clippers have now won three straight by double-digit margins. Chris Paul (15 & 15) played Robin to Griffin’s Batman while the Suns were short of superheroes. Marcin Gortat had 23, but elder statesman Steve Nash missed all four of his shots and the venerable Grant Hill (knee) didn’t play. Other Stuff MIN @ CHA: Kevin
If there were rankings for the NBA’s overlooked and underestimated, the San Antonio Spurs would be No. 1. They are the contender people love to forget. That’s not to say they aren’t respected. Four titles since 1999 and the potent management duo of Gregg Popovich and R.C. Buford translates to a substantial bottom line. But the last few years, it seems that when championship aspirants are rated, any mention of the Spurs is followed with “yeah, well … but … they
