Spurs Brazil
12-04-2007, 02:02 PM
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/basketball/nba/spurs/stories/MYSA120407.buck_1204.en.28bead2.html
Buck Harvey: Spurs feel pain, but not much
Web Posted: 12/04/2007 12:01 AM CST
Buck Harvey
San Antonio Express-News
Bruce Bowen is skinnier and older than nearly everyone he chases. He runs through picks, and he takes charges, and sometimes he's been accused of trying to hurt others.
His next start, against the Mavericks, will also be his 455th consecutive one. If Bowen retired right now, the NBA player with the second-longest streak, Tayshaun Prince of Detroit, could start every game for the next two years and not catch him.
It's a remarkable statistic of longevity and health and luck. It's also symbolic of his franchise.
On Monday, an MRI confirmed everything.
When asked if the Spurs are lucky, R.C. Buford opts for humor. "No. Two lottery picks, 10 years apart, just when we needed them? OK, maybe there's been some luck."
Some luck. David Robinson suffered the Spurs' most dramatic injury of the last dozen years — and that injury led the Spurs to the lottery and produced Tim Duncan.
Their championships followed the same theme. The Spurs were injury-free in 1999 even with Sean Elliott on his way to a kidney transplant.
They were lucky in 2003, too. Then, Robinson somehow remained limber even in his last season, and yet, in the Western Conference finals, a young Dirk Nowitzki fell with a sprained ankle.
Two years later, Duncan nearly broke his ankle in March, yet came back and stayed upright long enough to win another title. Others then, such as Seattle's Ray Allen and Phoenix's Joe Johnson, weren't as lucky that postseason.
And this past spring? The Spurs were healthy again, even with the league's oldest roster, while Steve Nash bled at precisely the wrong moment.
The Spurs also were smart and poised and talented. But Amare Stoudemire missed nearly all of the 2005-06 season, and Greg Oden is missing this one, both because of knee surgeries, and a traumatic blow caused neither injury. Given their youth and their athletic bodies, isn't bad luck the only explanation?
The Spurs had avoided the same, at least until Sunday. Then, Duncan's right leg twisted under him, and it looked as if it was the Spurs' turn to suffer.
Duncan had tangled the game before with a bullish forward he had known since college. Mark Madsen, then a freshman at Stanford, was part of a physical tag-team that beat on Duncan and eliminated Wake Forest from the NCAA tournament.
Madsen plays basketball the way a sumo wrestler plays tag, and it's something that has kept him employed despite an alarming lack of talent. Last week, playing for Minnesota, Madsen managed to get Duncan angry enough to draw a rare technical foul. But Duncan's only bruise that night was the following foul shot.
The figure who stood in his way Sunday afternoon, in contrast, was a thin ex-Sun named James Jones. He's 6-foot-8 and 220 pounds, and he's best known as a 3-point shooter.
But none of that mattered when Jones fronted Duncan. Duncan reached for a pass, and both his right ankle and right knee bent the way that ankles and knees aren't supposed to bend.
Bowen watched from the bench at the time. And asked later if he ever thought there's an art to falling down, he shook his head. He brought up Emmitt Smith, who recently said Adrian Peterson needs to learn how to safely hit the ground.
"Maybe you can save some skin if you bend just so," Bowen said. Otherwise, Bowen said, your body will mix with gravity and other people in your way, and there's only one thing you can do about it.
Hope, then get up.
So there was Duncan, grabbing his right knee only because it hurt more than his right ankle. Replays suggested the worst, or, in other cities, the best. Would the Mavericks and Suns, among others, look back and remember Dec. 2, 2007, as the day the West changed?
Duncan instead stayed in one piece. And as Bowen left the arena Sunday as he seemingly has every arena, without a limp, he searched for the word to sum up his feelings.
Thankful? "It goes deeper than that," he said.
Deep into a franchise, as well as an era.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[email protected]
Buck Harvey: Spurs feel pain, but not much
Web Posted: 12/04/2007 12:01 AM CST
Buck Harvey
San Antonio Express-News
Bruce Bowen is skinnier and older than nearly everyone he chases. He runs through picks, and he takes charges, and sometimes he's been accused of trying to hurt others.
His next start, against the Mavericks, will also be his 455th consecutive one. If Bowen retired right now, the NBA player with the second-longest streak, Tayshaun Prince of Detroit, could start every game for the next two years and not catch him.
It's a remarkable statistic of longevity and health and luck. It's also symbolic of his franchise.
On Monday, an MRI confirmed everything.
When asked if the Spurs are lucky, R.C. Buford opts for humor. "No. Two lottery picks, 10 years apart, just when we needed them? OK, maybe there's been some luck."
Some luck. David Robinson suffered the Spurs' most dramatic injury of the last dozen years — and that injury led the Spurs to the lottery and produced Tim Duncan.
Their championships followed the same theme. The Spurs were injury-free in 1999 even with Sean Elliott on his way to a kidney transplant.
They were lucky in 2003, too. Then, Robinson somehow remained limber even in his last season, and yet, in the Western Conference finals, a young Dirk Nowitzki fell with a sprained ankle.
Two years later, Duncan nearly broke his ankle in March, yet came back and stayed upright long enough to win another title. Others then, such as Seattle's Ray Allen and Phoenix's Joe Johnson, weren't as lucky that postseason.
And this past spring? The Spurs were healthy again, even with the league's oldest roster, while Steve Nash bled at precisely the wrong moment.
The Spurs also were smart and poised and talented. But Amare Stoudemire missed nearly all of the 2005-06 season, and Greg Oden is missing this one, both because of knee surgeries, and a traumatic blow caused neither injury. Given their youth and their athletic bodies, isn't bad luck the only explanation?
The Spurs had avoided the same, at least until Sunday. Then, Duncan's right leg twisted under him, and it looked as if it was the Spurs' turn to suffer.
Duncan had tangled the game before with a bullish forward he had known since college. Mark Madsen, then a freshman at Stanford, was part of a physical tag-team that beat on Duncan and eliminated Wake Forest from the NCAA tournament.
Madsen plays basketball the way a sumo wrestler plays tag, and it's something that has kept him employed despite an alarming lack of talent. Last week, playing for Minnesota, Madsen managed to get Duncan angry enough to draw a rare technical foul. But Duncan's only bruise that night was the following foul shot.
The figure who stood in his way Sunday afternoon, in contrast, was a thin ex-Sun named James Jones. He's 6-foot-8 and 220 pounds, and he's best known as a 3-point shooter.
But none of that mattered when Jones fronted Duncan. Duncan reached for a pass, and both his right ankle and right knee bent the way that ankles and knees aren't supposed to bend.
Bowen watched from the bench at the time. And asked later if he ever thought there's an art to falling down, he shook his head. He brought up Emmitt Smith, who recently said Adrian Peterson needs to learn how to safely hit the ground.
"Maybe you can save some skin if you bend just so," Bowen said. Otherwise, Bowen said, your body will mix with gravity and other people in your way, and there's only one thing you can do about it.
Hope, then get up.
So there was Duncan, grabbing his right knee only because it hurt more than his right ankle. Replays suggested the worst, or, in other cities, the best. Would the Mavericks and Suns, among others, look back and remember Dec. 2, 2007, as the day the West changed?
Duncan instead stayed in one piece. And as Bowen left the arena Sunday as he seemingly has every arena, without a limp, he searched for the word to sum up his feelings.
Thankful? "It goes deeper than that," he said.
Deep into a franchise, as well as an era.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[email protected]