Spurs Brazil
05-22-2008, 12:10 PM
http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dime-080522&lpos=spotlight&lid=tab2pos1
Spurs Refuse To Play Blame Game
By Marc Stein | ESPN.com
LOS ANGELES -- The Spurs typically refused to blame their fall-from-ahead Game 1 loss on the faulty plane that forced them to spend several hours after their Game 7 victory Monday in New Orleans on the runway waiting for the repairs that could get them here.
Manu Ginobili, furthermore, refused to blame his 3-for-13 shooting struggles in Game 1 on the fingernail on his shooting hand that was apparently torn off Wednesday night ... or the ankle injury that's been bothering him for a while.
"I have a couple issues, but nothing that bad that can justify the way I played today," Ginobili said.
"The hand is all right. It's just a nail. My ankle is bothering me, [but] I don't want to talk about that. That's not the reason I played so bad."
The Spurs can only hope. The schedule for this series certainly won't provide many opportunities to heal up, as Lakers coach Phil Jackson noted beforehand.
"Where we are playing every other day," Jackson said, "I think [L.A.'s lengthy rest after eliminating Utah] is going to work to our advantage, because we'll have a little reserve to work from."
This much we know for certain: San Antonio will no longer use the charter company that it's been flying all season. Champion Air was already scheduled to cease its operations at month's end, but the Spurs have begun making alternate arrangements for their trip home Friday night after Game 2.
"So we stayed on the plane -- big deal," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said, clearly growing weary of discussing a subject that he initially referred to as "the plane debacle."
San Antonio's players and staffers were forced to try to sleep on the team plane because there was no hotel in New Orleans that could accommodate them at such a late hour. But as Spurs guard Brent Barry said, "We weren't roughing it by any stretch."
Another subject Popovich has quickly grown weary of addressing is his initial reaction to the Lakers' Feb. 1 acquisition of Pau Gasol from Memphis, when he suggested that a league committee should be formed to prevent such lopsided deals.
"It was a joke," Popovich said during his pregame media session Wednesday. "You've got to have a life. I made a joke about it. I wasn't upset about it. I just made a joke."
Tim Duncan then went out and routinely abused Gasol's one-on-one coverage before L.A. eventually mixed in some intermittent double-teams which helped hold San Antonio to just 13 points -- and no assists -- in the fourth quarter.
The Lakers' comeback from 20 points down to take the series opener prompted guard Derek Fisher -- still known as Mr. Point Four in the Alamo City for the shot he threw in at the buzzer to beat the Spurs in Game 5 of the teams' second-round matchup in 2004 -- to offer this disarming reminder: "There is no script to an NBA basketball game."
Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here.
Spurs Refuse To Play Blame Game
By Marc Stein | ESPN.com
LOS ANGELES -- The Spurs typically refused to blame their fall-from-ahead Game 1 loss on the faulty plane that forced them to spend several hours after their Game 7 victory Monday in New Orleans on the runway waiting for the repairs that could get them here.
Manu Ginobili, furthermore, refused to blame his 3-for-13 shooting struggles in Game 1 on the fingernail on his shooting hand that was apparently torn off Wednesday night ... or the ankle injury that's been bothering him for a while.
"I have a couple issues, but nothing that bad that can justify the way I played today," Ginobili said.
"The hand is all right. It's just a nail. My ankle is bothering me, [but] I don't want to talk about that. That's not the reason I played so bad."
The Spurs can only hope. The schedule for this series certainly won't provide many opportunities to heal up, as Lakers coach Phil Jackson noted beforehand.
"Where we are playing every other day," Jackson said, "I think [L.A.'s lengthy rest after eliminating Utah] is going to work to our advantage, because we'll have a little reserve to work from."
This much we know for certain: San Antonio will no longer use the charter company that it's been flying all season. Champion Air was already scheduled to cease its operations at month's end, but the Spurs have begun making alternate arrangements for their trip home Friday night after Game 2.
"So we stayed on the plane -- big deal," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said, clearly growing weary of discussing a subject that he initially referred to as "the plane debacle."
San Antonio's players and staffers were forced to try to sleep on the team plane because there was no hotel in New Orleans that could accommodate them at such a late hour. But as Spurs guard Brent Barry said, "We weren't roughing it by any stretch."
Another subject Popovich has quickly grown weary of addressing is his initial reaction to the Lakers' Feb. 1 acquisition of Pau Gasol from Memphis, when he suggested that a league committee should be formed to prevent such lopsided deals.
"It was a joke," Popovich said during his pregame media session Wednesday. "You've got to have a life. I made a joke about it. I wasn't upset about it. I just made a joke."
Tim Duncan then went out and routinely abused Gasol's one-on-one coverage before L.A. eventually mixed in some intermittent double-teams which helped hold San Antonio to just 13 points -- and no assists -- in the fourth quarter.
The Lakers' comeback from 20 points down to take the series opener prompted guard Derek Fisher -- still known as Mr. Point Four in the Alamo City for the shot he threw in at the buzzer to beat the Spurs in Game 5 of the teams' second-round matchup in 2004 -- to offer this disarming reminder: "There is no script to an NBA basketball game."
Marc Stein is the senior NBA writer for ESPN.com. To e-mail him, click here.