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Give me a freakin break.
Spurs persevere, Parker heats up
Web Posted: 01/21/2006 12:11 AM CST
Johnny Ludden
Express-News Staff Writer
MIAMI — The Spurs had already seen Manu Ginobili carried off the floor, and their Friday night was quickly turning from bad to worse.
Shaquille O'Neal began to toss his defenders aside, Dwyane Wade filleted the Spurs with his drives to the rim, and the Miami Heat erased a 15-point deficit to surge ahead.
With six minutes remaining and the 20,287 fans packing American Airlines Arena on their feet and roaring, the Spurs signaled for a timeout and retreated to the bench. Then they shrugged.
With Tony Parker scoring a career-high 38 points, Brent Barry throwing in a couple of clutch 3-pointers and nearly everyone else who stepped on the floor contributing in some way, the Spurs clawed past the Heat for a 101-94 victory.
"If you want to be standing at the end of the year, you have to play through that sort of thing," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "There are several teams in the league capable of doing that. Hopefully, we're one of them."
The Spurs figure to face more adversity in the days to come. Friday's victory was muted by the loss of Ginobili, who watched most of the second half from the locker room after spraining his right ankle.
X-rays taken at the arena were negative. Ginobili will be re-evaluated today to better determine the severity of the sprain.
"He'll be out for a while, that's for sure," Popovich said. "It's not broken, but he sprained it pretty good."
Ginobili's ankle buckled after he stepped on Udonis Haslem's foot while driving to the basket three minutes into the third quarter. After stumbling past the baseline, he collapsed to the floor and remained there for a few minutes before Barry and Sean Marks carried him to the locker room.
The Spurs held a 58-43 lead at the time of Ginobili's exit. They fought off one run by the Heat before Wade buried a 19-footer at the end of the quarter to narrow the gap to eight points.
Wade's shot seemed to give Miami the momentum it needed. O'Neal started to bully the Spurs inside, scoring six of his 23 points in the first six minutes of the fourth quarter. His hook shot with 6:11 remaining extended the Heat's lead to 82-78 and sent the Spurs into a timeout.
"We were kind of sad to see (Ginobili) go down," Parker said. "But we still needed to win the game."
Bruce Bowen quickly steadied the Spurs by knocking down a jump shot. Barry followed with a 3-pointer. Parker hit an 18-footer.
Barry coolly drilled another 3-pointer with 1:09 remaining to finally give the Spurs the separation they needed. After Barry blocked Gary Payton's 24-footer on the other end of the floor, Parker came off a screen by Tim Duncan and buried one more mid-range shot.
"Tony had an unbelievable night," Duncan said. "He's had an unbelievable year so far."
While Parker has repeatedly shredded opposing defenses with his quickness, darting to the rim time and again, he finally showed off his improved jump shot. Eight of the 13 shots he made were from at least 18 feet, including a pair of rare 3-pointers, one of which he threw in just before the first-quarter buzzer.
For the night, Parker made 13 of 18 shots and 10 of 13 free throws. He surpassed his previous high of 35 points, which he scored in a double-overtime victory at Golden State last season.
When Popovich met with Parker on Sunday, he told him he needed to show more confidence in his jump shot. Too many teams had begun to pack the lane and play under the screens on the Spurs' pick-and-rolls.
Said Parker: "Pop say keep penetrating, but you need to make that shot, too, for our offense to flow."
Parker also had plenty of help. Rasho Nesterovic played one of his finest games with the Spurs, contributing six points, five rebounds, three blocks and a pair of steals while supplying solid defense on O'Neal. With Robert Horry missing his second-straight game with an abdominal strain and Nazr Mohammed in foul trouble, Fabricio Oberto and Marks both played important minutes.
"Guys came in there and were making little plays that add up to wins," Barry said.
Coupled with Parker's performance, it was just enough for the Spurs to overcome not only the Heat, but also the loss of Ginobili.
"There are going to be bad periods in every game," Popovich said. "But nobody cares. All that matters is the end result."
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Man that sucks for Manu - again. What horrible timing, just when we were starting to come together. Now we'll be without him on the rodeo trip.
About Tony, what can you say? He was incredible. When he's hitting that jumper, he's unguardable. If he starts to hit that with any consistency then that will take our team to another level.
Give me a freakin break.
It's a sprain. Don't say that.Give me a freakin break.
I figure Manu is out through the ASB (12 games) plus the ASB week off, which is a good break for his recperation but a bad break for his making the AS again.
Then we'll have probably 2 more weeks where, as we saw twice already this season, where Manu will play limited minutes, but won't start.
Lots of minutes for Brent and Michael.
it's just a sprained ankle. 2 weeks max at full strength.
"just" isn't what anybody is using to describe the severity of his pain and inability to put his foot down.
Look how long he was out for the spraining his foot in practice, 8 games, follwing by several more not starting.
Manu missed "just" Oct 02 - Mar 03 with "just" a sprained ankle.
I would love to see him starting in 2 weeks, but I bet Pop, with March just around the corner, will be super cautious and slow in brining him back.
Remember when Shaq landed on Artest's foot early in the season? Reggie Miller was doing TV analyst commentary, and he said something like "that's a month-er, right there"...as in 1 month to recover. He was correct in that observation but it was not based on anything other than experience.
If Manu's injury was a 3rd degree akle sprain (we don't know yet, this is just "for instance") he would need to sit for a month and it would probably not completely heal until 3 or 4 months had passed.
That'snot good.....rodeo road trip is coming up and if we want to gell, we need all our players healthy.
I dismiss anyone who makes such foolish comments as, "I have seen a lot worse twists" like you can tell jack about the injury from a fans view.
There are way too manu variables that effect this type of injury. Only x-rays, MRI's and time can determine how severe this type of injury is, or was.
From my view, the angle of the twist appeared quite severe. However, having had and watched the sprains and recovery of many ankles, I know looks never tell the whole story.
The only thing that I saw that MIGHT work in Manu's favor and lower the severity of the sprain, was it appeared Manu felt the twist in progress, and responded quickly to pull the weight off of the joint. Also, Manu appears to be much more flexable than your average bear.
In watching the film, it appeared to me that Manu knew he was landing on the foot, and was already trying to shift the weight before the most extreme bend of the ankle. With Manu's great flexability, and quick transfer of wieght, perhaps the ligiments were not stressed as much as we fear.
I hope Manu's expressed hurt was more from the frustration of knowing he would miss a little more time, and not from the severity of the injury.
As I said, only time will tell.
It looked like a month-er to me.
Guess they'll just have to gel without Manu. Not much that can be done about that at this point. I guess if that was the overarching concern for the season, Pop would have placed Manu in a hermetically-sealed box and pulled him out in February to take him on the rodeo trip.
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