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its all in the head timmy!
http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/b...n.38ff933.html
Pro basketball: Spurs begin brutal slate of March
Jeff McDonald
San Antonio Express-News
MILWAUKEE — The sweat had barely dried on the Spurs' latest biggest victory of the season, a 97-94 cliffhanger over rival Dallas on Thursday night at the AT&T Center, when someone reminded Tim Duncan where his team was headed next.
The news hit Duncan's postgame happy time like an ice-cold shower.
"Milwaukee, ugh," Duncan said. "I hate going to Milwaukee."
Duncan's dread of Milwaukee, where the Spurs face the Bucks tonight at the Bradley Center, has nothing to do with a revulsion for beer and brats. It has everything to do with the team that plays there which, inexplicably, seems to give the Spurs as much trouble as anyone in its home building.
"It's always a tough game, there, it really is," Duncan said. "For whatever reason, we don't play well in that building."
Milwaukee is only the tip of the iceberg. For Duncan and his teammates, March ought to be a month full of "ughs."
Fresh of a dazzling 10-1 February and riding a season-best seven-game winning streak, the Spurs are rewarded with the busiest month in franchise history — an 18-game epic that should test their legs, their resolve, and their standing atop the Southwest Division.
The slate includes five separate sets of back-to-backs, beginning with every tourist's dream package — a Milwaukee-New Jersey two-fer this weekend.
"That schedule in March is going to be brutal," said point guard Tony Parker. "We have to be focused to make sure we get through it."
On a different page on the Gregorian calendar, the poet T.S. Eliot once penned this not-so-loving ode: "April is the cruelest month."
Eliot, however, never had to face the likes of Phoenix, Detroit, New Orleans, Boston and Denver (twice) in a 10-day span, as the Spurs must in the middle part of this month. It might have redefined the bard's understanding of the word "cruel."
That's why, even as the Spurs were tearing through a red-hot February, dispatching teams left and right with the cold-blooded brutality of a Manu Ginobili step-back 3-pointer, they didn't get too high on their own success. They knew. The monster of March loomed.
"We knew it was coming," Ginobili said. "We knew March was going to be really tough for us. We've got to be ready."
This being a leap year, at least the Spurs had an extra day to gear up for the March grind.
With Western Conference teams packed like a marathon starting line, this particular March takes on even greater importance for the Spurs.
Heading into Friday night's action, just 31/2 games separated the conference's top team — the Los Angeles Lakers — from its seventh — the suddenly Yao Ming-less Houston Rockets.
The 39-17 Spurs, meanwhile, lurk one game behind the Lakers in the West, with New Orleans prowling one game in back of them in both the conference and divisional chases. All told, it ought to soak the rest of the season with a pre-playoff intrigue seldom seen in previous NBA seasons.
"There's going to be a lot more emphasis on the regular season because no one wants to drop to seventh or eighth place," Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. "And that could happen to any of us."
Indeed, teams must walk a razor-thin tightrope.
"You can't afford to lose the games you're supposed to win," Parker said. "You can't have no letdown."
Which brings the Spurs to the Bradley Center tonight.
On paper, and only on paper, the Bucks would not seem to pose much of a threat to the Spurs' winning streak. Milwaukee, after all, is 22-36, having gone 4-11 in February.
But for much of the past decade the Bradley Center never has been overly hospitable to the Spurs, who have dropped seven of their past nine there. They haven't won in Milwaukee since Dec. 4, 2004.
This partially explains Duncan's abhorrence to that particular arena. It is a place that makes him go "ugh."
"We've got to go up there respecting them," Duncan said. "We've got to go up there and understand we've got to turn it up a little bit and play a much better ballgame up there."
its all in the head timmy!
Even if they fell to 6th or 7th seed it doesn't matter. If you want to win a championship you gotta win on the road anyway.
march madness?
OUTRAGEOUS
THIS IS SPUR-TAAAA
bos det nor phx and den twice in 10 days, wholly
this stretch of games
make or break
losing a few will see us go down a few seed ranks or missin the playoffs....
if we beat denver twice....goodbye playoffs for them imo...
THis time will be different we will win!
Milwaukee really sucks this year, but compared to other EC lottery teams with losing home records, Bucks have +.500 home record of a respectable 16-11.
The Spurs just can't start off March and blow their winning streak by losing to these bozos.
Spurs go 5 and 1.
The playoffs just got extended. Teams are going to have to play playoff basketball all throughout March to even make the playoffs. I just worry that this stretch of games could kill our momentum.
The first half of March is the brutal part. Amazing: they play 5 games in 7 days (2 back-to-backs), get only one day in between, then do another 5 games in 7 days (2 back-to-backs). That's 10 games in 16 days. That is just flat insane.
Oh yeah: then there's the week of March 23 when they play 3 games in 4 days. The three teams? Dallas, Orlando, and the Lakers.
...still waiting for Mr. Ed Helicopter Jone's Annual SPAM Classic...
If the Spurs play well, and stay focused this is gonna be a stretch of games that vaults them into the playoffs and playing well.
When they've struggled in past years, its when they have nothing to play for the last week of the season, rest everyone, and come out in the playoffs and lay a stinko.
Its the same premise for a baseball team that gets the wild card.
They've been playing so many meaningfull games down the stretch, that the playoffs just become an extension of those said games.
Should be good for em
Pop loves this I gaurantee it.
We might as well include football in that catagory with the wildcard Giants knocking off the undefeated Patriots.
This is one of a season. No team in the WC that is currently holding a top 8 position can afford to lose. Certainly not to team they are supposed to beat. This is a year to remember. Probably never see another one like it in my lifetime.
C'mon Spurs. Make it really memorable. Kick all their asses.
Great point. It works out in alot of sports really, hockey as well, you always see the 8th team sneak in on the last day, and then beat the 1 seed in 6 games, just because all their games down the stretch meant something, they have nothing to lose (probobly a bigger reason for winning, but I'd like to think the importance of games down the stretch had something to do with it
Actually, that would be a disaster. Spurs have never had to win more than 1 series where they didn't have HCA in any championship year. To expect them to do it four times is foolishness. We really can't fall below 3rd seed.
We can't really. T'was just one game. You can't bull your way through a seven game series.......
meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference.....
<crickets>
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