Harvey: A Tired Issue: Parker Gets The Asterisk

[duncan228]

http://www.mysanantonio.com/sports/c....22dd0904.html

Buck Harvey: A tired issue: Parker gets the asterisk

LOS ANGELES — It was the mamba against the roaches, and that isn’t a fair fight in nature or basketball. At least the insects were back to being what they’ve been this spring.

This, after all, is how the Spurs lose playoff games.

In Phoenix and New Orleans and now Los Angeles, the Spurs have spent fourth quarters swaddled in towels. Friday they again played three-quarters of a game, and Damon Stoudamire again became the signpost of resignation, and minutes afterward Gregg Popovich was joking.

No one, including Phil Jackson, wanted to make too much of this. Jackson even provided the Spurs with their excuse, talking again about the fatigue factor.

But Popovich, still relaxed, went to the postgame podium and identified the one area that fatigue has less to do with.

Tony Parker.

If the Spurs are going to come back from another 0-2 hole, and if Manu Ginobili isn’t healing, Parker has to become what he’s been in the past.

The roach connection came from Charles Barkley last week, and he meant it in a good way after the Spurs beat the Hornets in Game 7. These old roaches keep coming back.

The Spurs left San Antonio six days ago for that last game in New Orleans, and they never  went back until Saturday morning. Along the way they created an easy out. Who can blame them for losing these two games in Los Angeles when they are worn out?

Jackson sure doesn’t. He all but put an asterisk on his 2-0 lead. “I think they might have had some tired legs,” he said of the Spurs.

What Jackson didn’t say: The Lakers earned their rest advantage.

They finished first in the Western Conference, drawing splintering Denver in the first round, and they took out Utah in six games. Had the Lakers not done that, they would have played their Game 7 on the same Monday night that the Spurs played theirs.

The Lakers earned the 9-0 run to end the first half Friday, too, when a backup named Sasha Vujacic threw in a long jumper and a 3-pointer. There was a time when the Spurs were the ones finding a Slovenian such as Vujacic. They even had their own Slovenians.

The Lakers didn’t do it the same way. They drafted Vujacic only after he had played three years in Italy, and this is his fourth year in the NBA. But the end product is similar, which is a tested, productive international player.

By halftime, in the lead again, Kobe Bryant looked so comfortable in a TNT interview that he referred to himself by his snake-given nickname. Mamba.

Ginobili had gone scoreless that first half, when he would normally turn the corner on Vujacic as he has the rest of the league. Afterward Popovich admitted he “thought of shutting him down for the game,” and then Popovich returned to his what-the-heck mood.

“We wanted to take out Manu earlier, and then he made a mistake and made two good moves in a row,” Popovich said. “And then I got all excited again.”

The transcripts of the quotes as prepared by a service included this Popovich facial reaction in parentheses — “(smiling).”

But among the half-dozen questions that Popovich fielded was one about Parker. There was no suggestion that Parker could have changed this outcome, no matter what he did, but Popovich still answered this question differently.

“I thought Tony was probably a little tentative tonight,” Popovich said. “He went to the basket fine, but I thought he had shots and he missed a couple, and I thought he just backed away from it. He didn’t have confidence for whatever reason.”

The reasons were clearer earlier in the decade. Then Parker would show bursts, and Jackson would adjust, and Parker would act his age and lose confidence.

But that was two les ago. Parker has since been an All-Star and a Finals MVP. He’s the one who put away the Suns with a perfect Game 3.

Now he’s going at a defense without an intimidating shotblocker, and he’s also the only Spur in the rotation under 30.

No excuses, then — not for the lead roach.

[Slippy]

“We wanted to take out Manu earlier, and then he made a mistake and made two good moves in a row,” Popovich said. “And then I got all excited again.”

Manu is such a tease. I had that feeling, too bad Vaughn and Horry couldn't hit an open shot. That excitement ended quickly.