Road to success? Spurs hope so on rodeo road trip
SAN ANTONIO (AP)—The San Antonio Spurs had just finished a dreary homestand with another loss when Manu Ginobili(notes) was asked: Might he or Tony Parker(notes) be traded to turn things around?
A reporter didn’t ask. It was a season-ticket holder.
Limping into an three-week road trip starting Wednesday that Tim Duncan(notes) says is the most important one yet, this is the Spurs: so inconsistent that the once-absurd idea of trading two of the Big Three is sounding plausible to some of their most loyal fans.
Ginobili doesn’t think he or Parker are going anywhere. But where the Spurs are ultimately headed may be determined in the next eight games.
The Rodeo Road Trip—the annual get-it-together moment for the Spurs—has arrived.
“We really need to get this bunker mentality together more than before,” Ginobili said after the Spurs went 2-4 at home in 12 days. “If we’re going to be the contenders we know we can be, this is the time we’ve got to show up.”
Mostly because time is running out.
The Spurs are 27-19—a bottom seed in the Western Conference if the playoffs began today, and certainly worse than most expected after the Spurs got healthy this summer and went on a spending spree to keep the window open for a fifth NBA title.
The record is the lowest winning percentage San Antonio has carried into Feb. 1 in the Duncan era. The Spurs also better get used to the road, because thanks to a frontloaded home schedule, they have just 12 games in San Antonio the rest of the season.
Panic is not a Spurs custom. Winning streaks or losing skids, coach Gregg Popovich and his veteran core keep the Spurs even-keeled and always mindful of perspective. They play for April and May, not December and January.
But February is a traditional turning point. Since the Spurs moved into the AT&T Center in 2002, they’re left homeless each year about this time by the annual San Antonio Livestock Show and Rodeo.
Popovich has seized on the trip as an inimitable bonding opportunity—no families, no distractions—and with great success.
The Spurs are 40-16 in seven rodeo toad trips. The trek has traditionally propelled their final burst to the playoffs, and with San Antonio struggling to find traction, Duncan declared this trip crucial for the Spurs.
“We hope the results of the past are what we get now,” Duncan said. “Because we need to turn that corner. We’ve always used this trip to kind of get on a roll. Hopefully we can do just that and come back a better team than we’re leaving.”
What the Spurs want to leave behind is sloppy defense and unreliable shooting. Popovich began a season-long, six-game homestand last month flustered that “we’re scoring more points than we’ve ever scored in our lives, but our defense is really sub-par and it’s killing us.”
That much is true: the Spurs average nearly 101 points a game, a record pace under Popovich. But so is allowing 96.2 points to opponents.
When the homestand ended Sunday with a loss to Denver, Popovich turned his frustration toward the offense, even though the Nuggets were still allowed to shoot 54 percent. He criticized the team’s inability to make a basket at big moments.
“We can’t expect to shoot like this two out of every four games and expect to get anywhere,” Popovich said. “People got to step up and make some …. shots.”
The road trip begins against the Kings, followed by Portland on Thursday before heading to Los Angeles. San Antonio plays the Lakers on Monday and will face a team expected to be much more healthy than the team the Spurs blew out last month.
San Antonio may be the short-handed one this time. The Spurs have not said when they’ll get back Parker, who has missed the last two games with an ankle sprain.
“If we beat Sacramento or Portland it doesn’t make us all the sudden feel excited about the way we’re playing,” swingman Richard Jefferson(notes) said. “We’re looking for consistency over a 10, 12, 15-game stretch.”
Pounding The Rock
