For league’s top two teams, Saturday’s game in San Antonio is everything.
It must be strange to see an asterisk attached to “all- powerful.” That’s the San Antonio Spurs, the world’s greatest basketball team except for one.
Saturday night’s meeting with the Warriors won’t mean much in the end, but it means a lot to the Spurs right now. They badly need a win: in the standings, in the court of public opinion and especially in their heads. They won’t have any kind of case for “best team in the West” if they don’t pull this one out, and if they get blown out again — remember that 30- point loss in Oakland two months ago — they’ll have to back off their regular- season surge and focus on postseason plans.
Yes, the teams play twice more, in the season’s final week, but if the Warriors have secured the playoffs’ homecourt advantage by then, coach Gregg Popovich will be in full retreat, refusing to show his strategic hand.
The Warriors may not need a victory quite as badly, but this is like any other game on their schedule with a record 73 wins in sight: They want it in the worst way. Outsiders claim the record isn’t their primary focus? Ridiculous. It’s everything to the players. This is their time. They want to be remembered, forever, and that means every streak and historical landmark they can nail down.
It’s astounding to think that the Spurs have competition of any kind. They are 34- 0 at home. The elegant flow of their offensive sets is easily the match of Golden State’s, perhaps even more appealing to watch ( at least until Stephen Curry pulls a double- crossover and casts off from 32 feet). They are healthy, primed and 100 percent ready for this game.
Popovich got at least 14 productive minutes out of 11 players Thursday night in a convincing win over Portland. A spry and youthful- looking Tim Duncan shot 5- for- 6 from the floor, and Tony Parker racked up 16 assists. The third member of that aging group, Manu Ginobili, has been spectacular of late.
What makes this team especially tough, though, is its shift in focus. The scoring is all about Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge now, and Aldridge doesn’t look like the same player who was so thoroughly outclassed by the Warriors in January. He’s finally comfortable in the offense, and he’s said to be a changed man since shutting down his Twitter account ( as it happened, right after that night in Oakland and some savage comments from his followers).
The Spurs also have their deepest team of the Popovich era. An all- reserve unit of Ginobili, Patty Mills, David West, Boris Diaw and recently acquired Kevin Martin means court sense, smart decisions and only a negligible letup in efficiency.
It was clear Thursday that Saturday night’s game means a great deal to Popovich. Even with the game well in hand, he was chewing out players for lackluster play. “Pop has always been like that — stay focused,” Parker told reporters. “It’s a 48- minute game. Saturday, if you rest one minute, ( the Warriors) can go up 15- 0.”
And that asterisk will be shining over the state of Texas like a full moon.
Outright disaster
It never ends well for Cal in the major sports, at least since the Eisenhower administration, and now we have the basketball season that never happened. There’s no other way to view it. Summarizing a fan’s emotions: Embarrassed. An alarming number of sexualharassment cases have critics referring to the school as Grope University. Abandoned. Ivan Rabb and Jaylen Brown are off to the pros ( although Brown doesn’t look anywhere near ready), and coach Cuonzo Martin could lose his job over the Yann Hufnagel crisis. Angry. Over the notion that a coach would make repeated sexual advances to a reporter — as if he wouldn’t be brutally exposed whether he was successful or not. Incredulous. Over the barely plausible explanation of how Tyrone Wallace broke his hand. Depressed. With Wallace and Jabari Bird out, a first- round loss to Hawaii. Other than that, hearty laughter all around ... Seasoned fans had to be amused by the mention of “Cal’s highest tournament seed ever.” In 1960, with a 24- team field and no seeding process, Cal was 24- 1 and coming off the national championship ... Now Al Harrington has joined Stephen Jackson in claiming their 2007 Warriors (“We Believe”) would beat this season’s version. That’s just comical. Those Warriors were 42- 40 in the regular season. One of their cornerstones was Andris Biedrins. They flamed out of the playoffs against Utah, blowing Game 4 at home and imploding in a torrent of technical fouls and missed shots in the climactic Game 5 ( Jackson shot 3- for- 17 that night). It was a team full of vagabonds that produced one memorable week.
The Dodgers’ rotation concerns make the Giants’ seem tame. Scott Kazmir’s velocity is noticeably down and Hyun-Jin Ryu won’t pitch until June, at the earliest, as he continues to recover from shoulder surgery. Kenta Maeda had better be the real thing; otherwise it’s Clayton Kershaw and a prayer ... Jon Lester has finally acknowledged his phobia about throwing to first base, telling reporters, “This is obviously something I can’t run from.” That’s a bit too late for Oakland ( the Royals ran wild on Lester in that 2014 wildcard game), but not too late for Lester and the Cubs in a potential World Series year ... The pride of Marin County, Steve Fainaru and his brother, Mark Fainaru- Wada, detailed the undeniable connection between concussions and the brain disease CTE in their 2013 book, “League of Denial.” Nearly three years later, the NFL has finally acknowledged that link. Coming soon, the league declares death a bad thing.