Hollinger Predicts Spurs May Miss Playoffs

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/dailydime?page=dime-080129

As Usual, Spurs Will Hit Stride Soon. Or Will They?
By John Hollinger
ESPN.com
(Archive)
I've been getting some cross-eyed looks regarding the relative positions of Utah and San Antonio in the Power Rankings. The Jazz, although they entered Monday in ninth place in the West, were fourth in the Power Rankings, while the defending champion Spurs were only 11th.

Moreover, the Spurs were projected by our Playoff Odds to have only a 75.9 percent chance of making the playoffs, compared to Utah's 94.4 percent. Even after Utah's 97-91 win over San Antonio on Monday, it seems almost absurd to suggest that San Antonio could miss the playoffs, let alone to assign them a 1-in-4 chance of doing so.

This reveals both the best and the worst about computer models -- they don't know history and personalities. In this case, the Power Rankings and Playoff Odds didn't know San Antonio has made a huge second-half surge nearly every year of the Tim Duncan era. Nor did they know the catalyst for that surge, the so-called "Rodeo Road Trip", started Monday in Salt Lake City -- over the past five years, the Spurs are 30-9 on this excursion.

But maybe that's a good thing. Because if you are blithely expecting the Spurs to turn it on just like they always do, I should warn you that their play of late hasn't exactly smacked of a team building toward greatness.

San Antonio began the year looking like a champion, roaring out of the gate 17-3. Since then, it is only 11-12, and not a particularly good 11-12. Thirteen of the games were at home, and only one of the victims had a winning record.

An optimist would point out that there was only one truly bad loss in the bunch, Saturday's 102-78 waxing by the New Orleans Hornets, but that would miss the larger point. Over the past 23 games, San Antonio has beaten all the bad teams and lost to all the good ones. In other words, it has been an average team.

Average doesn't cut the mustard in these parts, which is why the Spurs still look like a team trying to find itself. We saw that again Monday, as coach Gregg Popovich continued to search for combinations that would work. For instance, Matt Bonner sat the first three quarters but played nearly the entire fourth, primarily because Robert Horry and Francisco Elson once again delivered little.

On the perimeter, the absence of Brent Barry and the struggles of Bruce Bowen are hampering a team that depends on the longball. Bowen made five of his past 28 3s and was 10-of-51 from the field in his past 12 games. In an increasingly common sight, he lost crunch-time minutes to Ime Udoka on Monday -- at least until Udoka's moronic ejection with 1:27 left in a two-point game.

That was the other shocking thing Monday -- some of the mental stuff seemed downright un-Spurs-like. The Spurs took bad backcourt fouls with the Jazz in the bonus, got the killer tech on Udoka and another on Duncan, and degenerated into a Manu Ginobili-on-five offense any time the second unit was on the floor. They made 20 turnovers, and only a rare bout of free-throw accuracy (25-of-28) kept things interesting.

Of course, we shouldn't begin composing epitaphs just because the Spurs lost on the road by six to a fellow title contender on a rare night when Andrei Kirilenko couldn't miss a jumper. Let's face it: At least two-thirds of the league's teams would kill for San Antonio's problems. The Spurs still have the fourth-best record in the conference -- two games ahead of the Jazz, mind you -- and a solid plus-4.7 average scoring margin. Given that, how can we say there is a 1-in-4 chance they are headed to Lottoville?

Here's how: Unlike the Jazz, the tough part of the Spurs' schedule is still to come. Like I said, the computer doesn't know San Antonio's history in past seasons on the rodeo trip. But given the Spurs' recent play and the upcoming games (Phoenix, Cleveland, Toronto, Washington and Boston, among others), it looks like a doozy.

Not only are the Spurs' next eight games on the road (after they played 25 of the first 42 at home), but following the rodeo trip, the schedule remains rough. The likes of Dallas and Phoenix have been backloaded into March and April to create national TV games, meaning many of the cupcakes are already out of the way -- 25 of the Spurs' final 40 games are against teams with winning records.

Even with all that, it's still hard to imagine a San Antonio team with the likes of Duncan, Tony Parker and Ginobili missing out on the playoffs entirely. But throw in an ankle sprain to one of those three and put them in a conference where 48 wins might be needed to gain entry to the postseason, and it's a different story. That's why the Playoff Odds say there's a 1-in-4 shot of the unthinkable happening.

In the meantime, San Antonio obviously has much loftier goals than just making the playoffs. Yet as the rodeo trip begins, Utah looks much closer to being championship caliber than the four-time champs do. Maybe that's because the Spurs are lying in the weeds, like they've often done, busily preparing their annual February surge.

Or maybe something is truly different this year. Based on how the Spurs have played over the past month and a half, we shouldn't dismiss that possibility too rapidly.

 

Hate to break it to them, but the unthinkable has happened. Tony Parker out indefinately with Ankle Spurs.

 

Actually, I still think the Spurs are going to be in the playoffs. I just happen to think they will get in as the 8th seed and this time, we will leapfrog over them.

 

then explain why they have Bonner lol