warriors vs spurs preview (Photo: Photo: Hupu.com)
Golden State Warriors (44-26) vs. San Antonio Spurs (52-16)
Tip-off: Thursday, March 20th, 2014 – 7:30 PM PST
Location: Oracle Arena, Oakland, CA
Spread: Golden State (-7.5) meaning Warriors are 7.5-point favorites
TV: CSN Bay Area | Radio: KNBR 680 AM
Livetweet: @LetsGoWarriors (by @MaggiePilloton)
Last Game / Streak:
SAS – Won 99-79 vs SAC at Sacramento, won 12 straight games
GSW – Won 115-110 vs MIL in Oakland, won 3 straight games
Last Meeting Between The Teams:
Warriors lost 104-102 on 12/20/2013 in Oakland. The Spurs did not have their Big Three available due to injuries, but the Warriors played down their competition and still lost to mostly San Antonio’s second-stringers.
Probable Starting Lineups:
Warriors:
PG: Stephen Curry (23.5 PPG, 4.3 RPG, 8.6 APG)
SG: Klay Thompson (18.2 PPG, 3.0 RPG, 2.2 APG)
SF: Harrison Barnes (9.5 PPG, 4.0 RPG, 1.4 APG)
PF: David Lee (18.5 PPG, 9.4 RPG, 2.2 APG)
C: Andrew Bogut (7.8 PPG, 10.1 RPG, 1.7 APG)
HEAD COACH: Mark Jackson (114-104)
Spurs:
PG: Tony Parker (17.6 PPG, 2.2 RPG, 6.1 APG)
SG: Danny Green (8.5 PPG, 3.3 RPG, 1.5 APG)
SF: Kawhi Leonard (12.3 PPG, 6.3 RPG, 1.8 APG)
PF: Tim Duncan (15.0 PPG, 10.0 RPG, 3.0 APG)
C: Tiago Splitter (8.4 PPG, 6.1 RPG, 1.3 APG)
HEAD COACH: Gregg Popovich (957-439)
After taking care of business on Thursday night against the NBA’s worst team, the Warriors now face the NBA’s best team in terms of win-loss record, the Spurs.
Andre Iguodala will sit out his third straight game for the Warriors, after been diagnosed with right knee tendinitis. He is expected back for the next game, next Friday against the Memphis Grizzlies.
The Spurs are the model franchise that the Warriors — as well as most of the NBA — hope to become someday.
“That’s the team who’s gonna put themselves in contention every year,” Draymond Green told LetsGoWarriors today after morning shootaround at the Warriors’ practice facility, “That’s definitely what you want to continue to build and with the chemistry and with the camaraderie, everything you want, continue to build towards that. It took them some time. It just didn’t happen overnight, but they’ve been the mainstay for years.”
Rusty Simmons of the San Francisco Chronicle:
“We’re learning. We’re learning. It’s part of the process. We’re getting a better understanding of (recognizing mismatches), but we’re not going to be the Spurs overnight,” Jackson said. “That’s something that you work on and something that you study to understand and get a feel for. You go through a period of making mistakes and learn to look for something else. There are a lot of times that I call it out and recognize it, but we’re doing a better job of recognizing it ourselves.”
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Jackson is hopeful that his team will eventually develop into an efficient offensive machine similar to that of its next opponent, which has won its fair share of championships over the past 17 years.
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Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who will bring an offense that ranks first in assists and three-point shooting and second in field-goal percentage into Oracle Arena on Saturday,
Monte Poole of CSN Bay Area:
Warriors general manager Bob Myers concedes the Spurs are a “pretty good example to follow.” Coach Mark Jackson, describing the Spurs as having “excellence across the board,” credits coach Gregg Popovich for his deft handling of a roster constantly being adjusted around stars Duncan, Parker and Ginobili.
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“It starts with a great basketball mind, one of the greatest coaches – not basketball, but coaches in the history of sports – in Pop,” Jackson said after practice Friday. “It’s what he does, the example he sets, and then great leadership with some Hall of Famers, first and foremost Tim Duncan and obviously, Tony and Manu and the great players surrounding them.
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“The whole organization is a model. And they deserve a lot of credit for how they continue to set the bar. It’s awfully impressive.”
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“We’ve beaten them in the past,” shooting guard Klay Thompson said. “It’s just . . . it’s more mental when you have to play 48 minutes. You can have lapses against not-very-good teams. When you play an elite team, you can’t have those. When you play somebody like the Spurs, you’ve just to got to play every possession.”
The Spurs come into town with a 12-game winning streak, on the second game of a back-to-back after beating the Sacramento Kings last night on the road by 20, but Green is still expecting tonight to be a challenge.
“This a championship-caliber team, so catching them on the back-to-back,” Green said, “They’re gonna be ready to play. Those guys have been through the ringer. They know what to expect. They’ve been through the grind. They know what it takes, so a back-to-back is not going to make any difference.”
Expect coach Popovich to sit at least one of his “Big Three” (Duncan, Parker, or Super Sixth Man Manu Ginobili). San Antonio is coming off a 20-point victory last night in Sacramento, in which Parker played 28 minutes, Duncan 33 minutes, and Ginobili 23 minutes, and so there’s a good chance Popovich will avoid a back-to-back or at least be very careful with minutes, with just over two weeks left to go in the regular season. Per Mike Monroe of SpursNation.com:
Sometime in the late afternoon or early evening in the East Bay of the greater San Francisco-Oakland area there will be a conversation between Gregg Popovich and each of his three star players: Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili.
Based on a history of similar late-season talks before the second game of back-to-back sets Ginobili, the 36-year-old Argentine and the team’s No. 3 scorer, has a pretty good idea how this one will go.
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“I imagine I will go to the game tomorrow and he will say he thinks it’s smart if I sit and I will say I want to play and then he’s going to go to Tim and it will be the same situation,” Ginobili said.
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“Sometimes you can’t convince him. He’s sure and he sits you. Sometimes there’s a dialogue. We’ll see what happens.”
Poole with more:
All three played significant minutes in Friday night’s 99-79 win at Sacramento that extended San Antonio’s win streak to 12 games. But Popovich generally does not utilize all three on consecutive nights. He sat them on his team’s last trip to Oakland.
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And the Spurs still found a way to beat the Warriors, who may have presumed victory in that Dec 19 game against the “lesser” San Antonio players.
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That defeat, 104-102, only reinforced what the Warriors (44-26) should have known about the Spurs (52-16). They win not only with talent but also because of a Hall of Fame coach and a system understood and executed by the entire roster.
Jordan Garretson of STATS:
The Warriors (44-26) have also played well of late, winning eight of 10 overall and nine of 11 at home. They’re two games ahead of Dallas and 1 1/2 games behind Portland for fifth place. Three games separate them from Houston for fourth and home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs.
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Golden State moved 18 games above .500 on Thursday for the first time since the end of the 1993-94 season with a 115-110 home win over Milwaukee.
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“You can take it for granted. There’s people that’s 19 years old that’s never seen this. That’s a wow moment,” Jackson said. “It’s an incredible accomplishment, and we’ve still got a ways to go. But we’re going to park and enjoy it, take a deep breath, appreciate it and then continue to chase down our ultimate goals.”
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