Spurs tread lightly with condensed schedule approaching
After a Monday off the San Antonio Spurs returned to practice today, walking the tenuous line between getting as much work in as possible after a several month layoff and not taxing bodies to much in anticipation of a condensed season.
“I’m going to approach this with paranoia and assume that everybody’s not in the greatest of shape,” Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich said. “With this schedule it would be pretty tough to get an early injury.
“So we’re going to ease into this and make sure that everybody’s body is ready to go before we really crank it up.”
A shortened season would appear in favor of a veteran team like the Spurs, but the condensed part is going to hurt. The Spurs have 17 back-to-backs on their schedule, and three back-to-back-to-backs.
“There’s no way to prepare for those, those are going to hurt,” Tim Duncan said. “We’re going to be very sore through those and we’re going to have to find ways to split the minutes up the right ways and keep everybody healthy so you’re not breaking down too badly down the stretch.”
For Duncan and Popovich there is little comfort in having been through the previous lockout shortened season. If anything, being the only head coach/franchise player combination still around serves as disadvantage given how long ago that was.
“It wasn’t a grind to me then, I was like a deer running up and down everyday. I just wanted to play,” Duncan said. “But this is going to feel a little different, I know.”
Whatever lessons the Spurs learned through that championship run, Popovich says, have long been implemented in their system. The limited minutes, the nights off on the wrong end of a back-to-back, the Spurs have been doing them for the better part of the decade.
True to form, Spurs players returned to training camp in reasonable shape, each player approaching the extended offseason in their own ways. Tony Parker and DeJuan Blair played overseas, Gary Neal worked out and ran games on the East Coast. And Tim Duncan worked here at home.
Duncan opened up camp noticeably a little trimmer. Told that at some point, for the sake of his knee, it would be better to be lighter, Duncan has entered training camp in each of the past few seasons in remarkable shape.
“Timmy’s incredible, it seems he comes back every year in better shape,” Popovich said. I think he realizes that as you get older you have to make sure your body is as good as it can be, and he’s a great example.”
While Duncan worked throughout the lockout, Manu Ginobili treaded lightly, entering camp in shape but not quite basketball shape. To be fair when drawing comparisons between he and Duncan’s summer routine, Duncan does not routinely throw himself into men at least 50 pounds heavier then him nearly every time down the court.
“I’m feeling very good. With this lockout, with the uncertainty, I’m not in the best shape ever. These three weeks are going to be huge for me, I’m a little behind,” Ginobili said. “I thought, for my body, for the long term effects, it was better for me to stay at home and rest instead of going to Europe to play.
“In the short term it’s going to hurt, but I think in the long term, in March and April, that’s when I’m going to realize it was a good decision for me.”
