San Antonio Spurs

San-Antonio-Spurs

San Antonio Spurs

NBA players set to lead Brazil’s Olympic team (The Associated Press)

SAO PAULO (AP) Brazil’s men’s basketball team will be led by NBA players Nene, Leandro Barbosa, Tiago Splitter and Anderson Varejao when it returns to the Olympics for the first time in 16 years.

Blake Griffin: Still Limited by Knee Injury (Rotowire.com)

Update: Griffin (knee) wore a brace for Game 1 and says he continues to be limited by the injury, the San Antonio Express-News reports.

Andrew Bynum after 9-0 Thunder run beats Lakers: ‘We’re better than Santa Claus’ (Ball Don’t Lie)

After an Andrew Bynum bucket with 2:08 remaining in the fourth quarter, the Los Angeles Lakers looked to be sitting pretty. They held a seven-point lead over the Oklahoma City Thunder thanks to nearly 46 minutes of gritty ground-and-pound that made the postseason’s best offense — yes, the Thunder entered Wednesday night averaging more points per 100 playoff possessions than even the San Antonio Spurs — look disjointed and stale.
OKC had hit just 39.7 percent of its shots en route to 68 measly points two nights after scoring 119 in Game 1 , and didn’t appear to be anywhere near gettng well against a Laker team that had held them to just 20 second-half points. Unfortunately for the Lakers, appearances can be deceiving.

Whether you’d like to laud Kevin Durant for the win, damn Kobe Bryant for the loss, do neither or choose both, the fact remains that Oklahoma City went on a 9-0 run in the final 128 seconds to score a 77-75 Game 2 win , take a 2-0 lead in their Western Conference semifinal series and deliver a serious haymaker to L.A.’s spirits as they head home for Friday night’s Game 3. The Lakers blew this one, and their center knows it.
Bynum (20 points on 8-of-19 shooting and nine rebounds in the loss) said as much with a sharp, somewhat curious postgame turn of phrase that was shared by the Lakers’ Twitter account and later expounded upon by Sekou Smith at NBA.com’s Hang Time blog :
The Lakers led 75-68 with two minutes to play with the game seemingly in hand. But instead of the veteran Lakers salting this one away with Kobe Bryant finishing the deal, the Lakers lost control of the game and basically gave it away.
“We’re better than Santa Claus giving out gifts,” said Lakers center Andrew Bynum. “We like giving out gifts. We give out games, contracts and rings.”
“We give out games, contracts and rings.” What’s that about?

2012 NBA Playoffs TV Schedule for Thursday, May 17 (Yahoo! Contributor Network)

The 2012 NBA Playoffs schedule for Thursday, May 17 will feature two games. On May 16, the Boston Celtics and Oklahoma City Thunder each moved one step towards the next round with wins over their respective opponents. Which of these four teams playing on Thursday will win the next game of their respective series?

Shaving a picture of Matt Bonner in his head could net a young Spurs fan an in-school suspension (Ball Don’t Lie)

A young San Antonio Spurs fan faces an in-school suspension on Thursday if he doesn’t somehow find a way to alter the image of Matt Bonner that was shaved into the back of his head. You read the previous sentence correctly. The Spurs forward, who is averaging just 14.6 minutes per game in the postseason, has apparently made such an impact on Woodlake Hills Middle School student Patrick Gonzalez that the youngster decided to have a hairstylist shave an image of the Spurs sharpshooter into the back of his haircut. Via Tas Melas , here’s the image that has the principals at Woodlake Hills Middle School in righteous fear of the apparently inevitable anarchy and lawlessness in the school halls that will result if Gonzalez comes to school on Thursday without changing the haircut:

Because the image is so threatening, and so severe, if the style isn’t “fixed” by Thursday, Gonzalez will have to take in an in-school suspension (the worst of all suspensions, because you don’t get to go home and watch TV), because that seems very rational and fair to all the children. Here’s the story, from Grace White at FOX 29 :

Clippers-Spurs Preview (The Associated Press)

SAN ANTONIO (AP) Hours before turning 30 years old, Tony Parker grinned Wednesday as though his lowest-scoring playoff game since his early twenties was an early birthday gift from the Los Angeles Clippers.