Tim Duncan (right knee soreness) to miss Spurs-Warriors on Monday
Maybe it’s our own fault. Maybe we just wanted this too much.
On the eve of the most anticipated game of the 2015-16 NBA season — the showdown between the league’s top two teams, the 40-4 defending champion Golden State Warriors and the 38-6 San Antonio Spurs — Gregg Popovich and company announced that they wouldn’t be heading into the titanic tilt at full strength.
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In some circles, the revelation that the 39-year-old Tim Duncan would be sidelined met with skepticism, given Pop’s previously established penchant for giving his veteran stars nights off for rest rather than injury in high-profile regular-season games:
In others — those that tend to chant “GO SPURS GO,” you’d imagine — news that the Spurs will enter battle against a squad as offensively potent as Golden State without Duncan, still one of the league’s top defensive big men, wasn’t exactly welcome:
Other observers suggested that perhaps Pop elected to hold Duncan out, thus giving Golden State a look at a juggled and incomplete Spurs rotation, rather than showing his full hand to an opponent that San Antonio will also see three times in the final month of the regular season and, if all goes according to plan, in a seven-game series at some point this postseason:
While it’s certainly not outside the realm of possibility that Pop’s trying to play a game within the game against a team he expects to have to go through to return to the NBA Finals, it’s also possible that the simplest explanation is the most accurate one. Maybe Duncan, who has already missed seven games this season, who played just 21 minutes against both the Dallas Mavericks and Los Angeles Lakers, and who didn’t look much like himself in either game, really does have a sore right knee that would benefit from a night off. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar … even if we think the guy making this decision can be a real not-a-cigar about the matchups for which fans get so excited.
For his part, Warriors head coach Steve Kerr — fresh off Friday’s return to the sideline following more than three months on the shelf after offseason back surgeries — reportedly seemed very surprised that Duncan will miss Monday’s game, but not so shocked that he couldn’t smirk off a dig at his former teammate:
Those suggesting that the decision to rest Duncan in some way constitutes the Spurs punting on Monday’s game should perhaps pump the brakes. San Antonio’s 7-0 without Duncan this season, and has been nearly as dominant on both ends of the floor when Duncan has been off it. Plus, Duncan’s expected replacement in the starting lineup — veteran big man David West — isn’t exactly a slouch, averaging 8.6 points, 5.9 rebounds and 2.1 assists in 23.6 minutes per game as a starter this season, with San Antonio winning all nine contests.
That said, Duncan’s absence does mean Pop is kicking the can down the road a bit on answering one of the most important and interesting tactical questions of this NBA season. Namely: how will the Spurs respond when the Warriors go to their murderous small-ball lineup, with Draymond Green shifting from power forward to center alongside Harrison Barnes, Andre Iguodala, Klay Thompson and reigning Most Valuable Player Stephen Curry? Will a San Antonio club that has played big often, with Duncan and LaMarcus Aldridge sharing the floor for 706 of the Big Fundamental’s 960 minutes this season, attempt to force Golden State to reinsert another big by punishing the smaller defenders on the interior and on the offensive glass?
Then again, maybe Pop isn’t avoiding an answer as much as giving us a heads up:
If Popovich wants to test out his smaller configurations, he can use the versatility of Boris Diaw — whom Mike Miller once said allows San Antonio to “be big and small at the same time” — to mix and match with Aldridge up front, and could even take a longer look at how rookie Jonathon Simmons, an athletic and physical 6-foot-6 swingman, might fare alongside MVP candidate Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green in dealing with the Warriors’ dangerous wings. If he wants to try out supersized alignments, he can keep Aldridge at the four and break out 7-foot-3 rookie Boban Marjanovic, who’s been pulverizing opponents on the offensive glass this season but figures to have significant issues matching the foot speed and quickness of Golden State’s smaller unit.
However Pop wants to approach the matchup, it’s a shame that — for one reason or another — we won’t get to see the legendary Duncan take the court against Steph, Draymond and the gang, and that after 44 games of waiting, we’re still not going to see a totally and unasterisked full-strength matchup between the two best teams in the NBA. Oh, well. There’s always March 19, I guess.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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