Spurs coach Gregg Popovich probably won’t make Tim Duncan defend Blake Griffin full-time. (D. Clarke Evans/NBAE via Getty Images)

We’ve already got a bang-up preview of the Spurs-Clippers series that begins tonight, and I’ve already given my quick-hitting prediction: Spurs in five. That prediction is based on the idea that the Clippers’ defense, merely average in the regular season, won’t be able to limit the Spurs’ league-best offense enough to win four times in seven tries. The Spurs lit up the Clippers in three regular-season games, scoring nearly 113 points per 100 possessions — about 4.5 points better than San Antonio’s overall mark — and shooting 44 percent from three-point range on nearly 25 attempts per game.

The Clippers struggled to defend the three all season, and their big men are shaky against the pick-and-roll — a deadly combination of flaws against a San Antonio team that, unlike the Grizzlies, does not offer a poor shooter or two off of which the Clippers can help.

That said, the Spurs’ status as big favorites here come with a few caveats:

• The Clippers scored 107.2 points per 100 possessions against the Spurs, a mark that would have nearly led the league, and they would have taken two of three meetings with San Antonio if not for a semi-miraculous Gary Neal game-tying three-pointer. The Spurs, surprisingly, ranked as one of the league’s worst teams at defending the pick-and-roll, per Synergy Sports. They ranked dead last in points allowed per possession on pick-and-rolls in which the ball-handler finished the play, and the Clippers have a pretty decent point guard–provided Chris Paul’s groin allows him to be something close to the usual Chris Paul. For the season, about 15.9 percent of San Antonio possessions ended via a pick-and-roll ball-handler finishing the play, the largest figure for any playoff team, per Synergy.

That probably says at least a little bit about how the Spurs prioritize defending various shot types over others, but it also suggests Paul could feast on open mid-range shots and driving lanes.

• The Clippers’ defense improved as the season went on and played well against the Grizzlies in the first round. That is partly due to a few bench players (Reggie Evans, Kenyon Martin, Eric Bledsoe) combining for more minutes, but Blake Griffin’s rotations were also a bit zippier during some of the higher-leverage moments of the Memphis series.

• The Clippers’ other huge defensive weakness — a tendency to foul everything in sight — is not something the Spurs are especially good at exploiting. San Antonio ranked a bit below average in earning free throws, though we might see Evans knock Tony Parker beyond mid-court with a hip-check on a pick-and-roll at some point in this series. Read More…

The Jazz built some late-season buzz by winning their last five games and experimenting (again) with ultra-big lineups. Those lineups, featuring center Al Jefferson and power forwards Derrick Favors and Paul Millsap, outscored opponents by the equivalent of nearly 40 points per game in just shy of 115 minutes together. With Utah facing San Antonio in the first round, the Jazz’s size brought back memories of Memphis torturing the Spurs on the interior in last season’s playoffs.

But in the first two games of San Antonio’s romp, Jazz coach Tyrone Corbin kept the big lineup in reserve until things got beyond desperate. That changed in Game 3, when Corbin went big earlier and for much longer. Now, with Utah facing elimination Monday in Game 4, Corbin is getting all crazy and starting this trio alongside point guard Devin Harris and swingman Gordon Hayward, according to Brian T. Smith of the Salt Lake Tribune.

But guess what? The ultra-big groups haven’t fazed the Spurs much on either end of the floor. The Jefferson/Favors/Millsap trio has logged 28 minutes in this series, stretches in which the Spurs have won by 10 points, per NBA.com. That works out roughly to a 17-point margin over the full 48 minutes — a blowout. Of course, the Spurs have won the first three games by an average of 19 points, so a slightly less devastating rout would constitute progress for a badly overmatched Jazz team. In all seriousness, this lineup is a funky beast that gets all of Utah’s best players on the court together, and it’s absolutely worth a shot in a no-lose situation. The Spurs have paid almost no attention to Utah’s weak-link wing, whether it’s Josh Howard or DeMarre Carroll, sagging off those players to muck up Utah’s spacing. Shuttling Howard to the bench also gives Corbin more options in trying to wring points from a scoring-challenged group.

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The Spurs scrapped the post pairing of Tim Duncan and Tiago Splitter after it (once again) failed to produce enough offense Tuesday. (AP)

Andrew Bynum nearly outrebounded the Spurs by himself in the Lakers’ easy win over San Antonio last week. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich countered in Tuesday’s rematch by starting his two best big-men defenders: Tiago Splitter and Tim Duncan.

The two barely played together last season, Splitter’s first in the NBA after emerging as one of the best players in Europe. But Popovich had paired them for about 108 minutes this season as of mid-February – two months and 25 games ago. It seemed like a signal that Popovich was ready to at least experiment with the Splitter/Duncan duo as a way to address the Spurs’ largest alleged weakness: the lack of a good secondary big-man defender next to Duncan, and a resulting inability to defend teams with two behemoth post players.

The Grizzlies exposed that flaw in upsetting the Spurs in the first round last season, and head-to-head matchups become paramount in the playoffs. With the Lakers, Clippers and Grizzlies fighting for seeds 3-5 in the Western Conference, the Spurs — who are in good position to get the top seed — are likely to face one of the league’s top two-headed post attacks in the second round. That likelihood becomes a certainty if the Lakers slip to fourth, into a first-round matchup with Memphis.

And don’t discount the Clippers. Only a miracle blunder stopped the Clips from taking two of three from the Spurs this season, and the sheer size of the DeAndre Jordan/Blake Griffin combo creates problems for San Antonio, even if Jordan isn’t an accomplished back-to-the-basket scorer. Jordan is huge and long, and he can hurt teams on the offensive glass. The Spurs have gone long stretches using Duncan on Jordan and Matt Bonner/DeJuan Blair on Griffin during the three meetings between the teams.

Alas, Popovich scrapped the Splitter/Duncan pairing in Tuesday’s victory after it (once again) failed to produce enough offense. The Spurs have scored just 97.6 points per 100 possessions in the minutes those two have played together, the equivalent of what Washington’s 29th-ranked offense has produced this season, per NBA.com’s stats database. San Antonio leads the league in scoring overall, so that drop-off is huge. Only two of the 50 player pairs that have logged at least 80 minutes for the Spurs this season have had a worse impact on the team’s offense. One such pair features a player no longer on the team (Richard Jefferson), and the other includes one who just arrived (Stephen Jackson). Read More…

Tony Parker's ability to penetrate in isolation and pick-and-roll plays drives the Spurs' offense. (Layne Murdoch/NBAE via Getty Images)

Incredibly, we are entering the home stretch of the regular season, which means it will soon be time to start looking ahead at potential playoff matchups. Talking heads love discarding the NBA regular season as meaningless, but actual evidence suggests regular season results tell us very important things about some head-to-head matchups. Trends from the first 82 games last season should have alerted us that the Grizzlies would be huge problems for the Spurs in the first round, and that a Hawks team willing to give Jason Collins heavy minutes against Dwight Howard would have a very good shot at upsetting a superior — in the big picture — Magic team.

On Friday in Oklahoma City, we got our latest reminder of another solidifying trend: The Thunder have a Spurs problem, and specifically, a major problem defending the Spurs. San Antonio has won five of its last six games against the Thunder, and eight of the last 10 dating back to the 2009-10, though San Antonio’s 3-1 mark against the 2009-10 Thunder probably doesn’t have much relevance now.

Taking too much from a five- or six-game sample size can be dangerous, and when you dig into the numbers and the tape, you notice a few variables that at first appear telling flip-flop completely over the next game or two. A random blowout or two can skew the entire sample, though this season’s blowout was actually the Thunder’s lone win in the series over the last two years, an early January romp in which Gregg Popovich threw up white flag and played his bench almost the entire second half.

Still, a few troubling trends have started to emerge for the Thunder:

• Oklahoma City cannot guard the Spurs, especially from three-point range. The Spurs have lit up the Thunder in three games this season to the tune of 107.1 points per 100 possessions, a mark better than that of the league’s best offense, and the worst such figure the Thunder has surrendered to any team they have played more than once, per NBA.com’s stats database. Of particular notice: San Antonio, which thrives on dribble-penetration and open three-pointers, has shot 28-of-57 (49 percent) from three-point range so far against the Thunder. Read More…

San Antonio's Matt Bonner was snubbed again from the All-Star three-point shooting contest. (Glenn James/NBAE via Getty Images)

ORLANDO, Fla. — On Saturday afternoon, the National Basketball Players Association partnered with the charity Feed The Children to distribute food and personal-care items to more than 3,000 needy families in the Orlando area. SI.com showed up to watch the event and chat a bit with the union’s executive director, Billy Hunter, who addressed the end of the lockout, the theory that a compressed season has led to more injuries than normal (Hunter doesn’t buy it) and recent comments from Mark Cuban about league owners opting out of the new collective bargaining agreement at the first chance either side gets — in 2017 (Hunter called the comments “hot air”).

But with the three-point shootout just hours away, I couldn’t resist the chance to visit with Matt Bonner, once again an egregious contest snub despite shooting better than 45 percent from deep so far this season. I campaigned for Bonner to get in the contest last season, but all such campaigns have failed. I had to know why, and whether Bonner even cares. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation.

SI.com: The league just won’t let you into the three-point contest. Any theories as to why?

Bonner: Apparently I’m lacking in the coolness department. It takes me back to high school.

SI.com: Were you a geek in high school?

Bonner: I was definitely geek-ish.

SI.com: How so?

Bonner: Well, my penchant for math. I was on the math team. It started in elementary school, when I placed second in the city of Concord, New Hampshire, crypto tournament. Read More…

Tim Duncan might need more help defending inside for the Spurs to excel in the playoffs. (Gerald Herbert/AP)

Here comes San Antonio, a winner of 10 consecutive games and the one Western Conference team that you could reasonably argue has been Oklahoma City’s equal all season.

The Thunder lead the Spurs by two games in the loss column and by a single point in victory margin, but San Antonio has played a slightly tougher schedule. John Hollinger’s power rankings give San Antonio a small edge, while Basketball-Reference’s rating system prefers Oklahoma City by a hair. The Spurs, playing unproven youngsters in place of the injured Manu Ginobili, have nonetheless built an offense that ranks sixth in points per possession. That’s a tribute to the greatness of Tony Parker and Tim Duncan, but also to coach Gregg Popovich’s half-court system of motion, screening and (above all else) spacing.

As the Thunder play one nail-biter after another, more executives around the Western Conference are beginning to sense a vulnerability that didn’t exist on Christmas. Every scrap of evidence we have suggests that the Spurs are best positioned to topple that allegedly vulnerable conference favorite in June.

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The return of Mike Miller gives the Heat more flexibility to use smaller lineups. (Steve Mitchell/US PRESSWIRE)

It was a mere footnote amid the Heat’s explosion from the perimeter Tuesday against San Antonio, but it’s worth sticking in our collective back pocket: LeBron James played power forward in small lineups last night for 7:52 seconds, nearly five minutes more per game than James has played that role on average so far this season.

A possibly related event: Mike Miller returned from his sports hernia, giving Miami three wing players (Miller, Shane Battier and James Jones) other than James with the size to defend opposing small forwards. Miami is down one superstar wing player in Dwyane Wade, but he is a pure shooting guard, even if his combination of strength, smarts and athleticism makes him capable of defending almost any small forward in a pinch.

The Heat’s offense reached another level last season with James at power forward, scoring a whopping 10 more points per 100 possessions on average than lineups with James at his traditional small forward spot – lineups that scored at an elite level to begin with. Miami’s defense slipped from elite to average with James at power forward, though the results here were all over the map, depending on which four teammates joined LeBron. The lone small lineup to get major minutes with Zydrunas Ilgauskas at center predictably hemorrhaged points, while such lineups featuring either Chris Bosh or Joel Anthony at center were alternatively stingy and sieve-like. That kind of inconsistency is both frustrating and encouraging.

This was a powerful weapon for coach Erik Spoelstra, and one he used to great effect against Boston and Philadelphia during the playoffs before personnel issues forced him to pocket it against Chicago and Dallas. And we hadn’t seen much of it this season before Tuesday night’s whipping of San Antonio. Entering that game, James had played just 5 percent of his minutes at power forward, per 82games.com, and no small lineup had logged more than six minutes and change together. James played nearly 15 percent of his minutes at power forward last season, according to 82games.com. The Heat had in fact been more likely to go “big,” with Battier as the nominal shooting guard aside from LeBron, two big men and a point guard. Read More…

Zach Randolph is expected to miss about eight weeks after tearing his MCL in a loss to the Bulls on Sunday. (AP)

San Antonio’s Manu Ginobili will miss six to eight weeks — not four to six, as initially hoped — thanks to the broken bone in his hand. And now, even more jarring, Memphis’ Zach Randolph is expected to miss about eight weeks after an MRI revealed that he tore a ligament in his right knee during the Grizzlies’ loss in Chicago on Sunday, according to the Commercial Appeal in Memphis. Early reports indicated that the injury was a bone bruise, and that Randolph would be day-to-day.

The Grizzlies, a borderline contender given a healthy roster, could have survived a short Randolph absence, even atop Darrell Arthur’s season-ending injury (torn Achilles), and still made the playoffs. The Western Conference is so competitive, and the schedule so grueling, that it would be surprising if teams in the race for the bottom two or three playoff seeds separate much from each other and the teams that end up just outside the postseason picture. Lose Randolph for a week or so, fill Arthur’s minutes with newly acquired Marreese Speights and Dante Cunningham, and you’re still a playoff team.

Lose Randolph for two full months — half the season, including up to nine back-to-backs — and you’re in major trouble. To say the Grizzlies’ entire offense is built around having two monster post players in Randolph and Marc Gasol is a bit much, because Rudy Gay is back from shoulder surgery, Mike Conley has developed into a credible starting point guard with a decent outside shot and Memphis creates easy baskets from its ball-hawking defense. But it’s only a bit much.

Gay is struggling to rediscover his game and his place in this offense, and the two-man post attack is really what defines Memphis when it has the ball. It’s not just the obvious stuff, like the fact that Randolph can score in the post against anyone, ranks among the league’s great offensive rebounders and draws constant double teams — a crucial thing for a team that lacks outside shooting and thus needs to create space from the inside-out. It’s not even just that he and Gasol, two bullies with touch, are an unmatchable nightmare for a team with just one reliable big-man defender it trusts with major minutes. Ask the Spurs, and Matt Bonner.

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Manu Ginobili could miss as many as six weeks after breaking his hand in the game against the Timberwolves on Monday. (AP)

Going into the season, the Western Conference featured at least nine strong playoff contenders, all of which had a very good shot at finishing at least a few games above .500 — seven of the eight teams that qualified last season, plus Houston (a near miss in 2010-11) and the new Clippers. At least one good team is going to miss the playoffs, and the Spurs, at 3-2 and entering their busiest month of the season, are in some danger of being that team now that their best player, Manu Ginobili, has broken a bone in his left hand and is expected to miss at least a month.

He could miss as many as six weeks, and if that’s the case, Ginobili’s absence could stretch into San Antonio’s nine-game rodeo road trip in February. As is, the Spurs have 17 games over the next 27 days, a stretch that includes six back-to-backs; road games at Memphis, Oklahoma City, Miami, Orlando, Houston and Dallas; and a brutal six-games-in-eight days set that starts Wednesday against Golden State. The Spurs have played just one back-to-back so far, and they lost the second game to Houston so badly that coach Gregg Popovich threw in the towel early and sat Tim Duncan the entire second half.

If the Spurs manage to go .500 without Ginobili, they’ll be fine. There’s no way the bottom two or three teams in the Western Conference playoff race are going to surge well above .500 in the first half of the season. The conference is too tough, and the schedule is too difficult. But if the wheels fall off, and the Spurs go something like 5-12 without Ginobili, they could be in trouble. Ginobili’s absence will mean more minutes for James Anderson, Kawhi Leonard and Daniel Green, and it will be fun to watch the young guys work in San Antonio’s system. But it goes without saying none of these guys can touch Ginobili as creators, and Tony Parker, as good as he is, will have to carry a very heavy burden now. Read More…

The Spurs decided to use the new amnesty provision on Richard Jefferson but must still pay all or most of the $38.5 million remaining on his deal. (AP)

The Spurs’ epic affair with Richard Jefferson is over. The team has decided to use the amnesty provision on its starting small forward — a guy who ranked fifth in the league in three-point shooting last season for a team that, as John Schuhmann pointed out, loves the corner three more than any other.

But now the questions are flying …

1. Do the Spurs have a Plan B?

Are they really going to trust rookie Kawhi Leonard — or second-year guys James Anderson, Danny Green and Da’Sean Butler — to man the “three” spot on this aging team? You know the answer: San Antonio is going to sign someone, and cutting Jefferson’s $9.3 million salary from the books is crucial in that regard. Before this move, the Spurs were over the luxury tax, meaning they had access only to the “mini” mid-level exception — a three-year deal starting at $3 million. But with a payroll now around the $64-million mark, the new rules allow the Spurs to offer the full mid-level — a four-year deal starting at $5 million per year. Will that be enough for Grant Hill (a great fit, but not a three-point shooter), Shane Battier (so perfect it hurts), Caron Butler (met with San Antonio today, but has $7-million offers from the Clippers and Nets, according to ESPN’s Chris Broussard), Andrei Kirilenko (likely seeking more than the mid-level), Tayshaun Prince (another great fit who may want more) or even Mike Dunleavy Jr.?

We’ll find out. The trick for these guys is that most teams under the cap either have no chance to make postseason noise this season or want to use the space they have — or can get via amnesty — to sign one of the elite big men on the market. There are a few appealing potential big-money landing spots out there for wing players, and some of these guys are going to have to “settle” for a mid-level type deal on a contender. San Antonio fits the bill, and you can bet R.C. Buford is confident he has one of these guys in the bag. Read More…