CBSSports.com wire reports
Jan. 2, 2012

MINNEAPOLIS — Rick Adelman was wondering how his young Minnesota Timberwolves would handle their first taste of prosperity.

He couldn’t have been much happier after watching them thump the San Antonio Spurs, who now find themselves knee deep in adversity with the loss of star guard Manu Ginobili.

Kevin Lovehad 24 points and 15 rebounds to lead the Timberwolves to their second win in a row, 106-96 Monday night over the Spurs, who lost Ginobili to a broken left hand.

Luke Ridnour had 19 points and nine assists and Wes Johnson broke out of a shooting slump with 14 points and 6-for-6 shooting for the Timberwolves, who snapped an 18-game losing streak with a win over Dallas on Sunday.

“You’re not satisfied with last night, you build off of it,” said Adelman, whose Wolves scored 65 points in the first half on the second night of a back-to-back. “That’s what I just told them. We’ve got two more home games on this homestand and we want to build off it.”

Ginobili injured his shooting hand in the second quarter. The two-time All-Star will be examined in San Antonio on Tuesday.

“It’s going to be tough for us because he was playing at an All-Star level,” said point guard Tony Parker, who had 11 points and nine assists. “And now we’re going to have to have everybody pick it up.”

Tim Duncan had 16 points and five assists and Richard Jefferson scored 16 points for the Spurs.

The Timberwolves shot 58 percent for the game and were above 70 percent shooting midway through the third quarter.

Playing with five stitches in the index finger on his shooting hand, Michael Beasley had 19 points on 8-of-15 shooting and Johnson bounced back after going 3 for 13 in his previous two games.

“I was pressing,” Johnson said. “I was trying to find my shot moreso than letting it come to me. As I saw tonight, if I just be patient, it’s there.”

The Spurs will get over the loss to Minnesota quickly. The loss of Ginobili could linger for a while.

The team’s leading scorer is the emotional and fiery center of this proud, veteran team. With Duncan getting older and having his minutes limited to save him for the postseason, the offense revolves around Ginobili’s perimeter shooting and slashing to the basket.

“Manu is pretty important to us and we lost him,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. “We’ll just have to deal with it.”

The former Sixth Man of the Year quickly walked to the locker room after he was injured for X-rays, which revealed a broken fifth metacarpal on his shooting hand.

“He means a lot to the team,” said James Anderson, who figures to get a lot of the playing time in Ginobili’s absence. “He’s one of the biggest plusses to the team. Without him we lose a lot of stuff, and that’s on both ends.”

Without Ginobili’s offensive punch, the Spurs simply couldn’t keep up with Minnesota’s torrid shooting.

The Spurs have hung their hats on the defensive end for years, building a championship foundation that let opponents know they were going to have to work for every bucket against Duncan and Co. Coming into the game, they held their previous two opponents to 4 for 33 on 3-pointers.

That’s why it was so startling to see the Timberwolves have such an easy time on Monday night. They shot a scorching 67 percent from the field in the first half, including 7 for 8 from 3-point range. A lot of those were wide open looks for Love, who buried 3 of 4 from long range thanks to superb ball movement from Ridnour and Ricky Rubio at the point.

The Wolves hit 12 of 21 shots from deep for the game.

Rubio, the impressive rookie from Spain, was quiet with six points and three assists in 24 minutes, but the veteran Ridnour more than picked up the slack by hitting seven of his 10 shots and two of three 3-pointers.

“There’s going to be so many games this year, if you can try to find a way to get on a run at home, it’s going to help you in the long run,” Ridnour said. “To be able to win two in a row against Dallas and San Antonio, for this team, is huge.”

Notes

• Timberwolves G JJ Barea sat out the game to rest his strained right hamstring.
• Spurs G Gary Neal, who has not played this season because of an appendectomy, has been assigned to the D-League Austin Toros to get some practice time in before rejoining the team.
• Danny Green played a solid 17 minutes for the Spurs, scoring nine points and playing tough defense on Rubio.

The San Antonio Spurs will be without one of their top players for the next few weeks after Manu Ginobili broke his left hand in Monday night’s 106-96 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.

The injury occurred with 2:38 remaining in the first half when Timberwolves forward Anthony Tolliver tried to strip Ginobili of the ball as he attempted a shot from near the arc.

“I have the 5th metacarpal of my left hand fractured. I guess I’ll miss a few weeks. Sad day 4 me,” Ginobili tweeted after the game on his account, @manuginobili.

X-rays taken at the arena confirmed the break, according to the San Antonio Express-News. The two-time All-Star will be examined in San Antonio on Tuesday.

Ginobili leads the Spurs in scoring this season at 17.4 points per game and was shooting a team-high 59 percent from the field.

”It’s going to be tough for us because he was playing at an All-Star
level,” said point guard Tony Parker, who had 11 points and nine
assists. ”And now we’re going to have to have everybody pick it up.”

The Spurs will get over the loss to Minnesota quickly. The loss of Ginobili could linger for a while.

The
team’s leading scorer is the emotional and fiery center of this proud,
veteran team. With Tim Duncan getting older and having his minutes limited
to save him for the postseason, the offense revolves around Ginobili’s
perimeter shooting and slashing to the basket.

”Manu is pretty important to us and we lost him,” Spurs coach Gregg Popovich said. ”We’ll just have to deal with it.”

”He means a lot to the team,” said James
Anderson, who figures to get a lot of the playing time in Ginobili’s
absence. ”He’s one of the biggest plusses to the team. Without him we
lose a lot of stuff, and that’s on both ends.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

San Antonio • The Jazz’s locker-room door opened Saturday night and C.J. Miles sat hunched down in a chair, studying a box score, while Paul Millsap eyed rows of statistics over his teammates’ shoulder.

Utah had fallen 104-89 to the San Antonio Spurs. The Jazz shot just 37.1 percent from the floor, 12.5 percent behind the 3-point line, distributed only 11 assists and scored 21 points or less in the first three quarters.

With 9 minutes, 52 seconds left in the fourth, Utah (1-3) was down by 27 points and the team’s third blowout in four games to start the 2011-12 campaign was already in the books.

But what wasn’t in the box score were words such as effort, energy and communication. They were the same problems that plagued the Jazz during back-to-back road embarrassments to open the season. And they were the exact issues Utah coach Tyrone Corbin hammered home after watching San Antonio (3-1) run the Jazz out of the AT&T Center via a 20-8 second-quarter run that featured 11 consecutive points from Manu Ginobili, who scored a game-high 23 and drilled 5 of 6 3s.

Al Jefferson led Utah with a team-high 21 points and 11 rebounds, while reserve Josh Howard added 18 points and seven boards.

Corbin knows this will be an at times rough, at times joyous season for the Jazz. Utah’s young and rebuilding, but still trying to win games with veterans such as Devin Harris, Millsap and Jefferson. As a result, unpredictability will rein.

But the one thing Corbin’s squad can control is its nightly effort. And after seeing the Jazz lose three games by an average of 19 points – all featuring big-time, game-changing runs by the victors – consistent effort could be the one trait that keeps Utah moving forward even if defeats pile up.

“We need to keep searching for who we are. We just need to make sure we understand that we need to keep working to get better,” said Corbin, who kept the locker room closed longer than normal for the second game in the three contests.

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He added: “We just need to make sure the guys understand that it’s a long season. We need to stay together and work.”

Sticking together was again a familiar postgame refrain. Reserve forward Derrick Favors said it’s the Jazz’s primary problem when on-the-court play falls apart, while veteran backup point guard Earl Watson said Utah’s shown a tendency to cave when it falls behind on the road.

The Jazz have trailed by double-digits in all four games this season, and Utah had to come back from 13 points down Friday to knock off Philadelphia at home.

“We’re a different team on the road. It’s obvious, for whatever reason,” Watson said. “But you can’t sit there and look for the reason why. You have to look for the reason how to win on the road. First, we’ve got to start getting close.”

The Spurs made that goal almost impossible. San Antonio ran a shooting clinic during the first half, burning Utah on rotations that left the Jazz’s perimeter naked and allowed the Spurs to drain 80 percent (8 of 10) of their 3s.

After Utah was lifted by its youth movement Friday, Saturday was a replay of blowouts to the: poor defense, a methodical and lethargic offense, and energy that occasionally spurted but never became in vogue.

Now, the Jazz return to Salt Lake City staring at a cushion of 12 of 15 January games at EnergySolutions Arena. But two months of brutal road travel follows, and Corbin’s more concerned with his team’s progress and evolution than random home wins.

“It’s going to be up and down for a while until we get [settled],” he said. “It’s just not the way that you lose games – it means something the way we play in a losing ballgame. For the most part, the 48-minute effort that we’re looking for, we haven’t gotten in the losses.”

bsmith@sltrib.comTwitter: @tribjazzfacebook.com/tribjazz

CBSSports.com wire reports
Dec. 28, 2011

SAN ANTONIO — The Los Angeles Clippers might be the talk of the Western Conference right now, but the San Antonio Spurs showed they still have plenty of life left.

Manu Ginobili scored 24 points and DeJuan Blair added 20 to lead the Spurs to a 115-90 win over the Clippers on Wednesday night.

Blake Griffin scored 28 points for the Clippers, while Chris Paul was held to 3-of-10 shooting and finished with 10 points.

Richard Jefferson added 19 points on 8-of-9 shooting for the Spurs, who have won 17 straight home games against the Clippers, a streak that dates to Jan. 31, 2002. Tony Parker scored 14 points, James Anderson 12 and Tim Duncan 10.

The Spurs hit 45 of 80 shots from the field while limiting the Clippers to 29-of-74 shooting. San Antonio led by only four points at halftime but outscored Los Angeles 38-17 in the third quarter to take control.

“Our defense in the second half was great,” Ginobili said. “They couldn’t get lobs. They scored under 40 in the second half. We were pretty good on defense. We moved the ball, and everybody scored.”

San Antonio outscored Los Angeles 57-36 in the second half.

“They tore us apart in that third quarter,” Griffin said. “Our defense needs to be better, and it can get better. The good thing about the mistakes out there is that they are easily correctable.”

While Blair didn’t limit Griffin’s scoring, he was able to do enough offensively to nearly offset him.

“I try to read them,” Blair said. “They’re very athletic. They jump high. I jump a little bit, but I’m undersized, so I just try to read them. Just look for schemes to get around the taller defenders. I watch a lot of Charles Barkley and Karl Malone, try to get a low shot. But I’m doing great with what I’m doing.”

The Clippers weren’t able to get closer than 19 in the fourth quarter. After DeAndre Jordan’s free throw made it 98-79, Ginobili hit a 3-pointer then found Blair for a short jumper to put the Spurs up 103-79.

“They’re dunkers,” Blair said while laughing when asked about the Clippers being called Lob City. “But, yeah, not tonight.

The Spurs hit 16 of 21 shots in the third, with Parker scoring 10 on 4-of-4 shooting from the field and 2 of 2 from the free throw line. Anderson converted a three-point play with 0.3 seconds left in the quarter to give San Antonio its biggest lead of the game at that point – 96-71.

“We were down four, and I look up to see we are down 68-58 at one point,” Paul said. “We are going to practice tomorrow and figure out what we did right and figure out what we did wrong. First things first, we need to start with me.”

The Spurs led 58-54 at halftime behind 16 points from Ginobili, who hit 4 of 6 attempts from 3-point range in the half.

Blair added 12 points on 6-of-8 shooting and Jefferson had 10, including a pair of 3-pointers. Griffin had 16 points in the first two quarters and scored all but four of those points on either layups or dunks.

San Antonio led by as many as 15 points in the first half, but the Clippers went on a 16-4 run and tied the game 52-all on Griffin’s dunk with 47 seconds left in the half.

The Spurs led 26-19 entering the second quarter after holding the Clippers to 8-of-22 shooting in the first. The Clippers jumped out to a 5-0 lead, but Ginobili responded by scoring the next nine points. Ginobili sandwiched two 3-pointers around three free throws after he was fouled by Chauncey Billups on a 3-pointer.

I’m kind of surprised,” Ginobili said of the team’s 2-0 start. “I didn’t think that the team was ready to have two games like this — to be so solid defensively. We’re looking sharp, but I don’t want to get too confident. I don’t think it’s fair or it’s true. We still have a long way to go. It just so happened we played two very good games.”

Notes

• Jordan hit 4 of 6 free throws. He went 4 of 12 in the opener against Golden State.
• Since Dec. 10, 1997, the Spurs have won 47 of 52 against the Clippers.
• The Spurs are off to a 2-0 start for the first time since 2008.
• The big win allowed the Spurs to rest several key players. Duncan played 26 minutes, while Ginobili and Parker played only 27.
• Caron Butler and Mo Williams each had 12 points for the Clippers. Billups had 11. Ginobili hit 5 of 8 3-pointers and 7 of 7 free throws.