For Spurs, balance between rest and winning is hard to come by – San Antonio Express-News
Denver guard Jamal Murray went down in a heap in San Francisco on Monday and an entire league took notice.
In a vacuum, the torn left ACL Murray suffered late in the Nuggets’ loss at Golden State was tragic.
In a context of a pandemic season, with a compacted schedule pushing players to the brink of human limitations, it was a flashing neon warning sign.
Could the NBA’s well-intentioned attempt to squeeze 72 games into the space between Christmas and Memorial Day put its players’ health, and possibly careers, at risk?
“We’re athletes,” Spurs forward Rudy Gay said. “We worry.”
Nowhere is the question more apropos than in San Antonio, where the Spurs have been dealt a second-half schedule that features 40 games in 68 days.
No team in the NBA will play more games after the All-Star break as the Spurs. Only Memphis will play as many.
This week, the Spurs are in the middle of a stretch of five games in seven nights. They close their busy week with a back-to-back beginning Friday against Portland at the AT&T Center before moving on to Phoenix on Saturday.
“It’s been a tough season, not just for me, but for everybody,” Gay said. “It’s a lot of traveling, a lot of moving, a lot of games, a lot of consecutive games.”
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich is aware of the toll the schedule is taking on his players.
“We look like we’re fried,” Popovich said after the Spurs were blown out at home by Cleveland on April 5.
That was before the Spurs began a five-game road trip that ended with a dispiriting 117-112 loss to Toronto in Tampa, Fla., on Wednesday.
Popovich has recognized the need to find rest for his veteran players at least.
He has mentioned 31-year-old guard DeMar DeRozan, who leads the Spurs in both minutes per game and usage rate, as a candidate for a breather.
“There are some guys you worry about, like DeMar for sure,” Popovich said. “He’s playing all those minutes every night, so at some point, he is going to have to take a blow here and there.”
With the Spurs (26-27) in the midst of a playoff chase that has gotten more dicey as their record dipped below. 500, Popovich has so far resisted the urge to load manage.
DeRozan hasn’t missed a game since his March 19 return from a four-game hiatus while attending his father’s funeral.
The team’s oldest player at 34, Gay has not missed a contest since March 24. He sat out a loss to the Los Angeles Clippers with a sore foot.
Patty Mills, Spurs’ only other healthy player over 30, last sat out March 20 at Milwaukee when Popovich opted to rest him.
It was the only game Mills has missed this season.
“You have the moments where the mental fatigue can kick in here and there, but you got to get through it,” said DeRozan, who has logged 1,561 minutes despite missing seven games for personal reasons. “You can’t make no excuses. It’s a job at the end of the day.”
Players being players, Popovich will have to wait a long time to have one of them request a night off.
Rest days might be in the offing for some high-usage Spurs, however.
With the Trail Blazers-Suns back-to-back looming, it would not be surprising to see at least some of the Spurs oldest players skip the trip to Phoenix.
“It’s just one of those years like none other,” DeRozan said. “We’ve just got to push through it, man. It’s going to be tough but we’ll rest in the summertime.”
Weary legs aren’t only bad for the Spurs’ win-loss record. Exhaustion might be hazardous to players’ long-term health.
Though difficult to draw a direct correlation between the NBA’s overstuffed schedule and a rash of injuries, medical consensus is that the two are at least linked.
Per the Elias Sports Bureau, 2021 All-Stars have missed 15 percent of their teams’ games this season, poised to be the second-highest rate on record.
Soft tissue injuries also appear to be on the rise. Murray was the sixth player to suffer an ACL tear since the start of training camp.
According to an ESPN report, the league says the number of injuries through 50 games is down compared to last season and comparable to the average of the past five seasons.
Even so, players are feeling the wear and tear of the condensed campaign.
“Too many players getting hurt with this shortened season,” New Orleans’ Josh Hart posted to Twitter in response to Murray’s injury. “Let’s not do this again.”
It should be noted the National Basketball Players Association signed off on this schedule before it began.
As such, the Spurs will soldier on and try to find ways to mitigate the effects of the NBA’s sprint-packed-into-a-marathon.
DeRozan practically lives on ice after games, like some Euro-stepping Elsa.
“I am advocate of ice tubs two, three, times a day,” DeRozan said. “If I am not working, got to stay of your feet, eat right, rest.”
Gay said he plans to take a mind-over-matter approach to the stretch run of the season.
“I’m not sitting here and complaining because nobody else is,” Gay said. “Nobody else cares. We want to push through and get as many wins as we can the rest of the season.”
Still, devastating injuries like the one Murray suffered at Golden State resonate with Gay and others across the league.
In 2017, Gay suffered a season-ending ACL rupture while with Sacramento. He has an idea of what Murray will face to return to his former self.
The prospect of getting hurt, perhaps seriously, comes with the territory of being a professional athlete, Gay said.
“Obviously, some circumstances happen, and we hate to see another brother go down,” Gay said. “But this is what we work for, this is what we do, this is what we prepare for and sometimes you can’t control things.”
jmcdonald@express-news.net
Twitter: @JMcDonald_SAEN