Spurs at Rockets
THE STORY: With the way they lost in the first round of the playoffs last season and the age of their roster, many thought the San Antonio Spurs’ run as a top-level team was over. Two games into the 2011-12 campaign, however, the Spurs have announced that they will not be going quietly. After taking some revenge in a win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Monday, the Spurs ignored the “Lob City” hype of the new-look Los Angeles Clippers and delivered a 115-90 smackdown on Wednesday. That older roster will get its first taste of the compressed schedule’s back-to-back action when it visits the Houston Rockets on Thursday. The Rockets were stung in the days after the lockout ended when the commissioner’s office squashed a trade that would have landed them Pau Gasol. They could have used that inside presence in Monday’s opener, when they lost to the Orlando Magic.
TV: 8 p.m. ET, FSSW (San Antonio), FSH (Houston)
ABOUT THE SPURS (2-0): San Antonio put six players in double figures and did not have to play any of its starters more than 27 minutes in Wednesday’s victory, presumably leaving them fresh for Thursday's game. Manu Ginobili has been the high scorer in each of the first two games and went 5 of 8 from 3-point range en route to a 24-point outburst against the Clippers. Mildly troubling is the performance of Tim Duncan, who has been held to 10 points in each of the first two games and shot just 5 of 13 against Los Angeles.
ABOUT THE ROCKETS (0-1): One of the big worries after the squashed trade was how the players that were involved would respond to returning to a team that agreed to send them away. While Luis Scola and Goran Dragic showed no drop off, Kevin Martin struggled to four points on 1-of-10 shooting - including 0-of-6 from beyond the arc.
BUZZER BEATERS:
1. Martin has averaged 16.8 points on 41.1 percent shooting in 20 career games against the Spurs.
2. Duncan put up 16.3 points and 9.5 rebounds in four games against the Rockets last season.
3. San Antonio won three of the four meetings in 2010-11, with two of the games going to overtime.