AP
The biggest mystery surrounding the Golden State Warriors’ run at history is how motivated San Antonio will be to stop it.
The NBA’s two best teams this season will meet twice this week, perhaps the biggest remaining obstacles to the Warriors’ quest for an NBA-record 73 victories.
Or, the Spurs might decide not to be much of an obstacle at all.
With less than two weeks until the playoffs and the Spurs (64-12) all but locked into the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference, coach Gregg Popovich has already begun resting his players on occasion. So it’s impossible to predict who will be in uniform for San Antonio when it travels to Golden State on Thursday, or hosts the Warriors (69-8) on Sunday.
“It doesn’t matter, to me, how he plays it,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said of Popovich, one of his former coaches. “His team is a little older than ours, too.”
Kerr said the younger Warriors told him they don’t feel they need a rest, but Popovich doesn’t exactly give his players the option. When he made LaMarcus Aldridge sit out one of his first practices with the team in October, Popovich joked that he told the All-Star forward, “Welcome to the Spurs.”
The Spurs will be opening a back-to-back Thursday in Oakland, so Popovich figures to sit some regulars either that night or Friday in Denver. San Antonio is then off until the Warriors visit, and follows that game with another night off before hosting Oklahoma City.
San Antonio will be 39-0 at home when Golden State arrives, two victories from becoming the first team in NBA history to go undefeated at home for an entire season. That could motivate the Spurs to make everyone available – and leave Kerr as the one who might play the rest card.
The Warriors will be playing for the second straight night after a game in Memphis, and Kerr said he may give reserve guard Shaun Livingston one of those games off.
“Other than that, we have a lot of young guys who have no reason to sit out because they’re feeling great,” Kerr said.