Tony Parker injury: Severity of ankle sprain unknown heading into 2014 NBA Finals
The San Antonio Spurs kept Tony Parker’s ankle injury suffered on Tuesday under wraps but finally pulled him from the Game 6 Western Conference Finals win against the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Tom Pennington
Troubling as it may be that San Antonio Spurs point guard Tony Parker left his team's Game 6 victory against the Oklahoma City Thunder because of an ankle sprain, the team isn't panicking.
Spurs coach Gregg Popovich decided to pull Parker in the second half of the series-clinching win on Saturday night. But with five days off until the Thursday tip of the NBA Finals rematch against the Miami Heat, San Antonio general manager R.C. Buford seemed relatively upbeat and indicated that the issue isn't too serious, according to Yahoo! Sports' Marc J. Spears.
Spurs GM RC Buford doesn't sound too worried about Tony Parker's ankle. "We will find out more. We got five days," Buford told Yahoo.
— Marc J. Spears (@SpearsNBAYahoo) June 1, 2014 Parker had been playing with the sprain since last Tuesday, when he injured himself in Game 4 of the Western Conference Finals series. He played through the issue in Game 5, and both Popovich and his point guard even kept the injury from Spurs teammates.
Manu Ginobili was approached by Popovich before the game and told he should prepare to play point guard, and Ginobili didn't know why. Parker apparently was struggling with his movement heading into Game 6 but the team allowed him to give it a try, reports the San Antonio Express-News' Dan McCarney:
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“I don’t know what the deal is,” Popovich said. “He came to me with about eight minutes on the clock (before the game) and told me he couldn’t go. He couldn’t cut sideways or forward. We didn’t make a big deal out of (the injury), but I guess it caught up with him. I didn’t want him to be a hero. If he’s 50 percent or less, that’s bad for the team.
“He wasn’t doing very well, but the 19 minutes he gave us were huge. He showed a lot of guts to do what he did.”
Parker played 19 first-half minutes and scored eight points before Popovich decided to keep him on the bench for the second half after the ankle stiffened up.
Lost in the shuffle of Kawhi Leonard's big block, Tim Duncan's impactful overtime and Ginobili's big shots was Parker's replacements, Cory Joseph and Patty Mills, playing soundly despite not filling much of the box score. Joseph and Mills finished with positive plus-minus scores in the 112-107 overtime win.
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