SAN ANTONIO — After Warriors practice Wednesday night at AT&T Center, Kevin Durant navigated through a scrum of reporters and sat down courtside for what he probably assumed would be a series of questions about his team trying to build on its 2-0 series lead over the Spurs.
What he got was some tragic news: Minutes earlier, San Antonio had announced that Erin Popovich — the wife of Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich — died early Wednesday after dealing with an undisclosed illness for an extended period. She was 67. His eyebrows raised, Durant put his left fist to his lips and shook his head.
“Seriously?” Durant said. “Man, prayers and condolences go out to his family. … Damn. I don’t even know what to say, man.”
Durant recognized in that moment that, in the grand scheme of life, who wins a basketball game hardly matters. Though that is true, the Warriors enter Game 3 of the first round Thursday keenly aware that they would essentially seal a berth in the Western Conference semifinals with another victory.
No NBA team has come back from a 3-0 deficit in the playoffs. In fact, only three — the 1950-51 Knicks, the 1993-94 Nuggets and the 2002-03 Trail Blazers — have forced a Game 7 after losing the first three games of a series.
It is unclear whether Popovich, who ran San Antonio’s practice Wednesday, will be on the sideline for Game 3. Assistant coach Ettore Messina might replace Popovich on Thursday.
Before learning of Erin’s death, Golden State head coach Steve Kerr, a close friend of the Popovich family, said, “Oh yeah, things are going to change big-time tomorrow night. They’re a great home team, and they’ve got a lot of pride, and they’re down 2-0.
“But they’re all aware that all they have to do is win one game, and it changes the momentum of the series. We’ve got to bring it.”
The Spurs are especially tough at AT&T Center. Though its streak of seasons with at least 50 wins came to an end at 18, San Antonio went 33-8 at home.
The Warriors are 3-26 (.103) in the regular season at AT&T Center since the Spurs made it their home arena at the start of the 2002-03 season. That is the worst winning percentage any team has in any road venue in NBA history with at least 20 games played.
Before Golden State’s 92-86 win at San Antonio on April 10, 2016, it had lost 33 straight road games to the Spurs dating to 1997 — the first nine of which were at the Alamodome. The only road losing streak against a single NBA opponent that is longer came when the Kings’ franchise dropped 43 games to the Lakers from March 1975 to January 1992.
Kerr, whose team won Games 3 and 4 in San Antonio of the Western Conference finals in May to sweep the series, has decided against sharing such futility with his players. Most of the Warriors’ struggles at AT&T Center were when the two franchises sat on opposite ends of the league hierarchy.
These days, Golden State is chasing its third NBA title in four years as the Spurs stare down a potential rebuild this offseason. Reports suggest that Kawhi Leonard, who is missing the playoffs after being limited to nine regular-season games by a quad injury, might have suited up for the last time with San Antonio. The rest of the Spurs’ roster — a mix of older players and inconsistent younger ones — doesn’t engender optimism.
In their recent wins over San Antonio, the Warriors have reinforced just how wide the talent gap is separating these two teams. Golden State bullied the Spurs in Game 1 to the tune of a 113-92 rout. Popovich made several key adjustments in Game 2 to propel San Antonio to a six-point halftime lead, only to lose to the Warriors by 15.
Now, as they prepare for Game 3, the Spurs aren’t sure whether Popovich — the sarcastic, fiery intellectual who has guided them to five NBA titles since 1999 — will be in the building Thursday.
Not that any of it matters when compared with matters of life and death, of course.
“I feel so bad for Pop and his family,” Durant said. “As far as the basketball game, it’s just a game at the end of the day. Both teams are going to come out, play as hard as they can to win the game, then go home right afterwards.”
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