Second half should be brutal for Spurs

Excluding utter catastrophe, Spurs forward Tim Duncan will get the one point he needs to celebrate his 20,000th NBA tally tonight. That is a virtual slam dunk, although given Duncan's repertoire, the milestone basket is more likely to come on a 15-foot bank shot.

If only the rest of the Spurs' season could be so automatic.

Heading into the second half, which they open with Game No. 42 against Houston at the AT&T Center, the Spurs are 25-16, good enough for fourth in the Western Conference and on trajectory for their 12th consecutive 50-win season.

Congrats, Spurs. Now for the hard part.

The Spurs' next 41 games appear to pose a greater threat than their first 41. Twenty-four of them are on the road, where they are 8-9 this season. Twenty-eight are against teams better than .500, against whom they are 8-14.

The schedule sets up for a rugged march to the finish for the Spurs, who will need to improve just to equal their first-half mark.

“The effort is there,” coach Gregg Popovich said. “We're playing competitively, but we're not getting over that hump. As long as we stay dedicated to the fundamentals of the system, and are patient with each other, we'll get there.

“If we lose those things, then we have a problem.”

For much of the Popovich era, the Spurs have been a renowned second-half team, pacing themselves to peak in March and April. In the ultra-competitive West, which features 11 teams above .500 this season, there is danger in resting too much on the past.

If the Spurs win at the same rates against over-.500 teams and sub-.500 teams in the second half as they did in the first, their final record projects to 47-35. Last season, Utah snuck into the playoffs as the West's eighth seed at 48-34.

It would be a fool's exercise to project the Spurs, participants in every postseason since Duncan arrived in 1997, out of the playoffs in January. Still, that projection illustrates how razor-thin the margin for error is heading into the second half.

“I look at us like a college freshman team almost,” Popovich said. “We've lost a lot of our corporate knowledge. We haven't played well. We've been inconsistent.”

At times, the Spurs have swung wildly from one extreme to another within the course of the same game.

Case in point, Wednesday's 105-98 loss to Utah, when the Spurs fell behind 12-0, took a 14-point lead with a 25-0 run, then faltered to the finish.

The good news for the Spurs is they believe there is more room for improvement this season than in others.

“I think we'll be OK,” said DeJuan Blair, the Spurs' rookie starting center. “There's a little buzz we have right now, but we'll come around.”

Blair says this with confidence, but nobody can be sure. For now, the only thing even remotely guaranteed is Duncan's next point.