Spurs news and notes: we have a winner, Nuggets healthy, a Spurs report card and more

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• Congratulations to Roxanne Alvarez (aka @simmonslover on Twitter) for winning two free tickets courtesy of tiqiq.com and Project Spurs to tomorrow’s San Antonio Spurs-Denver Nuggets game. However, do not fret as we will be giving out another pair of free tickets to a Spurs home game next month. All you have to do it follow @projectspurstiq on Twitter to enter. Easy huh?

• The San Antonio Spurs will face a healthier Denver Nuggets team as Kenyon Martin, Chauncey Billups and Chris Andersen will return to action. This should be an exciting game seeing how the last time these two team faced off it took Manu Ginobili drawing the offensive foul after nailing the winning shot to secure the victory for the Spurs.

• The Spurs beat the Phoenix Suns last night, albeit a depleted Suns team with their recent trade to acquire Marcin Gortat, Vince Carter and Mikael Pietrus from the Orlando Magic, and as one scout pointed out, the moves makes them just like the Spurs:

“Well, it looks like they (Suns) are trying to change the culture,” the scout said. “I suppose they look at this as making them tougher. But I think that’s kind of interesting. The (San Antonio) Spurs are pretty tough, right?”

We’ll answer that one in the affirmative.

“The Suns swept the Spurs a few months ago,” the scout pointed out. “Swept them. Does that means the Spurs weren’t tough last spring, but are now? Has that much changed in terms of what people say is toughness?

As they say, imitation is the best form of flattery.

• How efficient are the Spurs? Well according to the Huffington Post the Miami Heat are but the Spurs could lead the NBA in efficiency:

Who are the least efficiently run teams in basketball (i.e. the teams who spend the most wastefully above the luxury tax threshold)?

The analysis relied on efficiency differential, since this projects future success (or failure) better than current won-loss records. Still one might be interested to know… if we project wins from current won-loss records, then the San Antonio Spurs — with a cost per win of $0.931 million — lead the NBA.

• Express News’ Tim Griffin hands out his Spurs first-third report card on the team. How did they do? Find out HERE.

• Spurs’ gaurd Gary Neal had a fantastic game against the Phoenix Suns scoring 22 points off the bench in a 118-110 victory. Here is what Spurs’ coach Gregg Popovich had to say about Neal’s performance:

(video courtesy of woai.com)