San Antonio point guard Tony Parker has a grade-one hamstring strain, making him a day-to-day proposition ahead of the Spurs' NBA Western Conference finals.
The Spurs made the announcement on Thursday, a day off after eliminating the Portland Trail Blazers in game five of the semi-finals. Parker missed the entire second half of the clincher.
Just as the Spurs appeared to be finding their playoff legs and asserting themselves as the team to beat in the powerful Western Conference, Parker's gave out. He felt his left hamstring tighten early in the second quarter, went to the locker room to get it examined and only played briefly before calling it a night.
Parker missed 14 games with various injuries during the regular season, but the Spurs went 11-3 in those games and still managed to post the best record in the NBA. Still, the prospects of losing Parker - the inexhaustible throttle on the Spurs' relentless engine - was enough to make a team bent on returning to the NBA Finals a little nervous after their 104-82 victory over Portland sent them back to the finals.
"If we want to have a chance to make it to the finals, we need him healthy," guard Manu Ginobili said.
Parker suffered a grade-two strain of his right hamstring in game three of the NBA Finals last season against the Miami Heat. He didn't miss a game because of it, but the discomfort definitely limited effectiveness. He was nine for 35 in the last two games, including three for 12 for 10 points in the Game-seven loss at Miami.
But Parker told the San Antonio Express-News that his latest injury wasn't as serious as the one that bothered him last June.
"It's OK; not too bad," Parker said. "Not as bad as the NBA Finals. NBA Finals was a grade two. This one is grade one. So should be fine for Monday."
The Spurs will host the opening game of the Western Conference finals on Monday if Oklahoma City defeat the Los Angeles Clippers in game six of their series on Thursday. If the series goes the full seven games, the next round will open on Wednesday in San Antonio.
This makes the Spurs' five-game victory over the young Trail Blazers even more important. Parker will have at least four days off, perhaps as many as six, to rest and rehab his hamstring.
"Luckily we have a couple of days," Spurs forward Tim Duncan said after the game. "It worries us, obviously. But he's been going hard. He's had a great series thus far, and it just kind of caught up with him."
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