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Spurs greet new players as training camp starts todayThe Spurs began defense of their 2003 NBA championship in a North Side conference room this summer, barely one month after their festive River Walk celebration. General manager R.C. Buford watched Tim Duncan walk into the team's practice facility on the rain-soaked afternoon of July 16, then handed him a pen and a $122 million, seven-year contract. That same day, the Spurs plucked Rasho Nesterovic out of Minnesota and handed him David Robinson's old job. When Stephen Jackson balked at a $10 million offer one week later, they quickly traded for Ron Mercer and Hedo Turkoglu. After Steve Kerr retired in August with five championship rings, Robert Horry arrived from Los Angeles with five of his own. Yet for all the talent the Spurs added this summer, they may long regret the loss of one of their largest icons: Jimmy Chang. When Mengke Bateer signed with Toronto, he took Chang, the Spurs' prodigious self-described "language consultant," with him. That leaves coach Gregg Popovich as the team's resident linguist when training camp opens today, an unenviable job considering no fewer than seven foreign countries will be represented on the 18-player roster: France (Tony Parker), Argentina (Manu Ginobili), Slovenia (Nesterovic), Turkey (Turkoglu), New Zealand (Sean Marks), Yugoslavia (Igor Rakocevic) and Brazil (Alex Garcia). Read the Full Story Discuss Send Feedback Buy Tickets Spurs' training camp roster near completionWith their first workout scheduled to begin in three days, the Spurs are close to finalizing their training camp roster. Point guard Igor Rakocevic, centers Sean Marks and Ernest Brown and guard Larry Ayuso all have been invited and given non-guaranteed contracts. Forward Dan Langhi and Brazilian guard Alex Ribeiro also may be added to the roster before Tuesday. Rakocevic played 42 games for Minnesota last season while Marks appeared in 44 games the past two years with Miami. Brown, a former second-round pick of Miami, spent last season in the NBA's developmental league. Ayuso played on Puerto Rico's national team during the recent Olympic qualifying tournament in San Juan. Of the 12 Spurs with guaranteed contracts, six are holdovers from last year's playoff roster. Read the Full Story Discuss Send Feedback Buy Tickets Jackson disses Clippers?Stephen Jackson, so I'm told, failed to show up for a scheduled Clipper audition late last week, claiming his flight from Texas to L.A. (he took a later one) had been canceled. That was later discovered to be untrue. Then the 6-8 swingman left town early the next morning before coach Mike Dunleavy could eyeball him on the floor. Why the flagrant irresponsibility? Surely the Hawks must be offering more money, more years, more minutes, more something. Well, it's certainly not more money or years. The most Jackson can pocket in Atlanta is $1M for 2003-04, whereas the Clips were offering the Spurs free agent $2.5M per for two, but no longer. "We've decided to go in a new direction," underlined an L.A. official. Los Angeles Clippers, Atlanta Hawks, San Antonio Spurs Read the Full Story Discuss Send Feedback Buy Tickets Spurs Sep 2003 Archive
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