The San Antonio Spurs have an anticipated game coming up on Friday night, as the team will play against the Los Angeles Lakers at the Staples Center at 10:30 PM on Friday night, but it will be lacking some star power, as both Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan will be out of the matchup while dealing with injuries.
According to ESPN.com, Spurs coach Gregg Popovich announced that Duncan will be out of the game with a chest contusion and that comes after he sustained the injury in the opening game of the season on Wednesday, which resulted in a win for the Spurs. The report says that this will be the first time that Kobe Bryant or Duncan are not in the lineup for a Lakers and Spurs game since back in November of 1996 and that was for Kobe's rookie year and Duncan was still a year away from the NBA and was in college at Wake Forest.
The Lakers will be banged up without Kobe, but the team will have its starting point guard back with Steve Nash in the game, as he sat out on Wednesday night in the blowout loss to the Golden State Warriors. The Lakers are hosting the Spurs after winning against the Clippers and losing to the Golden State Warriors and now this game will be without Duncan for the Spurs, with Boris Diaw starting in his spot on Friday night.
Duncan underwent tests before the matchup and it found no fractures in Duncan's chest, but Pop said that the team would monitor his injury to ensure that he gets back healthy. Duncan will be travelling with the team for their road trip against the Lakers, Blazers and the Denver Nuggets and that means he could play some minutes if he heals up enough heading into those games. The Spurs are playing in a tough division this season with the improved Houston Rockets and Dallas Mavericks and those two teams will go at it on Friday as well in their first divisional matchup.
Both the Memphis Grizzlies and the New Orleans Pelicans could be solid teams this season as well in the division.
