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The latest on Tiago Splitter's calf, Kawhi Leonard's eye, and Robert Sarver's comments

The Spurs had their first official pre-game shoot-around of the 2014 season at their practice facility today and while neither Danny Green nor Boris Diaw had anything particularly substantive to say there were a couple of items worth sharing.

Boris Streubel

First the good news: Tiago Splitter was on the practice court and working with trainers in various drills. He wasn't running full speed or anything that I saw, but he appeared to be moving well and his calf didn't seem to encumber him as the trainers had him repeatedly switching from moving forwards to backwards and twisting his body and hips this way and that. Coach Gregg Popovich wasn't made available so we don't know the extent of Splitter's progress or his availability for tonight's game, but my guess would be that he's still a few days away. Splitter didn't look winded or fatigued as he was doing the drills, so I doubt he participated in the main portion of practice. He's still in the "rehab" stage from what I saw.

Splitter's fellow South American, Manu Ginobili, who chronicled his own aches and pains in a column for the Argentine newspaper La Nacion, looked fairly normal while going through shooting drills after practice. He was working, as usual, on his threes, first following a jab step and later off the pull-up dribble. He made most of the former and swished all of the latter that I saw. Interestingly enough, he was shooting both of those better than the catch-and-shoot threes he was working on with an assistant.

Now the bad news: Kawhi Leonard still wasn't out there. We haven't heard anything new about the extent of his eye infection or the prognosis for it, but it's a pretty safe bet that he'll miss tonight's game. It looks like he's still being quarantined from the team, though I'll be on the lookout tonight to see if that's actually the case. In any event Pop will probably update his status.

Green did have one good line, and it was about the Robert Sarver situation. In case you're not aware, the Suns owner felt the need to apologize to fans late in Thursday's blowout win over the Spurs because Tim Duncan, Ginobili and Leonard all stayed home rather than fly to Phoenix for the one-game preseason road trip. After Green was informed of this, he offered:

"We probably should've been the ones apologizing, the way we played," Green said.

If it makes him feel any better, the game wasn't televised in San Antonio.