San Antonio Spurs' LaMarcus Aldridge has a history of heart-related issues
SAN ANTONIO — The hype surrounding Saturday's matchup between the NBA's two best teams in terms of record continues to escalate in the wrong direction. The Spurs announced Friday Kawhi Leonard has entered the league's concussion protocol and will miss the game; the Warriors announced later that evening they'd be without Steph Curry, Klay Thompson and Draymond Green.
And yet the haymaker may have arrived Saturday morning: LaMarcus Aldridge is now out indefinitely due to an occurrence of a minor heart arrhythmia.
As is typical for San Antonio, the Spurs were guarded about releasing much information.
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"Unexpected. But it's a sensitive issue so we want to make sure that he's fine," Manu Ginobili said. "The most important thing is to have him healthy. We'll wait as long as is necessary for him to feel secure and sure, and the team, too."
Aldridge was diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White Syndrome during his rookie season in Portland, a condition in which an extra electrical pathway between your heart's upper and lower chambers causes a rapid heartbeat, according the the Mayo Clinic's website. The extra pathway is present at birth and fairly rare. He also had a recurrence in 2011, but Spurs spokesman Tom James reiterated that Saturday's announcement wasn't related to any prior incidents.
Ginobili said there were no signs of concern recently.
"Not this time. I know he had an issue one time, but not I did not expect it today, so it was a surprise."
While the basketball side of things is far less important in a situation like this, the games must go on.
"It's tough when you lose your two best scorers in a single day. It's tough to face. But it happens to almost everybody. Sooner or later you're going to lose some players and you have to face it the best way possible," Ginobili said. "Good thing is that we've got a deep team — we've got a lot of players that can go out there and help out, and do some little things. So we'll try to keep our intensity up, keep moving the ball — or move it better, because we don't have the two guys that are the 'iso' type of guys, so we need to create and move the ball."
Ginobili was the only player made available for comment at Spurs shootaround, and the Warriors did not hold shootaround. Gregg Popovich was even more to the point, speaking for about a minute and referring media to the Spurs' official statement.
"You just play," Pop said. "It's the same as Steve (Kerr) is going to do, whoever is there is going to play and whoever is left for us is going to play."
Follow Matt Tynan on Twitter at @Matthew_Tynan.
