Some of the discussion this week, with Thabo Sefolosha back in the lineup, was what Royal Ivey would do. Tonight we found out: stick to Tony Parker “like Velcro,” in the words of radio guy Matt Pinto. This is important, because as we all know, when Parker really gets going, he’s going to run up Chamberlain-like numbers. (We’re talking basketball here. Behave yourself.) You don’t want to know what the local Twitter stream looked like when the Spurs were up by 27 points. And you can’t imagine the noise level when the Thunder cut that lead to two early in the fourth. Comeback of the year? San Antonio wasn’t buying: the Spurs took the rubber game, 114-105, to pull within three games of OKC in the Western standings.

What made this work, of course, is the standard Spurs M.O.: they come at you from every direction, and everyone is a threat. All five starters posted double figures; Parker had 25, DeJuan Blair 22 (and 11 boards), Danny Green 21, Tim Duncan 16 (and 19 boards), Kawhi Leonard 15. The entire bench, however, kicked in only 15. The Spurs shot over 51 percent, and hit nine of 19 treys.

There was a brief period when I thought Russell Westbrook was going to go all “Screw this, I’m taking over.” He finished with 36 points, though it took him 29 shots and ten free throws to get them. Kevin Durant produced a Durantesque line with 25 and seven rebounds, while Serge Ibaka doubled up with 12 points and 12 boards. But here’s your telltale statistic: Lazar Hayward, who played eight minutes while Scott Brooks was trying to find something resembling matchups, went 0-3, fouled twice, and finished +10, the highest on the team. The Thunder were outrebounded 49-37, and shot 44 percent. They also got nine treys, albeit in 25 attempts. Fortunately — or it could have been a lot worse — the Spurs showed a talent for clanking free throws, missing ten of 25; OKC missed only two of 20. And this is the part that hurts: all this happened with an inactive Manu Ginobili.

At least we’re done with the Spurs until the playoffs. Meanwhile, the Nate McMillan-less Trail Blazers beat the Bulls tonight, and they’ll be in town Sunday. Probably too much to hope that they implode.

The San Antonio Spurs, on the evidence of the first quarter of the season, can’t win on the road and can’t lose at home. (Coming into this game: 12-1 at home, 3-8 away.) It was inevitable, I suppose, that they’d give the Thunder a serious drubbing in Tonytown, and they did: the 107-96 final doesn’t really tell you how bad it was. (It was 88-70 after the third quarter; the Spurs led by as many as 24 on several occasions.)

The Thunder weren’t particularly horrible: they blocked twelve shots, Kevin Durant had yet another double-double (22 points, 11 rebounds), Daequan Cook continued to prove that he can defend, and rookie point guard Reggie Jackson came up with 10 points in 17 minutes.

The problem, of course, can be summed up in two words: “Tony Parker.” TP pretty much wiped out the Thunder tonight: he dropped in 42 points, a season high, and served up nine assists, more than enough to make him the NBA’s all-time dimesman. Add to this Tim Duncan playing like Tim Duncan (13 points, 15 boards), and the unexpectedly easy time Kawhi Leonard had bottling up Kevin Durant, to the extent that holding KD to 22 counts as “bottling up,” and well, it could have been a lot worse than the final suggests.

As it happens, the Spurs are being crowded out of their arena for the next three weeks while the rodeo comes to town: they don’t have another home game until the 29th. They may not go 0-9 during those three weeks, but we can always hope.

Marginal upside for OKC: they don’t have to go back to San Antonio this season; Kendrick Perkins drew not one technical foul.

Speaking of long road trips, the Thunder face five in a row, all against Western Conference rivals. Hang on to your hats, folks.

So far, every NBA team faced with a back-to-back-to-back has won the third game, and the Thunder weren’t at all inclined to break the string, handily dispatching the visiting Spurs, 108-96, giving OKC the distinction of being the first team this season to go 3-0 through the triple-dip.

The word at the beginning was “apprehension”: last night, Eric Maynor went down and didn’t come back. Today we found out why: torn ACL, which will require surgery, and Maynor will miss the rest of the season. We needn’t have worried. Rookie Reggie Jackson, moved up in the rotation, responded with 11 points and four assists in his first extended stint, one of six Thundermen in double figures. Both Kevin Durant (21 points/10 rebounds) and Nick Collison (12 points/10 rebounds) posted double-doubles, something we haven’t seen a lot of this season.

The San Antonio starters were reasonably effective, with Gary Neal pocketing 18 points and Richard Jefferson dangerous from beyond the arc, but in the third quarter, they were overwhelmed 37-21, and only Neal played any significant time in the fourth. Reserve forward Kawhi Leonard was the only player on either side to log more than 30 minutes of playing time; he had the only Spur double-double (13 points/10 rebounds) for the night. And there was an early fracas between DeJuan Blair and Kendrick Perkins that resulted in double technicals. (We really need a pool to guess when Perk goes over the technical limit of 13 — shortened for this abbreviated season — and gets suspended for a game.)

I suppose it’s considered a travel day tomorrow. Tuesday the Thunder are at Memphis, where the frontcourt isn’t what it used to be — Darrell Arthur is out for the season and Zach Randolph may miss a couple of months — and then Wednesday to New Orleans, where in the post-Chris Paul era nothing is what it used to be.

Time was, the San Antonio Spurs would just grind you to death, and you’d walk away from the Ma Bell Center, beaten something like 90-86 and pounded like so much Swiss steak. But that was then. This year’s Spurs prefer to pepper the air with the long ball. The result, however, is much the same: a 109-105 defeat for the Thunder, and the Spurs’ 26th win at home out of, um, 28.

And really, the trey was the only weapon the Spurs were consistently able to exploit: they got exactly one second-chance bucket all night, with less than half a minute left. Still, signs of that old S.A. defense appeared when it had to, and when it didn’t have to, there were those thirteen treys out of 21 tries. Pop played only nine men, and six of them scored in double figures, led by Tony Parker with 20.

While OKC controlled the boards (54-37), they missed too many shots — they actually put up even more three-point attempts than San Antonio, to little effect — and that second-quarter swing, from six points up to 11 points down, was particularly fugly, especially after that flagrant-1 called against Nick Collison. Still, the Big Three came to play (Kevin Durant checked in with 30 points, Russell Westbrook 25, Jeff Green 14), and Serge Ibaka came up with a double-double.

So the Spurs win this series 3-0, and I suppose it’s a good thing there won’t be a fourth game. On the other hand, if the Thunder make any headway in the playoffs at all — but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. There are 26 regular-season games to slog through, and the next two (at Orlando Friday, and at home against the Lakers on Sunday) will be slogariffic enough.

Sports guys have their superstitions: former Astros infielder Craig Biggio, for instance, never washed his batting helmet until the season was over.

George Hill of the San Antonio Spurs wears something called a “balance bracelet,” and he swears by it. The rest of the team? Not so much:

“Have you heard of a placebo?” Manu [Ginobili] asked.

Hill didn’t follow.

“It’s a Spanish word,” Richard Jefferson chimed in, jokingly.

This might not matter so much, except that the manufacturer, a firm called Power Balance, is reported to be the high bidder for the naming rights to the (soon to be) former Arco Arena in Sacramento, so we may be hearing more about these little confidence-builders.

And there was twelve minutes of garbage time, as San Antonio won its twelfth game in a row at home in the face of a massive display of what can only be called Thundersuck. In three of four quarters, Oklahoma City failed to come up with as many as twenty points — they did manage 21 in the fourth — losing to the Spurs to the tune of 101-74, the sort of tune you don’t want to hear too often against a conference rival. This one was in doubt for maybe three seconds after tipoff.

In the face of this level of futility, the Spurs didn’t have to do much more than show up, but they turned in a worthy performance, shooting an okay 47 percent and grabbing 52 rebounds. Tim Duncan was his usual solid self, dropping in 21 points; Tony Parker had 14 points and 10 assists. (Telltale statistic: The Thunder in aggregate came up with only 10 assists.) The Spurs weren’t too wonderful from beyond the arc, but they didn’t have to be.

When your most impressive line belongs to Serge Ibaka, you had a rough night. The OKC bench scored as much as the starters — 37 points each — which should tell you how badly the starters were doing. Ibaka, though, kept his chin up and his fouls down, recording 14 points, 13 rebounds and four blocks. Kevin Durant (remember him?) was held to 16; James Harden had 12, and that’s it for the double figures.

Mullens Report: Byron put in nearly eight minutes in the final frame, hitting one shot (of four) and one free throw (of two) while reeling in one offensive rebound.

Neither of the next two road games — at Memphis on Tuesday, at Dallas on Thursday — is exactly a gimme, and then the Grizzlies show up in OKC for a Saturday game. It’s going to be a long week, I suspect.

The Spurs took control of this one in the third quarter and never let go. You can point to several different factors — dominance of the boards (DeJuan Blair had seven offensive rebounds, Oklahoma City in aggregate had only five), superior results at the stripe (34-38 versus 24-30), Matt Bonner’s long-ball skillz (he put up seven treys and hit them all), or just the fact that it was Sunday (the Thunder haven’t won a Sunday game all season) — but sooner or later, you end up pointing to the scoreboard, which read San Antonio 117, Oklahoma City 104.

The Thunder had been up 66-61 at the half, meaning they were outscored 56-38 in the second half. That’s not just a fold; that’s origami. The Dynamic Duo were held to 42 points — Kevin Durant had 23 and Russell Westbrook 19 — and Jeff Green added a dozen more, mostly early, but the Spurs shut everything down after halftime, and second-chance points were few and far between. For that matter, first-chance points were few and far between.

San Antonio took a while to get untracked, but when they did, they didn’t let up. Down 35-23 late in the first, they put together a 7-0 run to close, and then got the first bucket after the break. Bonner’s beyond-the-arc performance was scary enough, but Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili dropped in 24 points each, and Manu was the very picture of calm as he sank all eleven of his free throws. If this is the Over-The-Hill Gang, well, pass the Geritol.

And tomorrow night in Utah. I’m already scouring the Net for synonyms for “not pretty.”

The Thunder squeezed out a 111-102 win against the San Antonio Spurs, though it’s pretty sure that they have no answer for Manu Ginobili, who took only nine shots in 26 minutes and wound up with 17 points, including five of seven treys. And the starters did all the heavy lifting: Scott Brooks played only nine men, as he usually does during the actual season, and the bench contributed a mere eight points.

Still, we got to see the Good Jeff Green tonight, the one who got 27 points and nine rebounds. Kevin Durant dropped in 29. Serge Ibaka got the start in the middle, and responded with 12 points and six boards — and five fouls. Then again, San Antonio has no answer for James Harden, who took only six shots in 33 minutes and wound up with 18 points, including three of three treys.

And the Spurs, supposedly riven with Methuselah’s college teammates, managed to get all their starters into double figures, plus sixth man George Hill. Had they left them in as long as the Thunder did theirs, it might have been a different game. But tomorrow at Denver, we’re not likely to see either Durant or Russell Westbrook, so things could get scary. Damn preseason.

Well, that’s that: the New Jersey Nets have won their 10th game of the season, meaning they will not be tagged as the Worst NBA Team Ever.

Better yet, they got that win against San Antonio, and anything that makes life a little more complicated for San Antonio is a boon for the Thunder.

Thirty-two seconds to play, the Spurs are up two, and Russell Westbrook does the inbound — and steps on the line. Instant turnover. It was that kind of night. The Thunder did get the stop, but they couldn’t follow with the shot, and San Antonio, winning 99-96, squeaked in front of Oklahoma City in the standings by dint of having won the season series 3-1. I didn’t even bother looking around for Eva Longoria, reasoning that hubby Tony Parker’s hand injury would keep him off the active list.

In the absence of Parker, the slack was taken up by George Hill, who’s never scored 27 points before, and Roger Mason, Jr., who came up with timely treys. (Given the Thunder’s lacktion — 2-13 — from beyond the arc, I suppose any of Mason’s treys could be considered timely.) The Spurs, like the Thunder, had lost the first half of a back-to-back, but neither team really looked tired; in fact, no one played more than 40 minutes except Kevin Durant.

And KD made every minute count, coming up with 45 points, tying his season high. Jeff Green, despite foul trouble, stuck it out for half an hour and 16 points; Russell Westbrook, presumably over whatever was ailing him yesterday, added 12.

How close is the West? The Thunder were knocking on the door to fourth place last week, and now they’re seventh, just one game ahead of Portland. And while seventh isn’t exactly the sweet spot, it beats the hell out of eighth, and a first-round matchup with the Lakers — or ninth, and a trip to the lottery. Things are about to get even hairier.

Before the Thunder won those nine games in a row, they lost three straight.

Which doesn’t mean that they’re going to lose the next game, but two losses in a row has to be just a tad disheartening. Not that this mattered to the Spurs, who methodically explained how age and treachery were superior to youth and skill — these youth, anyway. The game was closer than the 95-87 final makes it sound, but not enough to make anyone feel better.

And speaking of streaks, Kevin Durant’s string of 25-plus games came to a screeching halt tonight: he racked up 21 in the first three quarters, but the Spurs shut him down in the fourth. On the other side, Manu Ginobili’s two-game scoreless streak against the Thunder ended in dramatic fashion: the San Antonio sixth man outscored everyone tonight, with 26 points and nine rebounds. Tim Duncan snagged 15 boards to go with his 19 points.

There were double-doubles on the OKC side as well: KD (12 rebounds) and Thabo Sefolosha (12 points, 13 rebounds). Jeff Green weighed in with a 19-point performance, and Russell Westbrook, taking a long time to get untracked, finished with 17. But the Thunder bench — Scott Brooks played only eight men tonight for some reason — contributed a mere 10 points to the cause, though James Harden did reel in seven boards.

Nobody shot all that well, either: the Spurs shot 42.3 percent, the Thunder a woeful 39.8. And radio guy Matt Pinto was hors de combat, losing what was left of his voice in the first quarter, whereupon they started piping in the TV audio. Let’s hope he recovers quickly.

So OKC is 7-2 for February, with two games left, both at home: the Timberwolves on Friday and the Raptors on Sunday. After that, the schedule gets even more crowded.

For sheer ferocity, it’s hard to beat a Thunder-Spurs game. This one didn’t start out that way, though: San Antonio ran up a 35-18 lead after the first quarter, was still up 12 at the half, and then Oklahoma City clamped down, holding the Spurs to 13 points in the third. It was 99-all at the end of regulation, and with nine seconds left in overtime, Richard Jefferson landed the 12-footer that put the Spurs up 109-108; the Thunder got one last look, but it was not to be.

And the Spurs produced all that offense with Tim Duncan resting on the bench. In his place, rookie DeJuan Blair generated numbers even Duncan could envy: 28 points, 21 rebounds, before fouling out early in overtime. Tony Parker, who never shoots treys, shot three of them while scoring 28. The sharpest of the sharpshooters, though, was George Hill, who earned the wrath of Harry Kim by hitting seven of nine for 16 points.

The Thunder, of course, had nearly as much offense of their own, led by Kevin Durant with 35; Russell Westbrook logged a double-double (25 points, 13 assists, and only three turnovers), as did Jeff Green (16 points, 10 rebounds). OKC barely outshot San Antonio, 46.1 to 45.3 percent; the Spurs won the rebounding battle, 50-45. I have to wonder, though, if things would had been different if Duncan hadn’t been given the night off.

And so begins another hairy segment of the schedule: coming up, the Mavericks (Friday at Dallas), the Heat (Saturday at the Ford), and the Hawks (Monday afternoon at Atlanta).

Last year, the Spurs won more than twice as many games as the Thunder, but the four games between the two teams were split 2-2. No one’s quite sure how this happened; OKC GM Sam Presti admittedly learned his trade in San Antonio, but that was years ago. Whatever the reason, the Spurs have learned not to take Oklahoma City lightly, and that lesson got some reinforcement tonight: the Thunder came away with a 101-98 win, ending San Antonio’s home-victory streak at four.

Don’t be fooled by the score: this was a defensive struggle, pillar to post. The Thunder blocked ten Spurs shots; both sides pulled off eight steals. And Thabo Sefolosha kept Richard Jefferson totally bottled up all night, holding him to four points. Manu Ginobli made all seven of his free throws, but went 0-8 from the floor. The Spurs put up eighteen treys, and got a whole 9 points for their trouble.

Still, most of the other numbers were in a dead heat. Both sides shot around 47 percent; the Thunder made only two of twelve treys, a percentage no better than San Antonio’s; OKC had two more rebounds, 40 versus 38. Still, stalwart kids were stalwart: Russell Westbrook (19 points, 11 assists) and Jeff Green (21 points, 10 rebounds) turned in double-doubles — Westbrook managed no turnovers, which is always a good sign — and Kevin Durant dropped in his usual 25. If you want to give someone player of the game, though, give it to Sefolosha: whenever the Spurs had good looks, the Thabster, as often as anyone, made them go away.

A 2-1 road trip is nothing to sneer at. And the rest of the month is busy: the Clippers at the Ford tomorrow night, a trek to Florida to face Miami (Tuesday) and Orlando (Wednesday), back home on Friday for a visit from the Wizards, then out west again to meet the Lakers and the Jazz, finishing up at the Ford with the Bucks and the Rockets.

Radio guy Matt Pinto pointed out an oddity: there have been nine Thunder games this season, and in three of them the final score was 101-98. The previous two, however, were losses. If this score recurs this season … well, we’ll worry about that when it happens.

The Frank Erwin Center hadn’t even been built when I was at Texas. For that matter, Frank Erwin himself was still there, in an incident I probably shouldn’t admit to remembering:

In October 1969 the [UT] board of regents decided to bulldoze several hundred feet of a local creek so they could expand the football stadium. In an attempt to stop the bulldozing, student protesters chained themselves to trees, and Erwin, complete with hard hat and bullhorn, personally oversaw their arrests.

This was, incidentally, before Erwin fired John Silber, then dean of the College of Arts and Sciences.

You’ll note that I’m avoiding talk of the actual basketball game, since it was another loss — the Spurs, who led the Thunder by one point after the first quarter, wound up winning 119-102 — and once again, OKC seems to have no answer for the trey. (San Antonio put up 19 of them, and 14 fell.) I concede, though, that UT alum Kevin Durant, who had 23 points, manifestly knows his way around the Erwin Center.

There’s one more preseason game left: Thursday at the Ford, against the Kings. The first regular-season game is the following Wednesday, against the Kings.

The Spurs, evidently sick of losing to the Thunder, kicked up the defense a notch and evened up the season series at 2-2 with a 99-89 win at the Ford Center, San Antonio’s 50th win, a figure they’ve reached every year since 1999-2000. The Spurs, trailing by seven after the first quarter, struggled to a one-point lead at the half, and gradually pulled away from Oklahoma City, executing with precision in the waning minutes while holding the Thunder to 17 fourth-quarter points.

Both Tim Duncan and Tony Parker recorded double-doubles, Duncan with 25 points and 15 boards, Parker with 21 points and 10 assists. Roger Mason filled the Manu Ginobili-sized hole nicely, logging 13 points; Drew Gooden got 20 from off the bench.

The lethargy the Thunder seemed to exhibit in the last two contests was less in evidence tonight: OKC shot a respectable 45.3 percent and nailed six of nine treys (three of them in a row in the first quarter). San Antonio outrebounded the Thunder, but only slightly: 43-42. But the Spurs blocked seven shots, Duncan knocking away three of them, and San Antonio committed only 13 fouls all night. The official Kevin Durant counter reads 24; Jeff Green had 16 points, Thabo Sefolosha 13, and Russell Westbrook 10 (with three steals).

Tomorrow night in Denver, and the Nuggets have won seven straight. This may not be pretty.

Last time the Thunder played the Spurs, it was in the friendly confines of the Ford Center, and OKC squeaked out a two-point win. This time, it was in the decidedly-hostile AT&T Center, and OKC squeaked out a one-point win, 96-95.

And it really wasn’t that close: after the lead seesawed for a period and a half, the Thunder put together a serious run and led by six at halftime, running that lead to as much as seventeen in the third quarter before the Spurs started getting stops again. San Antonio pulled within one point late, Tim Duncan blocked a Jeff Green layup, a mad scramble for the ball ensued, and finally Michael Finley delivered a buzzer-beater — which didn’t go in.

The numbers were appropriate for a game this close. The Thunder shot 49.3 percent, the Spurs 47.5; the Spurs got 40 rebounds, the Thunder 36; the Thunder turned the ball over nine times, the Spurs 11. If San Antonio had sunk more than eight of the 25 treys they attempted — well, you can do the math. Oklahoma City hit five of eight from beyond the arc.

Tim Duncan got his usual double-double: 21 points, 12 rebounds. All the Spurs starters except Matt Bonner were in double figures — Bonner scored 9 — and Roger Mason added 10 from the bench.

For some reason, Kevin Durant seems to do well against the Spurs. Tonight he wangled 31 points; Jeff Green, Nenad Krstić and Russell Westbrook all contributed 16, Westbrook also serving up 10 dimes.

This puts the Thunder up 2-1 over the Spurs this year, with one to go: a week from today at the Ford, following visits from the Trail Blazers (Friday) and the Pacers (Sunday).

It is no particular secret that Thunder general manager Sam Presti is modeling this team on the San Antonio template: Presti was an assistant to Spurs GM R. C. Buford before moving to Seattle and thence to Oklahoma City. And when the Spurs jumped out to a 29-14 lead after the first quarter tonight, pretty much everyone assumed it was the teacher reminding the student just who’s in charge here.

As if. The Thunder, very much playing the Spurs’ game, held San Antonio to 13 points in both the second and fourth quarters, and beat them 78-76, evening the series at 1-1. The Spurs, for lack of a better term, were Sefocated: Thabo Sefolosha batted away Tony Parker’s last trey attempt in the waning seconds. It was the Thabster’s second block of the night, along with three steals and 12 points.

The Spurs didn’t help their cause by missing 16 of 19 treys and committing 15 turnovers. (The Thunder turned it over only 11 times, with none in the fourth quarter.) Parker was decently hot, with 28 points, and Tim Duncan put together a 14-point, 12-rebound double-double, but that was pretty much it for the Spurs’ offense.

Not that the Thunder put up all that many points: they shot 35.8 percent, six ticks worse than the Spurs. But this was a night for defense, though Kevin Durant dropped in his usual 25 points and OKC went 17-21 at the stripe. (The Spurs were 7-12, and three of those five misses were in the final frame.) Nick Collison recorded 10 boards, and Russell Westbrook snagged eight more.

Don’t feel too sorry for Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, who was coaching his 1000th game and threw his hands up in the air in despair as the buzzer sounded. He’s still Pop, after all. And we have to play the Spurs twice more this season.

And two more playoff-bound teams will be reporting to the Ford this week: the Bulls on Wednesday and the Jazz on Friday.

And second prize is two nights in Texas.

The Spurs fired off trey after trey in the first quarter and took a 20-point lead after the first quarter, extending it to 26 points in the second. The Thunder refused to lie down and die, and gradually whittled away at that lead, getting it down to two with 29 seconds left. But Manu Ginobili put it away with a three-point play, and the Spurs won it, 109-104.

Still, I suppose if you’re going to have a bad quarter, the one to have is the first: at least you have a chance to recover. And in the subsequent three, Oklahoma City outscored San Antonio, 85 to 70.

The Thunder shot a respectable 52.4 percent, slightly better than the Spurs. Big differences: fouls (OKC 22, SA 13) and assists (OKC 19, SA 28). Tony Parker had seven consecutive points in the fourth quarter and 22 total, leading San Antonio; Tim Duncan had a double-double (20 points, 11 rebounds).

Speaking of double-doubles, Kevin Durant had one of those: 28 points, 13 rebounds. And Jeff Green keeps increasing his season high, which is now 33. Russell Westbrook got into foul trouble early and played only 19 minutes, during which time he scored 2; Earl Watson ran the point most of the night and collected 9. Kyle Weaver played an entire quarter, for what it’s worth.

I have a feeling that whatever frustration has been building up is going to be taken out on the somewhat-less-hapless Los Angeles Clippers Tuesday night at the Ford. Difficulty: the Clips have actually won two straight.