The San Antonio Spurs have announced Boris Diaw will not return to tonight's game.

Boris Diaw (back spasms) will not return to tonight's game. (@spurs)

This isn't good news as the Spurs are getting closer to the playoffs and will need every healthy body they can get.

The matchup of Saturday night's game between the San Antonio Spurs and Atlanta Hawks will be between Tiago Splitter and Al Horford.

The Spurs are coming off a disappointing loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder and have dropped three of their last four games. The news didn't get better as the team will be without starting point guard Tony Parker (sore neck) and will have to make up his contributions elsewhere when the Hawks visit the AT&T Center. This will make the Splitter/Horford matchup more valuable as the Spurs will have to depend on their taller guys from the forward and center positions to make up for what's lost without Parker, which is also Atlanta's main game with their two big men inside the paint.

What Splitter must do on offense:

The San Antonio Spurs (56-20) will host the Atlanta Hawks (42-35) tonight in San Antoio as this will be their final meeting of the regular season. The Spurs will continue to be without Manu Ginobili who is nursing a hamstring injury as well as be without Tony Parker (sore neck) and Stephen Jackson (ankle) who is probable.

The Spurs won first contest 98-93 at Atlanta. Tony Parker led the Spurs with 23 points and 12 assists.

The Spurs are coming off a loss to the Thunder in Oklahoma City 100-88. Tim Duncan finished with 24 points, 11 rebounds and 3 blocks.

The Hawks are coming off a 101-90 loss to Philadelphia. Josh Smith had 19 points to lead Atlanta.

And as the Spurs look to make it five wins in a row versus the Hawks, here are five things to watch for during the game:

• The Spurs can clinch the Southwest Division with two victories.

• Hawks' Devin Harris is averaging 19.3 points over his last three games played, scoring at least 16 each time.

The Orlando Magic have a 19-57 record, one win up on the Charlotte Bobcats for the worst record overall in the league. While it's not the most attractive record, very few (if any) will say the Magic are heading in the wrong direction in the long term. Jacque Vaughn  has been praised by his peers this season and his mentor is no exception.

After the San Antonio Spurs defeated the Orlando Magic in San Antonio, Gregg Popovich commented on Vaughn's approach to the team and what kind of job he's done so far.

"He's done a great job of just instituting a system," Popovich said of Vaughn. "He knows what wins and what loses, and he knows that in the long run certain elements of the game have to be established and standards have to be set. That's really where he's put his emphasis. (OrlandoSentinel.com)

After a string of picks categorized as draft and stash, the San Antonio Spurs have excelled in recent years turning back end of the first round guys in to rotation players.  Tiago Splitter I suppose was a bit of both, then there was George Hill, then DeJuan Blair who was actually a second round pick.  More recently Cory Joseph has shown he's at least a back up caliber point guard.  This year their draft position will be no different.  Now that the college season is over for all but four teams, we may be getting an idea of who the Spurs might be targeting.

According to Ray Fittipaldo of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, general manager R.C. Buford himself was in town last month presumably to have a look at freshman center Steven Adams (H/T to Dan McCarney for the link).

A struggling San Antonio Spurs team watched their season-long lead over the Oklahoma City Thunder dissipate to a half-game margin to control the top seed in the Western Conference. 

“I saw him come across half court actually limping at one time, so that’s when we pulled him,” Popovich said. “I said ‘Tony,  you’ve got to stop, so we can figure out what it is.’ He just couldn’t go.”

Spurs guard Patty Mills, along with the Coyote and some of the Spurs Silver Dancers, lent their time and support to the Dribble to Stop Diabetes campaign. Mills was out promoting the benefits of a healthy and active lifestyle to the patients at the Communicare Health Center in San Antonio.

The Spurs are showing that having a healthy community is as important to them as winning their fifth title.

UPDATE: The San Antonio Spurs have announced that they've assigned Aron Baynes to the Austin Toros.

With no Tony Parker and no Kawhi Leonard in the line up, it was a given that someone, probably multiple people, from the Spurs' bench were going to have to step up against the Orlando Magic this past Wednesday, we just didn't know who.  I'm willing to bet not many of us thought it would be Aron Baynes.

Since signing with the San Antonio Spurs at the end of January, Baynes has pretty much been given the Cory Joseph treatment, which is to say racking up the mileage driving from San Antonio to Austin to play with the Toros.  Considering he hasn't even had a training camp with the Spurs, none of us really expected his first season to amount to much more than that barring some sort of injury.

The Spurs got good games from Gary Neal, Nando De Colo and Cory Joseph, but Baynes' second half was pretty surprising.  Nine points and five rebounds in 18 minutes may not seem so impressive, but it may allow Gregg Popovich to rest not only Tim Duncan, but Tiago Splitter as well in the future.

The nominees for the 2013 Basketball Hall of Fame are surfacing and listed is former SuperSonics guard Gary Payton.

"The Glove," who had a phenomenal career in Seattle and won his only NBA title with the 2006 Miami Heat, will reportedly pick San Antonio Spurs legend George "The Iceman" Gervin to be his presenter along with former Jazz guard John Stockton.

“John Stockton is someone that I respect and was the toughest basketball player I played (against),’’ Payton had said. “George Gervin, because I admired him ever since I was (growing up). Those are guys that I respect a lot.’’

Second year San Antonio Spurs forward Kawhi Leonard has made leaps-and-bounds from his rookie season and is now a vital part of the team and its success.

This season he's averaging 11.7 points, 1.7 steals, 5.7 rebounds, and shooting 49% from the field and 37% from the three-point line in 30.9 minutes per game. Needless to say, he is making an impact on both ends of the court and has had a tremendous hand in the Spurs successful season which has them currently atop of the Western Conference.

Leonard was featured on NBA Action and spoke on his drive to be a better player while his teammates and coach (Gregg Popovich) also weighed in on the youngest member of the Spurs.