National Basketball Association

Spurs-Mavs playoff series delivers great hoops, lots of babies

Published Apr. 30, 2014 7:34 p.m. ET

foxsports

The San Antonio Spurs and Dallas Mavericks have been delivering us some stellar basketball in their first-round playoff series, but their significant others have been busy delivering babies.

On Wednesday, just hours before the Spurs hosted the Mavs for Game 5, the home team's star guard Tony Parker reportedly became a proud father of a baby boy named Josh, according to the live TNT broadcast and San Antonio's KSAT 12 news.

There's no official word on just how much sleep Parker and his fiancee — French journalist Axelle Francine — got before Parker had to suit up for Wednesday night's game. But it couldn't have been much.

Yet Parker isn't even the only star on his team who had a baby arrive during this series. Hours after Game 1 of the series, Parker's fellow Spurs guard Manu Ginobili headed to the hospital for the birth of his son.

Thrilled to announce that today at 7.47am, Luca, our 3rd boy was born. Wifey and the baby are both doing great. #SuperHappyDad
— Manu Ginobili (@manuginobili) April 21, 2014

"Woke up at 4:45," Ginobili told the San Antonio Express-News. "Get ready. Pack. Go to the clinic and wait for a couple hours and witness a C-section. I held that baby as long as I could and then down here. Basically that was it."

Popovich was typically unimpressed with his player's hustle.

And the stork didn't just visit the Spurs roster, either. The Dallas Morning News reports that after the Mavs defeated the Spurs in Game 2, Dallas forward Shawn Marion hopped aboard the private plane of team owner Mark Cuban and headed to Chicago for the birth of his son, Shawn.

"It was great, though, an incredible feeling," Marion told the Dallas site. "Everything worked out very, very well.

"I have a beautiful, healthy son."

It's all further proof that everything really is bigger in Texas — including the number of births during a playoff series.