Welcome to Above the Break – the SPOX opinion on the NBA season! Twice a month, SPOX editor Ole Frerks scrutinizes a league issue closely. This time: The San Antonio Spurs at the crossroads – and user questions.
There are various mechanisms in the NBA that are supposed to prevent or at least make it very difficult for certain teams to be at the top of the list. There is the salary cap and draft, there is (at least in the meantime) an active free agency and a cap for the term of contracts. There is the luxury tax, which does not deter all but most team owners and makes it almost impossible for the really great teams to stay together for many years.
And there are the Spurs. The Texans have won at least 60 percent of their games in 20 seasons at a time – if there hadn’t been a lockout in 1998/99, it would have been 50+ victories for 20 years. The Spurs won 37 out of a total of only 50 games (74 percent) and their first of five titles.
This series is currently in jeopardy – more than you realize at first glance, after all, the Spurs are in fourth place in the West with a 36-25 balance sheet. This corresponds to a 59 percent balance sheet, so the 60 is not far away. Appearances are a little deceptive. Before the victory in Cleveland, the Spurs had lost six of their last seven games.
This is not a completely new trend either. Since the turn of the year, San Antonio has had a negative balance sheet (11-13). Funny as it sounds, there is now a scenario where the playoffs could take place for the first time since 1997 (!) without San Antonio.
At the same time, however, they do not want to be written off because they are the spurs. Maybe this is the ultimate proof of Gregg Popovich’s brilliance. The fact that San Antonio looks so good at this time of the season can be counted among his greatest achievements as a coach anyway. Compared to other top teams, their squad simply doesn’t produce a 3-seed.
Let’s exclude LaMarcus Aldridge, who rightly became an All-Star again and should definitely also be in one of the All-NBA teams; who from this team is scaring opponents in 2018? According to LMA, Rudy Gay (11.1) and Pau Gasol (10.7) are the only scorers in Double Figures, with Gay having missed 25 games and Gasol having the lowest rate in his career (46.4 percent).
In addition, there is a colourful mix of old players who have all missed at least 15 games and are far from their best time (Manu Ginobili, Danny Green, Tony Parker), semi young players who have certain skills but would not see many good teams (Kyle Anderson, Bryn Forbes, Davis Bertans, Joffrey Lauvergne) and a potential top talent in De Somewhere Patty Mills is joining us.
Does this squad sound like “Number Four in the West”? Or to put it another way: Are the Spurs better manned than the Blazers, Pelicans, Thunder and Nuggets, which currently rank 5-8? Are they deeper than the Clippers and Jazz in 9th and 10th place?
To be honest, most other playoff contenders would have to be stronger than San Antonio in terms of pure talent. It’s not just the fact that Kawhi Leonard, a top 5 player in the league, has played a total of nine games this season – it’s a game that runs through the entire squad. Only Mills and Forbes were available to the Spurs in every game this season.
Of course, many other teams have injuries as well, especially Boogie Cousins and Jimmy Butler. But the Spurs have a very pronounced form of the disease this season. Not least because their fixed point, which last season had a higher usage rate than any trace in the Popovich era (31.2 per cent), has disappeared without replacement. Popovich had to constantly re-calibrate his team and adapt them to the adverse circumstances.
He has so far succeeded impressively well. Popovich has carefully analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of his players’ equipment and hires his team accordingly. As in the previous seasons, the Spurs play extremely slowly, only the grizzlies have a lower pace (96,77).
San Antonio usually has two big men on the court, which are not too fast in the case of Gasol and Lauvergne. Correspondingly, they seldom push the tempo. They play both offensively and defensively conservatively, which has the advantage of making few mistakes. Their rotations sit, the discipline is enormous. The clock is milked, few turnovers are produced (only 13.5 per game, rank 6).
No team posts as often as the Spurs, because Aldridge is the only player who scores consistently and can bind double teams. LMA currently has its highest usage rate since the last Portland season (28.6 percent) and now almost always makes the right decision when it comes to doubles.
When it plays, the spurs flip the ball around the perimeter in no time at all to find the open shooter. This is anything but revolutionary, it’s a real oldschool style of play. But it is currently the best opportunity for San Antonio to score points on the board.
The fact that Aldridge is blossoming once again in the Spurs was by no means foreseeable in the summer. Rather, it looked like a break-up – Aldridge even openly admitted afterwards that he asked the Spurs for a trade. Instead, Pop has jumped over his not-so-little shadow and apologized to Aldridge; the reintegration of the Big Man is undoubtedly another brilliant achievement of the coach.
LMA is currently clearly the most important player for the success of the Spurs, but their playing style is similarly important. The Spurs are better than almost all other teams at making few mistakes and performing professionally every night – this can often decide on victory or defeat in a long regular season, even if you’re not supposed to be the more talented team.
The Spurs have already placed a few stink bombs this season and lost against Atlanta and Dallas for example, but as a rule they do their job against the “sediment”. The Spurs stand against teams with a winning record of less than 50 percent in a 23-5 record, against “good” teams they only stand at 13-20.
According to basketball-reference. com’s “Strength of Schedule”, they had the fourth-lightest schedule so far – but for the rest of the season they have the hardest remaining schedule in the West according to playoffstatus. com. Looking at the above-mentioned balance sheets, this is not a particularly good sign for the 50 victories series and the playoff chances of the Spurs in general.
It is therefore quite right that on Monday it was suddenly reported that Leonard will return to the Spurs – and even has his sights set on a comeback to the court in late March. However, the fact that this leaked report almost completely contradicts what Popovich had said only a few days earlier in public speaks volumes, so to speak; the relationship with the superstar seems, according to various reports, to actually have an acute need for repairs.
This is central to everything San Antonio wants to achieve this season and beyond. Even the greatest optimists are aware that the Spurs without Leonard can be uncomfortable in the short term, but not really dangerous. And that in the long run they need more than Aldridge, Murray and Pop to be attractive for certain free agents.
This is the crux of the matter: coaching, scouting, preparation and so on can undoubtedly create great advantages. To win at the very highest level, however, you also need the right talent. Even perhaps the best coach in NBA history depends on his players doing what he tells them to do.
In Tim Duncan, Popovich had the ideal franchise player or central building block for 19 years, even though it is often forgotten that he himself was about to join a “super team” in Orlando in the summer of 2000 with Grant Hill and Tracy McGrady. Leonard has been Duncan’s legitimate successor for years, but now it seems that the 2014 finals MVP is a bit offended by the NBA’s flagship franchise.
It’s safe to assume that Pop repairs the relationship and immediately finds the Spurs back on track. After all, this is about Pop, who has just found a way back in summer to satisfy an unsatisfied star again. This is about the Spurs, and one of the highest NBA laws states that you should never copy the Spurs.
However, one may also bear in mind that the Spurs have been successful for decades now, contrary to all probability. The system is not really designed for this. It doesn’t do justice to their fabulous constancy either, if you just take them for granted.
Page 1: The “lost year” of the San Antonio Spurs
Page 2: User questions: The Mavericks, Cuban, Playoff-Seeding and the “dirty” Zaza