If you’re a basketball fan, you can’t help but love what the Spurs have done over the past 17 years. In the Tim Duncan era they have never been in the lottery(Kawhi Leonard is the lowest draft pick they’ve made since 1997, and that pick was traded from Indiana), have always won 50+ games (or have been on pace to in lockout years) and have made the conference finals nine times. That’s more than every other year! Duncan has more playoff wins than 20 teams and more 50+ win seasons than 26 teams in their entire franchise history. Ginobili was drafted 57th and Parker 28th. Boris Diaw was waived couldn’t get minutes on a historically bad Bobcats team. Danny Green was out of the league before the Spurs picked him up. Kawhi Leonard has at least made the conference finals in every season of his career. The Spurs became the only team since the NBA-ABA merger to not have a a single player log over 30 minutes a game (and just as a reminder they finished with the best record in the league). You could list fun facts about the Spurs all day long, but the point is that in the modern NBA they’re about as close to being a dynasty as possible. The ridiculous run of drafting well, picking up under appreciated players who fit their system and developing talent is one of the greatest achievements not just in the NBA but all of team sports.
Stats and the Radical Shift in Style of Play
Duncan and Ginobili have been their two best players over the past decade, and are now 38 and 36 years old respectively. You would think that the Spurs couldn’t get better on a year-by-year basis, especially considering that San Antonio is a small market that doesn’t attract marquee free agents and they never get lottery picks. Here’s the list of all players 36 years or older and active in the league right now(minus Manu and Timmy): Kenyon Martin, Paul Pierce, Jason Terry, Nazr Mohammed, Pablo Prigioni, Vince Carter, Chauncey Billups, Antawn Jamison, Kevin Garnett, Andre Miller, Ray Allen, Mike James, Derek Fisher and Steve Nash. Read that list again. You could make a case that Tim Duncan is the best player on the Spurs or the most impactful defensive player in the entire league on a per-minute basis! And the stats show that Ginobili is insanely valuable to the Spurs(will show that later). How many players on that list can be the best player on a title contender? Zero. What about a starter? Maybe one? How about even a minor contributor? Three to Four.. maybe?
“The window” of winning a title was supposed to pass five years ago, yet here we are again, just off of a Spurs Game 5 close-out victory against the Portland Trail Blazers, where Parker left the game after playing 10 minutes and going 0-2 from the field. This was a desperate Trail Blazers team trying to stave off elimination at all costs, and without arguably their best player the Spurs pretty much blew Portland out of the building. The Spurs were ranked 6th on offense and 4th on defense, per NBA.com, for a net-rating that was #1 in the league. In the past 18 years, the average ranking in net rating of the team that won the championship is 2.9, and that out of those 18 champions 8 were ranked first. What this means is that over the past two decades, statistically speaking the team that has the best point differential has almost a 50 percent chance of winning the title. During the Duncan era the Spurs are already are four for seven in this stat.
The Spurs went from a slow, grind-it-out, perennially one of the slowest paces in the league to a top-10 ranking today almost over night after losing in the first round to the Dallas Mavericks in the 2009 Playoffs. They rejiggered the offense around Tony Parker realizing that they couldn’t get to the monster defensive numbers they used to. It took some time getting used to but in the five seasons since the move to a faster paced offense, the Spurs have won the #1 seed in the west three times and ranked #2 once. San Antonio started valuing the defensive glass more, and pretty much gave up on offensive rebounding. They doubled(!) the amount of threes they take, shot them better, took care of the ball better and emphasized fouling less. The 2013-14 Spurs are statistically and stylistically pretty much the 1998-99 Anti-Spurs, with the only thread connecting the two being the genius of head coach Gregg Popovich and Tim Duncan.
The 2013-14 San Antonio Spurs
Statistically speaking at least, this Spurs team is the best since the 2006-07 team that won the title and should be considered better than last year’s team that was 28 seconds away from winning it all(I still can’t believe that Game 6 ending). Kawhi Leonard and Tiago Splitter improved in tangible ways, they flipped Gary Neal into Marco Belinelli, found a nice upgrade at the back up point guard position with Patty Mills and Manu had a bounced back after a rough go in the playoffs last least. Popovich did a wonderful job resting his players and experimented with more line-ups this year, going with three guards some of the time and small with Leonard at the four at other times. Last year they were taken a bit off guard when Splitter was taken out of the Miami series, and they should be more prepared in those scenarios this year.
Their only weakness is attacking ultra athletic teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder. Which isn’t good considering they are likely to face them in the conference finals. The Spurs live off of Parker penetrating into the lane, kicking it out and making multiple passes along the perimeter. Getting into the lane gets harder against great athleticism and the Thunder especially are fast enough to cover long distances when the Spurs force rotations. Danny Green and particularly Kawhi Leonard have to find a way to be productive off the bounce if San Antonio wants to advance to the finals. If the drive-and-kick game dries up, the plan B so far has been to post Duncan, which might not work out against Perkins and Ibaka.
Whoever the Spurs get in the western conference finals isn’t exactly a perfect match up for them, but they do have some things they can take advantage of against both the Thunder and the Clippers. Westbrook has had trouble guarding Parker, off the ball he can get inattentive and careless, and Parker has taken advantage of that before. This being the most memorable example:
The Spurs also have two top tier perimeter defenders on their team in Green and Leonard to put on Westbrook and Durant.
The Clippers on the other hand have had trouble defending the three point against teams like San Antonio, even though they were the best three-point field goal defense in the league this season. They pack the strong side and can get into troublesome rotations and covers when they play teams that move the ball well and shoot it at a high percent from deep. This year they struggled against Dallas, Portland and Atlanta for exactly that reason; all of them run great motion like the Spurs.
Look, this deep into the playoffs every team is really, really good, and everyone can cause each other headaches, but San Antonio can just cause more of them than others. When Leonard played the Spurs were 54-12, per Basketball-Reference.com, the equivalent of which would be being on pace to win 67 games, closing in on historic territory. And when Ginobili was on the floor they had a net rating of +12.9 compared to a still solid +4.8 when he sits. +12.9 is a number that is just crazy, if a team averaged that over a full season they would basically be a 99% favorite to win the title.
If this Spurs team doesn’t win the title, they will be one of the best teams to ever not to win it. Beyond the numbers they have the best coach in the league, great depth and versatility, the best teammate to ever play the game in Tim Duncan, championship experience and they hold to their advantage essentially every tangible and intangible that relates to the game of basketball.
Who knows how long their run will last anymore; Duncan has a player option for next season and might retire with Pop to the Virgin Islands if they win the title this year. Just think about that, we might have only 10 more games to watch Tim Duncan anymore, might as well enjoy the heck out of it while we can.
