San Antonio Spurs: Will Tim Duncan Hold Up?
By Aaron Mah
The season of giving has not been kind to the San Antonio Spurs. While I’m not insinuating the defending champs have been playing naughty, their performance and record, in December, was far from nice.
After an optimistic start to their 2014-15 campaign, where the Spurs dialed up their defense while continuing to develop their bench, San Antonio has gone just 8-10 over the past month.
A tough schedule, an avalanche of injuries, and regressed ball movement have caused the Spurs to stumble into a 20-14 record — their worst start to a season during the Tim Duncan era (it should be noted, though, the 2002-03 NBA champion Spurs started with a similar 21-13 record).
In addition, four of their 10 losses came in heartbreaking overtime fashion, including a couple of instant classic triple overtime defeats, on consecutive nights, courtesy of the Memphis Grizzlies and Portland Trail Blazers — two of the top-performing teams in the Western Conference thus far.
Moreover, the schedule has been far from kind to the Spurs. In fact, San Antonio began the dreaded month of December playing four games in five nights, and ended the month playing their fourth back-to-back game in a 31-day span — a grueling stretch for any team, not to mention a team whose best pair of healthy players are a 38-year-old pivot and 36 year-old guard.
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To make matters worse, the two players that were expected to shoulder the brunt of the workload this season, in Kawhi Leonard — who, after winning the Finals MVP at age 23, was expected to platoon to stardom this year — and Tony Parker, suffered injuries that caused them to miss the majority of the Spurs’ games in December.
The loss of Leonard was especially excruciating, as it effectively put a wrench on the Spurs’ identity this season. Specifically, earlier on during the year, San Antonio displayed a renewed verve on defense we had not seen from a Gregg Popovich-coached team in nearly a decade.
With Leonard and Danny Green flying around the perimeter, causing deflections, and suffocating opposing ballhandlers, while Duncan walled off the interior and manned the paint, the Spurs were holding teams to just 95.7 points per 100 possessions through mid-November.
However, with Leonard in-and-out of the lineup, the Spurs’ defense has slowly deteriorated. At present, their defensive rating has fallen to 103.0. While on/off numbers usually should be taken with a grain of salt, Leonard’s actual impact can be accurately quantified.
Most notably, per 82games.com, the Spurs only allow 98.3 points per 100 possessions when Leonard is on the floor, while their defensive proficiency plummets when he is off, allowing teams to score 108.6 points per 100 possessions.
With that being said, spearheaded by their stringent defensive principles — in which the Spurs force opposing ballhandlers out of the middle, run them off the three-point line, and protect the paint by asking their centers to drop back and zone up the interior in pick-and-roll situations — the Spurs remain a top-five defensive team. Conversely, their regression on the offensive end may be more alarming.
While the Spurs still occasionally show glimpses of their trademark ball movement, continuous cutting, and ball swings, this version of the Spurs has not shown the capacity to consistently replicate the beauty of the selfless San Antonio team that we all fell in love with last year.
Without Parker, the Spurs have effectively lost the head of the snake to their offensive scheme and their main drive-and-kick initiator.
Although Cory Joseph has made tremendous strides as an offensive player, developing himself into a viable offensive threat coming off of a pick by adding a serviceable pull-up jumper and a Parker-esque repertoire of floaters/lay-ins (as I’ve previous noted), he inherently lacks that the ability to probe and dissect defenses while turning the corner to effectively create drive-and-kick opportunities for San Antonio.
Consequently, without the threat of a pick-and-roll maestro, defenses are daring the Spurs to beat them from midrange off of the pick by playing for the pass, sitting on their corner shooters, and collapsing on Tim Duncan when he rolls and dives towards the hoop.
Meanwhile, Marco Belinelli — while he’s a fireball of energy off-the-ball, perpetually cutting and curling for open looks — is struggling mightily this season as a ball-in-hand creator, as his shooting numbers (in particular, his effective field goal percentage) dips precipitously when asked to create his own shot.
Speaking of struggling, Boris Diaw is having perhaps his worst season as a Spur. Specifically, teams are forcing BoBo to become a scorer, blocking all passing lanes when he has the ball. As a result, most of Diaw’s possessions end in awkward post-ups where he tries to showcase his wide array of grounded flips/floaters/hooks.
With the recent return of Patty Mills and Tiago Splitter, the Spurs’ attack should gradually become a little more potent. We have already seen the effectiveness of the Duncan-Splitter high-low, and the instantaneous energy Mills brings to the game, especially as a hounding on-ball defender.
However, Mills is still searching for his game legs, as his three-point shot has been woefully off and is still struggling to find that extra gear when coming off of high pick-and-rolls.
Due to the struggles of Diaw as well as the injuries to Parker and Mills, Manu Ginobili has essentially become the Spurs’ lone ball-in-hand playmaker. Save for his end-of-quarter decision-/shot-making, Manu has been terrific all season. In fact, he leads all bench players in assists this year, averaging 5.0 assists per game and 5.9 during the month of December.
Ginobili’s foray of unpredictable drives allows Manu to penetrate the teeth of the opposition’s defense as he successfully finds his open teammates. However, teams are starting to zone in on Manu as the Spurs’ primary ballhandler. In particular, most teams have taken away the Ginobili-Aron Baynes pick-and-roll, which produced such fruitful results earlier during the year.
As such, Pop has leaned on Duncan to stabilize their crumbling defense and flawed offense — more so than he would have ever imagined. In fact, the 34.5 minutes per game Duncan has played during the month of December this season, is the most minutes he has logged since February of 2009.
In his extended role, Duncan is putting up vintage Big Fundamental numbers, to the tune of 17.9 points, 11.5 rebounds, 3.7 assists, and 2.2 blocks per game for the month of December.
Defensively, Duncan has hardly lost a step. He is still an omnipresence in the interior, where his crisp rotations and never-ending arms allow Timmy to block over two shots per game while holding opponents to shoot just 45.2 percent when attacking the rim with him patrolling the paint.
Offensively, with the Spurs’ recent propensity to get bogged down, Duncan has probably had that most isolation post-up opportunities he’s had since his prime years. Without the easy baskets he’s accustomed to getting off of pick-and-roll dives and open mid-range jumpers off of the pop, Duncan has shown a bit of his age as a post player.
More specifically, when facing intelligent centers with similar length, such as Marc Gasol, who takes Duncan’s right shoulder away from his arsenal of moves, Timmy is often forced to resort to his patented turnaround one-handed leaning jumper off his right shoulder. However, without the springs of a prime-Duncan, his attempts are usually deflected, blocked, or disappointingly short.
However, even at his advanced age, his ability to anchor both ends of the floor for prolonged periods of the game is a testament to Duncan’s greatness and longevity.
Even though the suggestions of the Spurs potentially missing the playoffs are pure conjecture at this point, the possibility of not having home court advantage throughout the playoffs is quickly becoming a forthcoming reality.
While there is no tangible timetable for Leonard’s and Parker’s respective returns, the Spurs’ schedule does ease up during the month of January.
But, the looming question becomes: how fresh will Duncan be by the time the playoffs hits? Duncan may be able to drag a depleted Spurs into the playoffs, but he may very well be burnt out when we finally approach the month of May.