San Antonio Spurs: Is This The Best Bench In The NBA?
By Jack Huntley
The San Antonio Spurs have a long list of things to boast about this season, and we can add its deep bench to that list.
The San Antonio Spurs have started 22-5, on the back of a historically stingy defense, an MVP worthy season from Kawhi Leonard, and steadily increasing production from LaMarcus Aldridge. Despite a strangely popular narrative suggesting otherwise, they are well and truly on the radar.
Understandably people have been talking lots about the Golden State Warriors, but they’ve also been talking about the Spurs; this isn’t and hasn’t been an either/or proposition.
A number of drool-worthy Spurs topics have been heavily discussed this season; whether it’s Kawhi Leonard’s surprising league-leading 49 percent three-point shooting, Tim Duncan‘s league-leading 6.7 DRPM (Defensive Real Plus-Minus), or the team’s league-leading (and best of the last 40 years) 93.9 defensive rating.
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Another potentially league-leading component of this perpetual contender is its bench. A complementary and crucially important collection of unsung Spurs, who might be the best reserves in the NBA.
The bench is 10 players deep. This is impressive, some NBA rosters aren’t even 10 players deep. But the Spurs are often the exception to league wide norms, and have an embarrassment of riches on the roster this season, giving head coach Gregg Popovich the absurd luxury of leaning on the depth of his depth.
The second unit lines up as: Patty Mills, Manu Ginobili, Kyle Anderson, Boris Diaw and David West.
The third unit lines up as: Ray McCallum, Jonathon Simmons, Rasual Butler, Matt Bonner and Boban Marjanovic.
That 10-man unit would give more than a few NBA teams a run for their money with a measured sprinkling of shooting, skill, and size. It’s a balanced selection of players from the complete spectrum of NBA lifecycles and archetypes. There’s youth, veteran leadership, championship pedigree, overseas imports, draft projects and D-League journeymen. A true motley mosaic of role players.
This depth’s primary purpose is to protect the Spurs aging core, and allows the unreserved implementation of the famous Popovich Player Preservation Programme. Basically, lot’s of rest.
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Despite the passing of the torch to Leonard and Aldridge, the Spurs will need Duncan, Tony Parker, and Ginobili to challenge Stephen Curry and his Warriors. But with 50-plus seasons of professional basketball between them, limited minutes and regular rest are a must to ensure the still sizably important three are present and performing come the playoffs.
So far so good this season, with none of the trio missing games due to injury, and all three of the Spurs elder statesman playing less games, and less minutes in the games they do play. The results are on display with the three Alamo-amigo’s having collectively their best start to a season for years.
The beauty of the Spurs bench is that this policy of rest doesn’t carry with it the any on-court cost. The bench doesn’t miss a beat, with the reserves much more than a mere maintenance crew, often coming in with the starters out of sync and with a defecit to make up.
They are experienced and precise, often overwhelmingly for opposing second units not used to facing such crisp execution on both ends of the floor. The backbone of the bench is the foursome of Mills, Ginobili, Diaw and West, who combine for a whopping 411 career playoff games – more than a lot of NBA rosters, and some NBA franchises.
There’s a versatility benefit to the second unit as well, who play a different way to the starters, with a more uptempo pace and spacing style that’s become fashionable around the league this season. Mills, Ginobili and Diaw played a huge part in the small ball dismantling of the Miami Heat in the 2014 NBA Finals, and thrive when the pace of the game leans that way.
Ginobili and Diaw especially embody this altruistic version of the Spurs, as natural creators and ball-movers. Per hoopsstats.com, the Spurs bench leads the league with 10.9 assists per game, and the offense visibly hums when both guys share the floor.
Mills is a constant source of energy all over the court, a pesky on ball defender, and solid three-point threat at 39 percent. West has slotted in nicely knocking down elbow jumpers, setting bulky screens, position rebounding and generally exuding a demeanour of controlled menace.
The bench’s collective salary comes in at just under $22 million, which is a bargain considering the talent it buys. For comparison, the Philadelphia 76ers’ bench costs around $20 million, and that’s for a group that mostly barely qualify as reserve D-League talent.
Reliable reserves are nothing new for San Antonio, who year on year find value for money cogs to slot into its system — often to replace the previous crop, who, having flourished within the principled parameters of the Spurs ecosystem, cash in on inflated values in free agency.
Each player’s skill is carefully selected by general manager R.C Buford, and masterfully deployed by Popovich. Ray McCallum is the latest in a long line of zippy Tony Parker prototypes to gradually learn Pop’s playbook as a third string point guard. Rasual Butler is a veteran and consumate professional, who knocks down the corner threes the Spurs offense specializes in finding.
Jonathon Simmons is a relentless, stocky, scrappy wing who puts valuable pressure on the rim and plays with a constant sense that his minutes are under threat, not to be taken for granted, something to be maximized. Anderson is a heady pass-first forward in the mold of Diaw, a promising project with rare skills and common flaws. Bonner is a part of the Spurs furniture now, a seasoned stretch-4 with solid fundamentals, a known commodity who stays in his lane.
And then there’s Boban Marjanovic. Probably almost certainly the second coming of Arvydas Sabonis, a simply gigantic human, with a beautifully bizarre marriage of brute strength and ballet-soft touch. An instant cult hero who’s currently sporting a PER (player efficiency rating) of 26.3. Of course he is.
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This bench is deep, cheap, productive and great fun to watch. It’s the sneaky engine of a rumbling Spurs juggernaught. It’s probably the best bench in the league.