San Antonio Spurs: Different players, same story

Although the San Antonio Spurs experienced more roster turnover than any time in recent memory, coach Gregg Popovich is still turning garbage into gold.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: “Despite only having (insert bad thing here) and not having (insert good thing here), and despite everyone counting the San Antonio Spurs out, Gregg Popovich has led them to a great record.”

Every year we do the same song and dance. The Spurs are too old. They’re stuck in the 90s. They lack shooting. Their best player is sitting out inexplicably and wants to be traded and will pretend like he’s injured all season just to get himself elsewhere. You know, normal stuff.

It’s all white noise though. Popovich has proven again and again how great he is, and we should never count him out or bet against him. He’s shown this year already that he’s not dependent on Tim Duncan, Manu Ginobili, Tony Parker or Kawhi Leonard. He can win with anyone.

Going into the season, the dominant storylines were that the San Antonio Spurs had too many mid-range shooters, too many poor defenders and no true superstars. Many pundits predicted they’d miss the playoffs in the wild, wild Western Conference (sorry, I’ve been playing too much Red Dead Redemption 2).

The funny thing about the whole situation is that those commentators were right, and still so wrong. The San Antonio Spurs take 28.1 mid-range shots a game, and the next team only takes 23.0 a night. Considering the Spurs play at such a slow pace (27th in the league), their per-possession difference is probably even higher.

Of those shots, they make 40.6 percent, good for only 10th in the league. Shooting even 27.1 percent from 3-point range would be more efficient. Speaking of which, they’re tied for last with only 22.3 long range attempts per game.

The Spurs regularly start Bryn Forbes, LaMarcus Aldridge, DeMar Derozan and Rudy Gay. Dante Cunningham, Jakob Poeltl and Davis Bertans have all started at least one game this year as well. None of them (save perhaps Poeltl) are seen as anything more than average at best on defense.

The other main bench players (Patty Mills, Pau Gasol and Marco Belinelli) might actually be even worse at defense than the starters. The fact that the Spurs are 20th in defensive rating and not even lower seems to be a minor miracle.

Let’s not forget that the Spurs are supposedly starless. Perhaps that’s a bit misleading, since Aldridge and DeRozan were both All-Stars last year, but neither was really viewed as a “superstar” that could be “the man” on a championship-level team the way Duncan or Kawhi were. It’s no wonder the Spurs were projected to miss the playoffs.

But dammit, the San Antonio Spurs are winning. They’re 5-2 through seven games. Their two losses came against the Portland Trail Blazers and Indiana Pacers — the former was last year’s Western Conference 3-seed, and the latter took the Finals-bound Cleveland Cavaliers to seven games. Those are good teams, and it’s understandable that you won’t win every game against good teams.

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One win was against the hapless Phoenix Suns, but the others were against the surprisingly decent Dallas Mavericks, the still-in-possession-of-Jimmy Butler Minnesota Timberwolves, and LeBron James‘ Los Angeles Lakers (twice!).

DeMar DeRozan‘s play has been indicative of the Spurs as a whole. DeRozan is supposedly not a great 3-point shooter, not a great defender and not a true superstar. That’s three strikes, and he’s out in today’s NBA.

DeRozan is taking only 7.5 percent of his total shot attempts from deep (not even including free throws), and yet he’s averaging a career high 27.9 points per game. He’s also averaging career highs in rebounds (5.7) and steals per game (1.3).

His development in playmaking has also blown away anything we’ve seen from him before. With all the injuries to the Spurs’ backcourt, Pop has been forced to start Forbes alongside DeRozan. Forbes is pretty much only a shooter though (averaging only 1.0 assist in 16.3 minutes for his career), so DeRozan has become the primary distributor. His previous career high in assists was 5.2, but this year it’s 7.3.

Players that have averaged at least those four stats over a full season can be seen in the table below (since steals used to not be tracked, the table omits one season from John Havlicek and eight seasons from Oscar Robertson that might have otherwise counted).

Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 11/1/2018.

I’d say that’s pretty good company to be in. It’s also worth noting that DeRozan’s 2.2 turnovers per game are much lower than the lowest number in this table, 3.2 turnovers for Larry Bird in 1987.

DeRozan isn’t the only one who’s frying, though. The entire team has performed above expectations all year. The San Antonio Spurs weren’t supposed to be here, but here they are; 5-2, top-four in the West. Just like usual.

It’s early in the season, sure. Yet in the offseason (a.k.a. even earlier than now), people were proclaiming the “true and real and definitely not fake this time guys, this is really it” end to the dominant Spurs era. In response to that, I’d imagine Pop only has two words.

Not. Yet.