Things aren’t looking up in San Antonio right now. The Spurs are 5-11 since November 4 and are trending in an especially ugly direction over the past week. Gregg Popovich’s squad has lost three games by at least 31 points since last Wednesday.
This Spurs team doesn’t have a high ceiling, but they are still playing well below their capabilities as of late. The bench players are holding up their end of the bargain, but the starters have been terrible as of late.
What Are Recent Trends Telling Us?
After the Spurs’ loss to the Clippers on November 16, the Spurs changed their starting lineup. Derrick White and DeMar DeRozan weren’t working well playing significant minutes next to each other, so Gregg Popovich inserted Rudy Gay for White.
Since then, Gay has started every game next to LaMarcus Aldridge, DeRozan and Bryn Forbes. The fifth starter has been Cunningham for seven of the 10 games. Bertans has gotten two starts and White has gotten one.
The stretch of play since that starting lineup change 10 games ago is our focus for this piece. Since then, the players who have come off the bench have been significantly more effective in than the starters.
Overall, the Spurs are 4-6 in this stretch, with a disappointing net rating of negative-8.6. But if it weren’t for several strong showings from the bench, things could be a lot worse.
Obviously, there’s a difference in quality, on average, between the opponents the starters are facing and those that the reserves are facing. But those net rating differences are pretty significant and worth talking about.
Let’s examine some areas where San Antonio’s starters can improve by imitating the reserves.
Defensive Effort
The reserves are showing much more fight on the defensive end in nearly every key area. They’re communicating, moving laterally, deflecting passes and rotating to contest shots despite their limitations in length and athleticism.
If you combine the numbers in the last nine games from Jakob Poeltl, Bertans, Patty Mills, White and Marco Belinelli, each player in that group is averaging 10.4 shot contests and 1.7 deflections per 36 minutes. The regular starting five is averaging 9.4 and 1.2 in those same statistics.
But these differences are more about how bad the starters’ defense is than how good the bench is playing defensively.
They Spurs don’t have any All-Defensive caliber stoppers in their starting lineup, but BBall Index’s defensive talent grades from last season would indicate that they’re at least capable of playing better defense than they are.
Aldridge was in the 95th percentile league-wide in protecting the interior last year. Gay was 70th percentile as a perimeter defender and 80th percentile as an interior defender. Dante Cunningham and DeMar DeRozan were around average in both categories. Bryn Forbes was the only major liability on defense from those metrics, though DeRozan certainly does have plenty of frustrating moments on that end.
The starters just haven’t been bringing it as of late, though, as their recent defensive ratings suggest.
The Spurs’ 135-129 loss to the Bucks was one of the best examples of this. All five starters had on-court defensive ratings of 130 or higher, and three of them were above 153. It was basically a layup line for Milwaukee whenever the starters were in.
There’s no magical solution to these issues. The starters just need to play with more effort and cohesion on the defensive end, like the reserves are.
Ball Movement
The three best offensive players on the Spurs are DeRozan, Aldridge and Gay. All three of them start for the Spurs. So why have the starters been so lackluster on offense recently?
One key issue is ball movement. San Antonio runs a lot of post-ups and isolations for those three players, who get a lot of usage in starter-heavy lineups. The trio have combined to average 17.2 possessions that end in a post-up in the last 10 games. The five aforementioned bench players are at just 1.6 as a unit.
San Antonio’s starters relying too much on DeRozan and Aldridge to create for themselves. Opponents are adjusting to this and sending well-timed help defense to force turnovers. Many of these turnovers are resulting in transition buckets for opponents.
Those two along with Gay, Forbes and Cunningham have struggled with turnover and crisp ball movement as a whole. Those five are averaging 1.71 assists per turnover in the last 10 games. The reserves are averaging 2.72 assists per turnover in that stretch.
The bench unit has consistently used actions that have Poeltl rolling to the basket after screening against a spaced-out defense. Teammates are finding him on the roll, and he’s been tearing apart defenses with well-timed cuts and passes from that position. In all, he’s averaging 21.3 points and 2.8 assists per 36 minutes in his last 10 contests on 75.5 percent shooting from the field. All three numbers dwarf his career averages.
The starters need to make quicker decisions in general. They need to anticipate when defenders might be converging on DeRozan or Aldridge and use that to facilitate ball movement.
Also, getting Aldridge in more situations as a roller would help. His popping to the midrange mucks things up, because his defenders can still position themselves to help on drives while remaining close enough to contest his pick-and-pop jumpers.
Finally, the Spurs’ starters should also prioritize balance more. The fifth offensive option (which has often Cunningham) hardly touches the ball. Even Gay can get unfairly pushed to the margins at times.
Shot Selection
This is an obvious issue with this Spurs team. San Antonio’s offense is a bit above average, but there’s a lot of room for improvement in the starting lineup. The squad continues to seek out shots that aren’t close to the rim or behind the three-point arc in a league that has increased its offensive efficiency by spurning that type of shot.
A league-leading 29.4 percent of the Spurs’ field-goal attempts are from the midrange. However, they’re shooting a poor 39.2 percent from that range (21st in the NBA). The next closest in terms of midrange frequency is the Warriors, at 27.1 percent of their shots. But at least Golden State is draining 49.4 percent of those looks.
Of course, it’s Aldridge, DeRozan, Gay and Forbes taking almost all of these shots.
Meanwhile, San Antonio takes just 27.1 percent of its field-goal attempts from behind the three-point line, 29th in the NBA. But when they take them, they go in at a 38.6 percent clip, second in the NBA.
It’s important to look at this as more than “the Spurs should shoot more threes.” Of course they should, but the shots should be the byproduct of the starters, especially Aldridge and DeRozan, attacking the rim more instead of settling for midrange jumpers.
Aldridge has a size, strength and skill advantage on most players who guard him. Too often, he dribbles for a few seconds in the post and then just spins over his right shoulder for an inefficient, contested jumper. Instead, he needs to bully his way into more fouls and easier shots.
DeRozan is a tricky ball-handler with excellent footwork, great hops and a knack for drawing fouls. He likes his elbow midrange jumper a bit too much, though.
He has bouts of aggressiveness where he forces the issue, though, and it’s awesome. Against the Blazers on Sunday, he scored 18 points in a span of four minutes and 35 seconds. 10 of the points were within four feet, and four were from three throws.
When these two can put pressure on the rim, defenders have no choice but to rotate away from shooters. That obviously creates more clean looks from the outside.
A big part of it is just different skill sets, but the second unit has done a great job playing with pace and utilizing that inside-out attack that finds efficient shots. Poeltl has been the surprising centerpiece, but quick decisions from White and hard work off the ball from Mills, Bertans and Belinelli are also paying off.
Final Thoughts
The first step for the Spurs’ starters is to step up their game on the defensive end with more fervent movement and communication. The offense can be more effective if it’s not always having to take the ball out at the end of every defensive possession.
But from that point, the starters needs to tweak their offensive approach a bit. They need a bit more balance, a bit more flow and a bit less one-on-one play that the reserves have found success with. They need to attack the rim more both in transition and half-court settings and use that to leverage a few more shots per game from behind the arc.
Now, even if the starters can find this balance throughout this season, we’re probably still talking about a low playoff seed that won’t scare any of the best squads in the Western Conference.
At the very least, Spurs fans deserve a team that can avoid getting blown out by 30 points three times in a week.
Note: All video clips are from 3ball.io, NBA.com, or the MLGNBA or FreeDawkins YouTube accounts. All statistics are from NBA.com.
