Whenever I talk with Matt Moore the conversation invariably leads to Matt Bonner, someone I do my best to defend. Moore thinks Bonner stinks. Shouldn’t be on an NBA court, or something to that effect. He’s the cause of much beard-tugging consternation for our favorite hoophead. My response, the easy response, is to tell Moore that Bonner eats APM [...]

San Antonio began the fourth quarter of this afternoon’s game against Phoenix with a three point lead. Over the next 12 minutes, the Spurs did not make too many defensive stops; Amare Stoudemire, Steve Nash, and Jason Richardson all scored with ease. Luckily the Suns aren’t exactly known for their lockdown defense either, and the [...]

Recently, 48MoH has discussed the struggles of San Antonio’s interior defense. Please see The Roots of Defensive Decline and The Root of All Defensive Evil for discussion of these points. But a struggling interior defense is often an indication of a prior breakdown on the perimeter, which seems to be the case with San Antonio this season, Manu Ginobili’s [...]

Wayne Winston, who served as a statistical consultant to the Dallas Mavericks for the last nine years, and is the author of Mathletics, was kind enough to explore a handful of Spurs-related questions with me. Over the next few days I’ll put up a series of short posts detailing the more salient moments of our [...]

Leaving the All-Star weekend, perhaps no theme encapsulated the Spurs more perfectly nor enemy loomed so big-well, maybe the Laker’s frontline-as time. And not just time, as in the amount of time left in their stars’ careers, but timing. Timing is everything.

If you wrote a book about this season, which story lines would play most prominently in your retelling of the story. The decline of Spurs’ defense? The slight but unmistakable devolution of Manu Ginobili’s game? Tony Parker’s game-weary legs? The promise of DeJuan Blair and George Hill? Tim Duncan’s squandered brilliance? The emergence of small-ball [...]

Last week we ran a series of features exploring three options for the Spurs: Make no move; make a minor roster move; and make a major roster move. There was supposed to be one more- a post arguing that we should make moves focused on future seasons- that for various reasons was never published. After [...]

With around 7 minutes left in the 3rd quarter, the Spurs found themselves ahead by 12. The previous play had featured a nice back-to-the-basket move by DeJuan Blair, and after Peja Stojakovic dribbled into a 16-foot spin-around fadeaway miss (not the shot the Hornets want Peja taking), Duncan secured the rebound and San Antonio was [...]

Yesterday I ran a piece that attempted to point out an obvious development that some have missed: Tim Duncan is playing very well this season. Some want to qualify this by saying Duncan is receiving less double-teams, to which my response is “so what?” and “is he really?” Honestly, I’m not sure that assertion is [...]

Well, that was far more stressful than I had anticipated. In a game that Gregg Popovich described as an “ugly win,” the Spurs defeated the Pacers on a go-ahead dunk from Tim Duncan with four seconds left. After an excellent 1st quarter that ended with a Matt Bonner and Manu Ginobili led run, the team [...]

The San Antonio Spurs defeated the Philadelphia 76es 97-89 last night, extending their winning streak to 5. The Spurs are now 9-6. So far as winning streaks go, the current run is nothing to brag about. The Spurs have played 4 of 5 at home, beating Washington, Milwaukee, Golden State, Houston and Philadelphia. Prior to [...]

In my recap of Monday’s Bucks-Spurs game, I touched on one of the team’s more controversial topics: The talent and usage of Matt Bonner. There are a proud few who claim that his ability to spread the floor and gaudy advanced statistics speak to his importance to the team, even if his vanilla-flavored style isn’t [...]

NBA Stats After blowing a substantial first half lead late in the second quarter, the Spurs regained control during the third and cruised to 14 point victory over Milwaukee Bucks, a franchise which has given us an inexplicable amount of trouble during the Tim Duncan era. A quick glance at the traditional box score paints [...]

During the offseason, I suggested that the Lakers had begun a movement of super-contenders by changing the model for winning an NBA championship from 3 stars and a bunch of role players to a 5 star, get-out-our-way template. To make this thesis work, I considered Andrew Bynum a star player. Many readers took exception. “Andrew [...]

Although the tactical details of basketball can be rather complicated, the underlying strategy is surprisingly simple. At a certain point, it is merely a question of number and proximity.