Ettore Messina and the constant system of change
This iteration of the San Antonio Spurs was built on the back of basketball evolution. Yeah, there was that Leonard trade — which, by the way, went from total win-win to lopsided as hell more quickly than any transaction I can remember in recent memory — but Tim Duncan is still playing at age 38 because of the way this team operates; Manu Ginobili is still effective because of the depth in the system; Tony Parker is regularly an All-Star and considered a top-tier point guard because he was finally given the reins. The change that’s taken place over the last seven or eight years is the reason the Spurs are still contending all this time later, and it’s also the reason we’re still writing articles like this one over and over again.
Variations of Gregg Popovich’s practice have spread around the league as assistants have left his side and found opportunities elsewhere, to Pop’s delight, I should add. And while they’ve all got their own flair and unique wrinkles, it all derives from the same place. They call it Pop’s coaching tree, not branch or limb or whatever, for a reason — it all sprouts from the same place. That’s not to say they didn’t offer their own insight along the way.
Pop has always been open to the input of other smart people. Doc Rivers, Brett Brown, Mike Budenholzer — they’ve learned much of what they know from the league’s longest-tenured coach, but they also contributed. They kept that tree watered, so to speak.
Still, they all grew under him. When one left for another gig, another filled his place. Rinse and repeat. Corporate knowledge is a crucial element to what the Spurs do, but an infusion of new experience is what keeps an operation running and growing. There are familiar faces on Pop’s bench in Ime Udoka and second-year man Jim Boylen, and even Becky Hammon has been around for a while despite only recently being hired full time. But it’s the newest face of the group that’s most interesting — the one that’s more like Popovich than any of the others.
Rarely do you see a union of this sort on an NBA bench. Ettore Messina is anything but a young up-and-comer. He’s built a legend of his own, just on a stage half a world away, and now he’s made it back to the league for a second stint as an assistant coach. And while you don’t see this very often — two old guys who’ve both been around basketball far longer than I’ve been alive and have established systems of their own teaming up to coach together — it’s sort of a match made in basketball heaven.
You don’t need to know much about Popovich and Messina to feel the similarities that pop off the screen. Each has a gruff exterior that just exudes “happy,” they both seem intensely passionate about the sport of basketball to the point of obsession, and it appears there’s a certain type of joy each man finds in setting up a field of land mines around a scrum of reporters looking for a quote.
Popovich and Messina both come across as alpha dogs, but the fact the current NBA Coach of the Year is looking for a different perspective isn’t surprising in the least.
It was a little more than a year ago when Messina brought his CSKA Moscow team to San Antonio for a preseason exhibition, before which Pop acknowledged his eventual assistant’s ability.
“A team just has to have the guts,” Pop said then about the possibility of an NBA team hiring Messina as its coach (there has never been a foreign-born head coach in the league). For the Spurs, this was about brains more than guts. Popovich admitted that day that he takes things from Messina’s style and implements them into his own. He understood what this coach had to offer, and given the locker room’s distinction of being the most internationally diverse in the history of the NBA, he knew the transition could be smooth.
But what will be most fascinating is to see if and how the Spurs’ style changes. Messina has long been a practitioner of the slow-it-down, half-court, dump-it-in-the-post style of offense, with the goal of managing the rhythm and pace of the game as a focal point. At heart, his new boss is very similar.
Pop prefers the days where Timmy dominated the block and San Antonio played suffocating defense on the other end. But as the league changed — and it must be mentioned, so to did the foul rules — Pop adjusted, because he had to. His team played with the twelfth-fastest pace in the NBA last year, and Duncan has become much more of a pick-and-pop kind of big than he ever was during the mid-aughts. The Spurs have still managed to control the game going inside-out, but they’ve done so with the penetration of Parker and Ginobili rather than post-ups.
So how will the two styles blend? It’s going to be interesting to watch develop over the course of the season, especially with a team that’s got such a grasp and familiarity with a successful system. It’s going to take much more than a single game to notice anything with regularity, but we can attempt to glean some info, can’t we? For #content’s sake?
One thing is for certain, the pace was significantly slower on Tuesday against Dallas. The Spurs registered 97.07 possessions per 48 minutes last year, and a slightly higher 97.44 against the Mavericks during the regular season. Even in the first round of the playoffs, where Carlisle’s dark magic funkified any flow the San Antonio offense tried to muster, the Parker and Friends still pushed the pace at better than 94 possessions per 48 minutes (which is actually pretty speedy relative to the typical playoff pace).
On Tuesday night, the Mavs and Spurs slogged along at 88 possessions per 48 minutes, yet it was still pretty to watch. San Antonio passed the ball 353 times, per NBA.com’s SportVU data, which is about 20 more than the 332.9 it averaged at a pace of roughly nine more possessions last season. On top of that, Duncan, who tallied about 35 touches per night last season, touched the ball on offense 41 times in 30 minutes of the team’s opener. Same goes for the suddenly gray and well-paid Boris Diaw, who received 49 touches in 33 minutes on Tuesday. He didn’t even average 30 during the 2013-14 regular season.
And assist opportunities were there around the perimeter, which is the idea behind going inside-out, offensively. Parker received the ball via pass 83 times on Tuesday, while Ginobili received 55 — that’s roughly 27 and 25 more than their averages last season, per SportVU. And the difference in perimeter shot-attempts off an assist opportunity was obvious: Manu and Tony combined for 10 3-point attempts off a direct pass, and they hit six of them (Parker 4-of-4).
*Another quick observation: All 10 of Duncan’s shots came from within 10 feet of the basket. His mid-range jumper was awful last year, and I think most were curious whether or not he’d be able to bounce back from that area of the floor. But everything came from inside the paint or about nine feet away on the left baseline. One wonders whether the Spurs going to use him as much around the elbows this season.
Messina’s offense wants to slow the pace, then get the ball into the post and react from there. Which isn’t a bad idea, considering the passing ability of the Spurs’ big men. Well, after only one game — and I stress, it’s only one game — check and check.
We’re going to begin noticing things more easily and more regularly over the next 10 games or so, but what we saw on Tuesday makes sense. If they can find a way to alleviate pressure on Parker and Ginobili as playmakers, it’s going to go a long way in ensuring a higher probability that they’ll be healthy when April and May come around.
Things were a little sloppy on opening night, and that’s to be expected, really. Still, the Spurs remained efficient despite the 21 turnovers. They managed to score 61 points off 23 assists, which is a pretty ridiculous average in terms of points per assist, and much of that damage was done by San Antonio’s best perimeter players. If you get your stars open looks, good things generally happen.
Good things happened on Tuesday, and that’s really just the beginning. Truth is, we don’t know what’s next, but we can look forward to it nonetheless.
