For the Spurs, the Passing of the Torch is Here
Go ahead and name the first three or four talking points from Game 1 on Sunday.
Chris Paul.
The Spurs’ shooting performance.
Blake Griffin and DeAndre Jordan.
San Antonio can’t afford for these subjects to be the first words out of people’s mouths when analyzing the Spurs’ first-round series against the explosive Clippers. If THAT’S where the conversation starts, the defending champs are cooked.
Kawhi Leonard couldn’t be in a better situation. When the Spurs are going, and he’s blowing up, we marvel at the way this 15th overall pick in the draft has exceeded all expectations and become one of the very best players in the NBA. But when San Antonio looks bad, we resort to the tried-and-true angles of analysis: Tony Parker is banged up and looks slow; the Clippers’ front court is too much for the far less athletic duo of Tim Duncan and Tiago Splitter, and poor Aron Baynes as a side dish; the Spurs are generating looks, but the shooters aren’t knocking ’em down.
All of these takes are legitimate, but by virtue of the fact we’re addressing those things over what should be obvious, we’re placing on the back-burner what truly drives the Spurs.
Leonard is the best player on this team, and it’s no longer a conversation. If he’s not a Finals-MVP caliber player against a monster like the Clippers, all the tactical adjustments in the world may not be enough.
Los Angeles’ game plan was fairly obvious in retrospect. They suffocated the Spurs’ pick-and-roll attack with startling efficiency from a group that hasn’t always been so disciplined. (It’s infuriating how good Zach Lowe is at breaking this stuff down ahead of everyone, but you need to go here and read. I hate you, Zach. I love you, but I hate you.) San Antonio was forced into second and third and fourth reads on damn near every possession, leading to shots that were decent looks, but felt desperate.
I wrote about the “uncontested shots” already — the Spurs will not, in all likelihood, miss 23 shots from the 3-point line again. The problem was that very few of them came within the natural flow of the offense. We can talk about the Parker pick-and-rolls all we want, but the Clippers were clearly defending against something else.
They have nobody who can singlehandedly deal with Leonard. Not a soul.
Los Angeles’ awareness of this issue wasn’t hidden. Whenever Kawhi touched the ball, there was a help defender hedging over or downright shadowing the Spurs’ small forward, and the Spurs did not respond well to it. We can pin that on ball-movement. We can pin that on shooters. We can do whatever dance needs to be done to skirt around the issue.
However it is you feel about the matchups, the truth is out there: the size and athleticism of Griffin and Jordan are really difficult for Duncan and Splitter to deal with, and Paul is in a much better physical state than Parker is. This playoff run, this entire postseason battle for a second straight title, is on Leonard.
I realize all this sounds super hot-takey — this absolute-type assessment of a team built around the concept of “unity.” I get it. But the only reason this group is even in this position, the only reason they were able to challenge LeBron and the Heat, and then topple them, is Kawhi. And now, the battles grow larger.
This is where the double-teams happen; This is where the scouting report is no longer centered around Duncan, Parker, and Ginobili; This is where the second-youngest Finals MVP ever will be put to the test. He’s not a secret any longer.
The Spurs were 12 points per 100 possessions better than their opponents this season when Leonard was on the floor. When he was on the bench, they were damn near even. He is who drives them. On Sunday night, he was minus-21 for the game.
Kawhi isn’t used to all the attention, though. In the past, opponents have doubled Duncan, used bigger players on Parker, and cut off Ginobili’s angles with multiple defenders in efforts to thwart the Spurs’ attack. But the idea of focusing a defensive game plan around a guy who isn’t part of that Hall-of-Fame triumvirate is relatively new, and the Clippers are doing just that.
It’s new to Leonard, for sure. His size, strength, and ability have pushed opponents to reconsider placing a lone defender on him, even knowing how dangerous the rest of San Antonio’s roster can be. The Spurs are a team that, in theory, is built to murder any sort of double-team strategy. But now it’s Leonard being doubled, not Tim or Tony or Manu.
How San Antonio reacts remains to be seen, but Los Angeles is putting it all out on the table: We’re not going to let your best player beat us, so you’d better figure out a different way to do it.
Duncan, Parker, and Ginobili have all solved this riddle during their times holding the mantle. For Kawhi, it’s about taking the next step in his development, a step we have yet to see on a consistent basis. But with him, it’s taken some coaxing in the past.
Before he broke out during the 2013 Finals in Game 5, he averaged a fraction more than 11 points per game over the first four; last season, he put up just nine points in each of the first two games of the Finals before exploding on the Heat.
Now what?
This is the fun part. These are the times where we find out what certain players are capable of when the lights are brightest. Yes, Parker can get into the teeth of the Clippers’ defense more effectively, Green can hit a damn 3-pointer on the road, and Manu can be more efficient, but none of that is likely to matter if Finals-MVP, havoc-wreaking Leonard doesn’t re-emerge.
For Kawhi, the stage has never been bigger, and neither has San Antonio’s dependence on him.
