Pop Culture, Vol. 14
We’ve shied away from the traditional recaps you can find all over the interwebs, but we still have a few thoughts after each game. For more as they happen, be sure to follow 48MoH on Twitter. You’ll find our post-game grades in emoji form there. (For real.)
Andrew McNeill
I watch a lot of soccer. It has become my second favorite sport and the one I follow the closest as a fan. Soccer is such a poetic game. Whether in print or spoken word, the way people describe soccer is unlike the discourse in any other sport. For some fans, the way the game is played is just as important as the end result. For God’s sake, the sport is nicknamed “The Beautiful Game.”
As I’ve watched matches lately, there’s been one phrase that’s taken root in my head and I’ve been unable to dispose of it as I’ve simultaneously observed the San Antonio Spurs running out to a second-best in the West 11-3 record. It’s the idea of players expressing themselves on the floor. In soccer, this is a common complaint when things go south with a manager. Players feel they want to express themselves more on the pitch is a familiar refrain.
This expression doesn’t manifest itself in the form of a goal celebration or a particular show of emotion, but instead in how a player plies his trade. It’s in the creativity, the free-flowing nature of the sport. Players don’t express themselves as cogs in the machine of a set play or pieces on a chessboard, but through their own free will on the pitch, playing as they know how. The term swashbuckling is used on occasion.
I think about this a lot when I watch the Spurs. We don’t think of the NBA in terms of personal expression, at least not when it comes to style of play. Sure, Tim Duncan might let out a primal yell after a big dunk, and that’s a form of expression, but the way he sizes up a defender in the post and decides how to attack him — whether it be a faceup bankshot or that awkward one-handed shot where he turns over his right shoulder and tries to place it off the glass — is a better example. For Duncan, the version of himself that he puts out on the floor is much more calculated than others.
The obvious one to point out in this exercise is Manu Ginobili. He is a sure-fire Hall of Famer and easily one of the most loved Spurs of all time, but it’s not his career averages of 14.3 points and four assists a game that make him the fan favorite that he is. It’s how he plays the game. You can’t watch Manu for more than two or three minutes and think that he’s trying to be anybody other than himself on the court. That hasn’t always been smooth sailing, however. It’s been well documented that early in his career Manu and Gregg Popovich had to come to a sort of compromise between the player that Manu Ginobili was and what the Spurs needed him to be, but there’s no question when watching him on the floor who Manu Ginobili is and we’re all better for having had the privilege of witnessing it.
The goal in the end is always to win, but amidst a seemingly endless season (for real, the Finals are seven and a half months away), simply tallying regular season Ws and Ls is monotonous at best. The real fun is in the aesthetics of it all and the most beautiful games are played by those who inject themselves into their play. Against all odds, Manu Ginobili is still out on the floor for the Spurs in 2015. We should all express our gratitude for that.
Matthew Tynan
Tony Parker’s had an interesting career arc. He was a 19-year-old rookie faced with the monumental task of leading a team with Tim Duncan and David Robinson as its foundation; he clashed early and often with a very demanding coach and the culture he helped institute; and he sped his way into the upper echelon of the league’s point guards with an unique interior style, quite the opposite of most small players in the NBA.
But it’s the last few years that have been the most interesting. While his physical prime came during the mid-2000s, a stretch during which no player could stay in front of the blazing-fast Frenchman, it was probably the 2012-13 season that stands out as the best of his career. He didn’t quite have the same first step and change-of-direction pace he once did (though it wasn’t far off), but he was as well-rounded as any player in the league.
He had perfected the mid-range game, taking defenders through screens all night, knocking down jumpers when they got caught and blitzing toward the rim when they decided to chase. The Spurs system had become his own personal playground, and at the age of 31, he hit his basketball peak. Most players do that by their mid- to late-20s, but it had more to do with the fact the team was finally his. After sharing the reins with Timmy and Manu for years, he had become the best player of the Big 3, and he ran with the opportunity.
Since then it’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. Injuries derailed him during those heartbreaking 2013 Finals, and while the euphoria of the 2014 Finals will trump most anything, the decline of the San Antonio point guard has been perhaps the biggest point of criticism over the last few years — especially in the wake of his recent contract extension.
But he’s looked more like Tony of Old than Old Tony so far this season. There’s been an adjustment period, as you’d expect for a team trying to integrate a player like LaMarcus Aldridge, but everything seems to be sorting itself out. Parker is boasting a 60.6 true-shooting percentage, which would be a career high (by comparison, last year’s 53.3 TS% was his lowest mark in a decade), a nearly 60-percent tally inside of five feet and 49 percent from mid-range, where he shot a dreadful 41 percent last year.
It’s a small sample and the real test will come as the season moves on toward its dog days, but this is a good start for Parker. As the offense has become more fluid, so has Tony’s statistical output. He no longer seems unsure of what the new-look Spurs system is asking of him, and he’s finding ways to get both himself and his teammates more involved. He’s also doing this in a career low 28.1 minutes per game.
The youngest member of the Big 3 foundation in San Antonio is now getting the Duncan treatment, effectively ushering him into the team’s elder statesmen category. But like Timmy over the last couple …. no, last few…. no, last half-decade, the Spurs hope the extra rest will have him ready for the postseason.
Spurs fans who still have memories of last year’s first-round ouster hope so, too.
Caleb Saenz
When Kawhi Leonard told the press he wanted to be MVP, people received his boldness as mere motivation, a loud outlier from a quiet young player pushed on by a sincere love of basketball and a clear desire to compete. There’s no harm in nudging yourself forward, and anybody can relate to moments in life that require you to talk yourself into attempting something that seems crazy. Stuart Smalley, he isn’t, but why couldn’t Kawhi use some extra motivation? What could it hurt?
A lot of this thinking went out the window when the Spurs opened their season against the Oklahoma City Thunder. In a game that featured a handful (at least) of sure-fire future Hall of Famers, Kawhi emerged as the clear star of the game. The Spurs would lose in the final minutes, but after leaving his massive fingerprints all over the game, the league was effectively on notice. What was excused as the brash talk of idealistic youth began to seem, by the game, less like a personal pep talk and more like the cold truth typically associated with Kawhi’s brevity.
Since that game, Kawhi has improved significantly across virtually every metric from his 2014-2015 season. His defense hasn’t missed a step, even as his usage rate has continued to climb. Last night against the Phoenix Suns was just another highlight reel for his mixtape, with Kawhi getting points of steals, fighting through post defenders for acrobatic layups, and hitting his now, practically automatic midrange jumper from a preposterous variety of angles. His final line - 24 points, 13 boards, four assists, four steals, and a block - would be monstrous on any night, but it still somehow fails to capture the heights Leonard is regularly ascending. He’s reached a new level, where shots that would have seemed silly in previous seasons are greeted with a nod and a shrug. Light schedule be damned, the young man seems to be firing on all cylinders. Like, literally all of the cylinders.
Yahoo’s Dan Devine noted the lofty company Leonard has found this season:
Leonard’s on pace to be just the 16th player since blocks and steals were recorded to average 21 points, seven rebounds, 1.5 steals and one block per game in a season. The rest of the list: nine enshrined Hall of Famers (Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Charles Barkley, Larry Bird, Julius Erving, Elvin Hayes, Karl Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson), one future first-ballot Hall of Famer (LeBron James), four players who at least have interesting HoF arguments (Marques Johnson, Shawn Marion, Tracy McGrady, Chris Webber) and noted contemporary outlier DeMarcus Cousins.
He’s doing all that while shooting 50 percent from the floor and 45 percent from 3-point range on 4.1 attempts per game, and continuing to lock up opponents’ top scorers.
Were it not for the supernova happening in Golden State, Kawhi might be standing alone in the MVP conversation. As it stands, he joins a few others in the race for second best, light years removed from Stephen Curry’s orbit. This is just the reality of this young season, but Kawhi’s continued improvement deserves our attention. Should these numbers hold for an entire season, it wouldn’t be silly to think of Leonard as the league’s Most Improved Player. On a team of aging Hall of Famers, Leonard has used his play to grab the reigns, his steadiness a calming force for a new, acclimating star and a team that’s still adjusting to significant roster turnover. The league usually hands the often derided award to players who see a big increase in minutes, but Kawhi has managed to exceed expectations on an already contending team, within nearly the same parameters of previous seasons. Come award season, there’s a case to be made for a quiet young player who called his shot and called our bluff.
