The Margin: 17 Observations from a Rocket-Sized Blowout
A general rule of thumb for me: Don’t take analysis of the first month of the NBA season too seriously. I say this because A) we’re obligated as people who exist in the basketball blogosphere to preface any observation with “It’s early, but,” and B) because it does give us a decent sample size with which to work, as arbitrary as it might be. There is no right answer to the “So, when should we start caring?” question, so I say just choose your own time, and we’ll tell you if your assessment is valid or not. There is no deadline for forming opinions, and we clearly know it all.
There are certain early developments that hold more weight than others, though, especially when a preseason suspicion manifests itself immediately. We thought the Cleveland Cavaliers might struggle defensively, and they have, but we thought the offense would make up for their lack of stopping power. So far that hasn’t been the case. But we’re only four games in, so we can’t take these observations too seriously. Historically speaking, newly formed teams struggle when they first come together, especially when comprised of ball-dominant players learning to play off one another.
San Antonio, on the other hand, is anything but newly formed. The Spurs are one of the few teams in history to return an entire roster from a championship run, so while there might be small questions here and there, we generally know what to expect. But so far, this team hasn’t looked like the one we thought we would see.
So… not three paragraphs removed from cautioning against overanalysis so early in the season, let’s go ahead and overanalyze.
For the Spurs’ second loss of the season, we’re bringing back The Margin (a blatant rip-off of Rob Mahoney’s “The Difference”), wherein we take the spread in the final score of the game and flip it into an equal number of thoughts, observations and ramblings. The Spurs lost by 17 points to a really good Rockets team, so there’s plenty to suck on here.
- Of all teams in the league, San Antonio is the one I expected to see hit the ground running most easily. I’m not saying I thought the group that left the AT&T Center floor in mid-June would show up gunning again right out of preseason, but I thought it’d be a little smoother. Through four games, the Spurs are 27th in offensive efficiency and 14th in defensive efficiency, and they’re committing 18 turnovers per game. That’s bad. Of course, the maladies have hit hard and fast. Kawhi Leonard’s conjunctivitis wrecked his preseason, and Tiago Splitter’s calf issue has bitten him again. And all this is piled on top of Patty Mills’ absence. So this team really hasn’t had a chance to play at full-strength yet. But man, they missed a lot of shots last night…
- …and speaking of last night, Houston is rocketing in the other direction. Now 6-0, the Rockets boast the fourth-highest offensive-efficiency rating and the third-best defensive efficiency in the league, and they don’t seem any worse for wear after losing Chandler Parsons, Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik over the summer. Honestly, it doesn’t seem like the loss of Parsons has wrecked their spirits too much. I’m not sure Trevor Ariza isn’t a better fit for this team anyway.
- Dwight Howard pummeled Aron Baynes. Poor dude. Poor, gigantic, bone-marrow-eating Big Banger. Then again, you expected this to happen with Tim Duncan resting and Splitter in street clothes, especially when we’re talking about THAT Dwight. THAT Dwight is a monster. He looked better than he has in years — at least since his pre-Lakers back surgery.
- It felt like, at a certain point, probably around the time the Rockets realized they could do whatever pleased them, Houston was simply throwing lobs at the rim whenever it was possible. I counted at least two different occasions where James Harden passed up a wide-open layup to put a lob up for Dwight. Spurs bigs looked more like Whac-A-Moles, popping up only to have Howard dunk on their heads.
- Speaking of dunks, Harden got Baynes good. Rough night.
- It got ugly after a while, but it has to be said: The Spurs missed a TON of great looks last night. The shots were there, but nobody came anywhere close to finding the range. Per SportVU tracking data, 15 of San Antonio’s 20 attempts from beyond the arc were considered “wide open,” where there wasn’t a defender within six feet of the shooter. SIX FEET. They only made two. And it wasn’t just the deep ball. Forty-one of the team’s 89 field-goal attempts were considered either “wide open” or simply “open” (defender within 4-to-6 feet), and the Spurs managed to hit only ten of them.
- That was the kind of game where San Antonio really misses Patty Mills. Lost in all the talk about depth and “next man up” and all that is the fact that the Spurs’ Tasmanian devil of a point guard literally won games on his own last season. His constant energy, ball-pressure and shooting ability, all wrapped into one explosive package, can keep an offense rolling on its own. This will be something to watch moving forward, and it could be something that costs the Spurs a few games along the way. It’s still understated how freaking good Mills was last season.
- Remember, Kawhi had a rough start offensively last season as well. His shot looked completely flat for weeks, and it got to the point where he wasn’t even shooting it anymore, electing instead to take a step in and fire from mid-range (where he was very good). It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for the Finals MVP, as I mentioned before, so it’s a judgement-free zone for now. (Judgement-free zone…like it matters what we think.)
- A silver lining in this small string of injuries and Popovich deciding to rest a few guys is that Kyle Anderson got the first burn of his career, then promptly received a delay-of-game warning for having his shirt untucked. Shame on you, Kyle. This is very un-Spurs-like.
- Perhaps you need a guideline, Kyle. See Duncan’s appearance above and on the left, below, then take note of David Robinson’s sharp look on the right. Notice how, even with his arms almost fully extended, the tuck never loses its grip on the waistband. This is how the pros do it, Kyle.
- Outside of this small jersey malfunction, I thought Anderson was one of the best Spurs in the game last night. He rebounded very well, showed off some of the passing skill he’s known for, and demonstrated some deft ball-handling in the open floor. The shot needs work, and when he’s the focal point on your TV screen, the game around him seems to be moving in fast-forward while he moves at his own pace. (The Slo-Mo nickname is just perfect, though, it really is.) He will adjust, but methinks it was a good start.
- Jeff McDonald of the San Antonio Express-News reported yesterday that the calf issues Splitter has dealt with off and on for a couple of years now might be more than just a recurring sprain. Tiago told McDonald there may be a back issue involved here, and that his return to the court is uncertain. We’ll see where this goes, but it’s better to deal with this now than to have it affect his play later in the season.
- I mentioned it after the opening-night win against Dallas, but the Spurs are playing at a slower pace. Not counting last night, where they were without their two starting big men, San Antonio had been playing at the sixth-slowest pace in the league through the first nine days of the season. I’m guessing we’ll see that number jump, especially in the more free-flowing, guard-oriented games like we saw last night, but remember, Ettore Messina is very much a half-court-, big-man-centric type of coach, and he was brought in to have an impact on this coaching staff. Let’s see where this goes from here.
- I wouldn’t normally fret over a slow-ish start to the season like the one the Spurs are experiencing, but it’d probably be a good idea to right the ship in a decently quick fashion. Have you looked around? The Western Conference is a madhouse right now. The Thunder are struggling mightily (they have a few really good excuses), and even the Clippers have hit a few early bumps in the road, but teams like the Warriors, Rockets and Grizzlies, and now the upstart Kings, are on an tear. There’s plenty of time to get in stride, but the West is going to be a bloodbath. It’s OK to bide your time, and there’s something to be said about weathering that early storm, but it’s those doldrums of winter that tend to weigh on teams a bit. The Spurs want to be in a good place when those dog days arrive, especially considering Oklahoma City might be in serious catch-up mode.
- I’m a little bummed Boris cut the hair off. I was digging the gray look, and now I’m not totally sure about the ‘stache. Can we find out if this is a ‘Movember’ thing?
- We’ll continue to nitpick on things throughout the season. It’s what we do, otherwise, what’s the point? But things will get better all around once people start making their way back from the various bumps and bruises. Splitter is vital to the defense, as is his offense in certain lineups. For now, Popovich is going to mix and match, as he is wont to do, and it’s going to be interesting to watch the rest of the West unfold in front of us.
- It always comes up when Pop rests players on national TV nights, and I’m not sure there will ever be a day where people aren’t yelling about it: The Spurs are doing a disservice to the fans and to the league by sitting their marquee names. In some areas of the media, there’s this weird, self-righteous stance against a perceived disservice that, in reality, is a preventative measure protecting players from the very thing these people are concerned about in the first place. You can’t yell about shortening the season and/or eliminating back-to-backs in order to preserve player health out of one side of the mouth, then turn around and chastise the Spurs for choosing to sit their old-ass players as part of a maintenance program the next second. How does that make any sense? It’s also difficult to argue this is hurting the league when the NBA is filled with former Spurs coaches and front office folks, a result of other teams’ efforts to model themselves after the San Antonio blueprint. And is it really hurting the TV product as a whole? ABC and Turner don’t seem to think so, judging by the nuclear bomb of a TV deal that’s going to drop in two years. Hey, I wish these rest games didn’t exist, and the plight of the ticket-buying public is totally understandable. But this is how it is with the current layout of the NBA schedule. These decisions to rest players aren’t made out of spite, nor are they based on whether it’s a nationally televised game or whatever other bunk reasoning. These reasons aren’t arbitrary. The Spurs have been at the forefront of many a movement in this league, the latest — or one of the latest — being player-health monitoring, especially regarding aging veterans. More teams around the league should be adopting this practice, and maybe we’ll see it in the future; for now, there are reasons San Antonio is able to do this more easily than other franchises. Whether it’s team depth, job security for coaches and general managers, or relationships between front offices and ownership groups, not all teams have the luxury the Spurs do. There’s pressure involved in decisions like these, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to theorize over them than it is to actually put them in practice, I’d imagine. Regardless, the Spurs are going to keep doing it, and they’re going to continue to play a major part in the playoff picture. This practice is a big reason they’re still part of that contending tier of teams, and those deep playoff runs are much more entertaining to me than those random regular-season nights. So let Dwight hold a dunk-a-thon at the expense of Bonner and Baynes; June basketball is much more fun anyway.
