Duncan’s Spurs Quietly Dominate

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Despite all the amazing upheavals this season in places like Phoenix, Seattle, and Washington, two NBA facts remain constant. First, the Spurs are the league’s best team. Second, nobody is interested in talking about them.While others grab the headlines, the quietly efficient Spurs are going about their business behind the scene They’ve more than lived up to their preseason hype as the league’s best team, rolling out to a 35-10 start be hind the coolly efficient play of perennial MVP candidate Tim Duncan.But here’s the funny thing about the Spurs: If you just get your news by watching SportsCenter, you’d hardly know they exist. They might be the best team in basketball, but to the net works they have about as much sex ap peal as Dick Cheney in Spandex.Undoubtedly, Duncan is the main culprit. Ask any general manager in the league to name the league’s best players and Duncan’s name is either first or second. Ask any shoe executive, on the other hand, and Duncan doesn’t crack the top 20. His game sometimes seems like an object lesson in monotony, but his fundamentals are undeniably effective.Despite the lack of spectacular plays, the Spurs’ premier player is an incredible force on what is once again the league’s top defensive team. In stead of the impressive swat, Duncan’s art is using his long arms a la Bill Rus sell to deflect and alter shots and either tip them off the board or to a teammate. Together with 7-foot center Rasho Nesterovic, Duncan makes it virtually impossible to score inside against the Spurs.While we’re on the topic, I’ll share two little-known tidbits about the Spurs’ defense. First, last year’s unit was the best of all time. Second, they may end up better this year.While the Pistons’ defense got the lion’s share of attention in 2003-04 (deservedly so, given how they shut teams down after the Rasheed Wallace trade), it was actually San Antonio that put up a better mark over the 82-game season, allowing just 92.3 points per 100 possessions to the Pistons’ 93.8. That performance was 8.5 points better than the league average bettering the 1992-93 Knicks’ record of 8.3.This season, San Antonio is right on track again, with a mark that’s 8.4 points better than the league. No matter how they fare the rest of the way they’re all but certain to crack history’s top five. (Side note: “history” here means since 1973-74, when the league began tracking turnovers. Before then it’s impossible to determine a team’s true effectiveness.) As the accompanying chart shows, three of the top five defensive teams in history are Duncan-era Spurs clubs. Adding insult to injury for New Yorkers, the Spurs are gradually knocking the Pat Riley-era Knicks off the charts.As befits this team’s style, San Antonio’s defensive excellence isn’t attributable to any one strength – it lies in their being good at nearly everything.The Spurs are second in both defensive field-goal percentage and defensive rebound percentage. Considering how hard they play, it’s amazing how rarely they foul – only three teams send opponents to the line less often than San Antonio does. Yet despite that restraint, only six clubs force more turnovers. The Spurs’ lone weakness is defending the 3-point line, where opponents are shooting 37% percent, the fifth-highest mark in the NBA.On the other end of the floor, the Spurs’ new and improved offense is leaving opponents reeling. Last year, San Antonio’s offense was merely average. Despite Duncan’s low-post domination, they ranked 14th in Offensive Efficiency, right in the middle in the pack. The Spurs’ offense became a huge liability in the playoff defeat against the Lakers, ultimately costing them the series.San Antonio addressed that issue in multiple ways this past off-season. First, they brought in Brent Barry, perhaps the most efficient offensive player in the past decade. Barry is averaging 1.19 points per shot attempt, one of the best figures in the league, despite an off-year by his standards – last season he was at 1.34, the NBA’s best mark in eight years.Second, they drafted Beno Udrih and inserted him as the backup point guard. Udrih gives the Spurs a realistic option when Tony Parker goes into one of his funks, providing a key ingredient that was missing a year ago.Of course, the Spurs also benefited hugely from the reinterpretation of the hand-checking rules on the perimeter, because Parker and Manu Ginobili are two of the quickest guards in the league. It’s no accident that both are having career years.Parker is shooting a sizzling 49% from the field because he has to rely less on his shaky jumper, while Ginobili has gone bonkers. The owner of one of the league’s quickest first steps, the nimble lefty increased his shooting percentage to 48.6% from 41.8% and boosted his scoring rate by 3.6 points per 40 minutes. Thanks to those exploits, there’s a good chance he’ll make his first All-Star team in a few weeks.The added boost from Ginobili and Parker has made the Spurs much more exciting to watch than when they would pound it into Duncan on every possession while the other guys stood around the perimeter. This is important, not least to David Stern.The Spurs are the league’s premier franchise, so it’s much better for the league if their style is fairly entertaining – the microscopic ratings for the 2003 Spurs-Nets Finals offer all the proof we need of that.Unfortunately, the networks have yet to warm up to this team, in part because the Spurs never generate any off-court news. The Boy Scouts of the NBA, they’ve kept a straight-laced, posse-free locker room ever since they saw their title hopes in 1995 ruined by Dennis Rodman’s circus act.Save for a brief dalliance with suspended pugilist Stephen Jackson, it’s hard to think of a single Spur from the past decade who generated even a shred of controversy. Maybe if Ginobili said he needed a raise to feed his family, or if Parker had a posse full of French thugs demanding brie in the locker room, that would create more interest.The TV folks will have to come around eventually, because this team isn’t going anywhere. Most of the key Spurs are still quite young, and next year they’ll get a boost when the best player in Europe, Luis Scola, arrives in town. So get used to the smooth efficiency of the Spurs as they cruise to the league’s best record and stampede to the Finals. Whether the networks like it or not, this is the team that everybody will be watching for several Junes to come.

Duncan’s Spurs Quietly Dominate

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