Kawhi-Harden

Photo credit: Darren Abate, FRE / Associated Press

If you’ve watched much Spurs basketball this season, there are a couple things you might have noticed:

  1. They start slow.
  2. They do NOT mess around in the third quarter.

Number one is probably fresh in your mind if you watched last weekend’s Spurs vs. Mavericks game, in which San Antonio was losing 16-14 to Dallas at the end of the first quarter. Yuck.

Number two is probably also fresh in your mind, because in that same game they showed absolutely no interest in letting up against the Mavericks once the Spurs got going. After halftime, San Antonio came out swinging and turned their 10-point lead into a 29-point win.

Up until now, I’ve only been able to anecdotally comment on the Spurs’ third quarter dominance, but I wanted to back it up with some data. So I looked up every box score from this season, entered San Antonio’s quarter by quarter point differential into an Excel worksheet, and made it do some math. And guess what I learned?¹

The Spurs are doing a great job in the third quarter.

But guess what else I learned?

They’re doing even better in the second quarter!

2015-16 Spurs Point Differential by Quarter
1st Quarter 132
2nd Quarter 229
3rd Quarter 176
4th Quarter 101

What this tells us is that the third quarter domination we’re seeing is actually being set up by truly stellar second quarter play. To borrow a phrase from fan favorite Jonathon Simmons, San Antonio really “changes the juice” after the first quarter comes to a close.

Think about it like this: if the Spurs have a tendency to be sluggish in the first quarter, it really masks how well they play in the second. The Mavericks game is a perfect example. San Antonio was down by 2 after the first quarter, then up by 10 at halftime, meaning they outscored Dallas by 12 in the quarter. In the third quarter, the Spurs again outscored Dallas by 12, pushing the lead to 22 points.

The third quarter only looks more impressive because the total lead has grown considerably by that point. Let’s take a look at another example of the Spurs third quarter dominance being set up by a strong second quarter.

On Dec. 3 at Memphis, the Spurs were down 1 point after the first quarter, but by halftime they held a 9-point lead. After the third quarter, San Antonio’s lead was up to 17, which looks much more impressive than 9, even though they actually scored fewer points than they did in the second quarter.

The reason these third quarters seem so soul-crushing to the opposition is because:

  1. They are.
  2. More often than not, the Spurs are building on a sizeable lead by the time the third quarter rolls around. San Antonio is averaging an 8-point lead at halftime!

Hats off to the Spurs for not stepping off the gas in the second half and making the third quarter so devastating for the opposition. The NBA is often a game of runs, and this season the Spurs have been really good at making sure the opposition go on theirs during garbage time.

If there’s a place San Antonio will need to step it up in order to keep up with the only team ahead of them in the NBA standings, it’s the first quarter. Golden State is outscoring their opponents by 5.8 points in the first quarter, and is 32-1 in games where they lead after the opening quarter.

As long as the Spurs keep themselves within striking range going into halftime, I think you have to like their odds to pull off the victory. We’ll find out how it actually plays out tonight.

1 I later learned that I didn’t need to use Excel because there’s a cool website that already did the work for me. D’oh!