Season 49, Game 56
San Antonio 118, Phoenix 111
47-9, 2nd in the West

You know it. I know it. Gregg Popovich knows it. The Spurs are playing really bad defense right now.

Sometimes these games happen, and you find yourself in a dogfight with a team you should beat handily. Hell, sometimes they even happen in back-to-back games.

When those games happen, though, it’s usually hot scoring from an unusual source, or an offense taking advantage of exactly what you want them to do (like taking contested long-2s), and you just have to tip your hat to them.

This is decidedly not what happened in Phoenix. The Suns got just about whatever they wanted at the rim or from behind the 3-point line – you know, the two most efficient places to score. The Suns looked downright Spurs-like with how open some of their lay-ups were. (Which is to say, the Spurs defense looked downright Lakers-ish.)

Phoenix scored 27 points from behind the 3-point line, 56 points in the paint, and 16 points from free throws. That’s 99 of their 111 points – a staggering 89% of their points. That’s not good defense.

The Lakers hung 113 on the Spurs; the Clippers 105. That’s not good defense.

Over the last 10 games or so, the Spurs are giving up over 100 points/possession, and rank right in the middle of the NBA in terms of defensive rank. We can argue that we were missing Duncan for most of that run, and now we’re missing Kawhi, and these things are true. But if you’re waiting on good health and two players to fix your defense, you’ll be waiting a long time.

And the counterargument: we’re still winning the games! So the offense has picked up. That’s good. The team does look much better on that end of the floor. But offense is more prone to be a victim of variance, and can lead to the wrong end of blowouts (see: Clippers game). Defense keeps you in just about every game, even when the offense is struggling, giving the team a fighting chance in every contest.

Second counterargument: It’s that midpoint malaise portion of the NBA season. The Warriors got their asses kicked in Portland. OKC has lost two straight at home, getting blown out by Cleveland on Sunday. Every team in the top 6 in the West has lost at least one game in the last 4 days. So perhaps the whole league is kind of shrugging their shoulders and muttering a collective, ‘meh.’

We know Pop won’t stand for that for too long. Any observant and ardent watcher of this team knows that while the wins keep piling up, the team just doesn’t look the same as it did back in December. The team has built itself a very nice cushion in the standings to figure things out.

Let’s hope they do.

The team has two days off before playing the Kings in Sacramento tomorrow night.

Go Spurs Go.