Slip Sliding Away

Season 48, Game 31
New Orleans 97, San Antonio 90
18-13, 7th in the West

On its face, there’s not much difference between this year’s team and last year’s team. The rosters are identical. The foundational principles are identical. The sets, plays, and defensive rotations are identical. No player is having an appreciably worse season, and many of the role players are actually having career years. Yes, there have been key injuries, but that was true last year, also.

After winning it all last year, the Spurs became the gold standard of the NBA. The model franchise. The epitome of team basketball, the beautiful game. The great coach, the selfless superstars. Team over individual, the virtue of building something.

This is part of the problem. Professional sports is built on emulating and copying. Everybody is studying the Spurs, copying the Spurs, stealing from the Spurs, and scouting the Spurs. The team isn’t a surprise anymore. Opposing teams know the pet sets, where the cutters are going, where the passes are supposed to be going. Opposing teams know what we want to do, and they are prepared for it.

This is partially why the offense seems less fluid this year and why there are more turnovers. The NBA is a game of inches, and the Spurs are losing those valuable  inches. Where once there was just enough room for the baseline wraparound pass to the man in the corner, now there is a defender’s hand to deflect or steal the pass.

The other drawback of becoming the gold standard is that it makes the team a target. Competitive people want to prove themselves against the best. Teams use the defending champs as a measuring stick. There are no off-nights for the Spurs: they are getting every team’s best effort. This is daunting over an 82-game season.

Which leads to the other big issue so far this season: the team has no juice. There’s no ‘there’ there. The team competes hard and is competitive in most games, but they just don’t have the spark–the juice–to get over the hump, to get that big run that puts the game away, to close games with defensive stops or free throws. (How many games have they nearly lost late because of missed FTs or just silly miscues? How many games have been marred by an excess of silly turnovers?) Our bench used to come in and blow the other team’s bench off the floor and open up the game; now our bench is routinely getting outplayed by lesser units. There is often a listlessness to the team, a feeling of rote repetition. They are getting through, they are surviving; but they are not thriving.  The team still has chemistry born from familiarity and trust, but there is a certain special quality that is lacking so far this season. Juice.

18 games in the month of December will do this. 18 games in the Western Conference will really do this. Most of that stretch without Kawhi, Tony, and Patty will do this. 4 OT games–2 of which were 3 OT–will do this.

Pop knows this. He’s certainly been angry after key losses (OKC and the Lakers most noticeably). But he’s also been praising, proud of the team’s remarkable effort in those OT games, proud of how they’ve competed short-handed and stuck together. He knows that Kawhi brings juice; he knows that a healthy Tony brings juice; he knows that Patty bring juice. If the team can just hold on, it’s coming back.

All of this, and we finally arrive at last night’s game against the Pelicans. Again, the team competed. But there was lethargy to the team, a culmination of tired legs and tough defeats. Boris was a step off. Bonner, after a wonderful game the day before, had a tough night. Kyle Anderson had a really tough night. Marco was feeling it and tried to shoot us into the game, but mostly shot us to a 4-7 point deficit the entire night, a hump the team could just never get over.

There were bright spots. Duncan, as usual. Baynes and Splitter both had good runs. Boris found some rhythm in the second half and kept us in it for a stretch.

And this brings us to Cory Joseph, probably the trickiest player for me to wrap my head around this season. He’s been really good this year, and he continues to improve week to week, even game to game. He plays with a ferocity and energy that–as described above–is mostly lacking on this team. Along with Duncan, he most routinely brings the juice. He is becoming a great attacker and finisher at the rim, and is a pesky defender. Right now, he is the best Tony Parker on the roster, and this roster needs a Tony Parker.

But he is not a healthy Tony Parker. And he is not Patty Mills. One could successfully argue that he is keeping in us in these games; one could also argue that we’re not winning these games. I don’t know how to process Joseph and his role. I love his tenacity and competitive spirit, I love how he’s improving. I like him on this team. But I don’t think he is the starting or back-up PG for this offense when it’s really rolling.

I think this will be born out if/when a healthy Patty comes back and we realize how important his role is on this team and how Cory doesn’t do it. That role: the 3-point shot. Even more precisely: the threat of the 3-point shot.

In many ways, the 3-point shot is the difference between the Spurs’ offense being good and being great. Last year, when the offense was elite, the team was at the top of the league in 3-point percentage. The team could break a game wide open with the 3. (Remember that spurt in the 3rd quarter of Game 5 of the Finals?) But even the threat of that shot completely stretches out a defense, opening up all of those holes in the middle for passing and for cutting. It opens up the inches, inches the Spurs don’t have right now. The Spurs bomb away, the defense stretches until it breaks, and the rest of the offense hums along.

Watch Cory play, and imagine Patty. Watch Cory catch a pass on a curl with his defender 5 feet behind, and imagine Patty. Patty? He pulls up with his quick trigger and takes the 3. Cory? He pauses, resets, and usually drives into the lane. This is not bad, per se. But it often resets the entire offense. And, because he is not a threat to shoot, he is driving into a defense that is ready for him, a defense that is tight and compact because there is no threat of the 3. He does this all the time. If he were Tony Parker, it would be fine. But he’s not, and his role dictates that he shoot that 3. (What’s really frustrating is that when he does shoot it, he often makes it.)

And still, Cory has been tremendous for us this season and deserves all of the acclaim he is getting. He still has so much room for growth, and if he does add that 3-point shot and couple it with his driving ability, he will be a handful. He’s not Tony and he’s not Patty, and he shouldn’t be; he should be Cory.

Right now, Cory is the starting PG on a tired, 7th-place Spurs team.