The final day of the 2015 NBA regular season was not kind to the San Antonio Spurs. They fell from the 2-seed to the 6-seed, and went from facing the struggling Dallas Mavericks (with homecourt advantage) to the similarly sizzling Los Angeles Clippers (on the road). And it’s not just that the Clippers are a very good team, it’s that they are one of a handful of teams with legitimate title aspirations. Now 2 of those 3 teams are facing each other in the first round, which seems a cruel joke (particularly when you see the match-ups out East).
Since expanding the playoffs to 16 teams, only one 6-seed has made the Finals. (The good news is that they won it.) Only a handful of teams lower than a 3-seed has even made it to the Finals. To repeat, the Spurs face a potential road of the Clippers, the Rockets, and then the Warriors–all starting on the road–before facing (most likely) the Cavs in the Finals. Hey, at least they’d have homecourt advantage in that series. The path is not easy, and history tells us it’s nearly impossible. Funny how one loss on the final day changes perspective this dramatically.
But these Spurs are not your typical 6-seed. For one, they won 55 games, just one game less than the 2-, 3-, and 5-seed. 55 wins would be good for the 2-seed in this year’s Eastern Conference, and good enough for a top-3 finish in either conference in many seasons.
Also, the way in which the team ended the regular season speaks to a domination on par with the best team in the league, the Golden State Warriors. This season was really two distinct chapters for the Spurs: before health and after health. The team treaded water for the first half the season, never playing with a full squad. (They also lost a lot of close and heartbreaking games in this period.) Once healthy and able to get some consistency and rhythm, it became a different team, one of the 2 or 3 best teams in the league over an extended period. The average of these two teams ended up just barely being a 6-seed, but they have not been playing like a 6-seed for months now.
Finally, this is the San Antonio Spurs, the DeathStar of the NBA, the movie monster that will never die, the White Walkers portending that winter is coming for the rest of the NBA. They have the coach, they have the system, they have the veterans, they have the young stud, and they have 3 straight Conference Finals and 2 straight NBA Finals. The only teams that have beaten them in the last 3 years no longer exist or are not in these playoffs.
Nobody is short-selling the San Antonio Spurs.
The problem is nobody is short-selling the Clippers, either. Remember those 3 best teams in the league over the last few months? The Clippers are surely one of them, as well. They have the best PG in the league, a strong defensive player of the year candidate, a coach who has a ring, athleticism, and shooting. They’ve been through their battles and this is their year. Anything short of a championship (or at least a trip to the Finals) is a failure of a season.
What happens when two top-level teams with Finals’ expectations meet in the first round? One team’s season ends in the bitterest of disappointment.
The Spurs open the series as favorites, which makes sense but also bucks conventional wisdom. There has been a funny backlash to this among the NBA community, which has the effect of bucking the trend returning the narrative towards conventional wisdom. Most experts have picked the Spurs, but there has been enough movement away from this popular pick to see a lot of pro-Clippers sentiment out there, as well. Basically, there are a lot of people saying “Everybody is picking the Spurs, but I’m going to pick the Clippers”. It has balanced out.
And it should be balanced. This match-up is fascinating, and there are plenty of advantages and disadvantages both ways. Let’s take a look at some of the key plotlines as the series begins:
Kawhi Leonard
This series is huge for Kawhi. We think of last year’s playoffs as his big breakout, but really, it was just 3 games (albeit massively important games) of excellence that hinted at the player he could be. We only started to see that player again over the final third of the season. Not coincidentally, the re-emergence of that Kawhi synced up perfectly with the Spurs becoming a Championship-level team again.
The future is now. This team is Kawhi’s, and he needs to prove that he can no only be the best player on a team in the playoffs, but that he can also be the lead player on a team. No more deferring to the Big 3, no more playing the super sub or the 4th option. If the Spurs are going to win this series–and the next, and the next–it’s going to be because Kawhi is the best player on the team, the best player on the court, and one of the ten best players in the entire league. We know it is in him.
Kawhi is even more critical in this series because the Clippers have no match for him. He is San Antonio’s single biggest advantage on both ends of the floor. The team spent the entire year building his offensive game and fitting it into the team concept: it was to build up to this. On defense, he’ll see time on Chris Paul, but his off-ball and weak-side defense will be just as critical. When defending top flight PGs, it’s almost more important to guard everything else, to take away his toys. That will start with Leonard.
If you think the Spurs will win this series, you think Kawhi is ready for this.
Tiago Splitter
The Spurs do such a good job of plugging in players to fill in for the injured, that you sometimes forget how important certain players are. While Baynes has had a breakout season and has become an important part of the rotation, he is better served playing with the bench and can not fill Tiago’s role with the starters.
As we saw in last year’s playoffs, Tiago is critical to the success of this team. His defense is hugely important, and the starters become one of the best defensive units in the league when he plays. He is particularly valuable guarding mobile PFs who can shoot with range but also attack the rim. Remind you of anybody on the Clippers? Duncan can’t really do that at his age (plus, we need him defending the rim and helping off weak side, where he is still elite). Baynes can’t do it. Boris can approximate it, but again, he is better off the bench (and also a full 3 inches shorter, which matters).
Tiago’s offense has always been secondary in his value, but he has really stepped up his offensive game this season. His interior passing is wonderful, and he has become a steadier finisher around the rim this season. He is a consistent threat for a 10-10 game, with the potential for a lot more.
The Clippers have two really great bigs, but the Spurs have a much better big rotation, and it can be a huge advantage for them. In many ways, Splitter is the key to that whole rotation and making it work.
Bench v. Bench
Though down a bit this season, the Spurs have one of the best benches in the league. The Clippers have possibly the worst. How the benches play against each other could swing a game or two, and by extension, the series.
The Clippers starters are great, possibly even with the Spurs’ starters. They can play our starters to a draw, and if they really get going, can actually outplay them. But outside of Jamal Crawford, there is really nobody on their bench that any other top-level NBA team would really want. (I say this, but of course the Clippers’ bench always seems to give the Spurs fit because of course.)
Austin Rivers. Big Baby Davis. Hedo Turkoglu. Spencer Hawes. This is the Clippers’ bench unit, along with Crawford. Manu, Marco, Baynes, Diaw, and Joseph or Mills should be able to eat this line-up alive and extend leads. There is no excuse for the Spurs to lose any ground in the bench battle.
The question is: how much will Doc play his bench? How many minutes can his starters go? And how much will this wear them down for the end of the game?
Hackin’ DeAndre
We know how willing Pop is to hack inferior FT shooters to get the ball out of the hands of great players, to slow down offenses, and to help erase deficits. The Clippers just so happen to have a really bad FT shooter in DeAndre Jordan. DeAndre is also a huge interior presence and backbone of their defense. So while hacking has all the previously mentioned effects, it can also force Doc’s hand into pulling him from the game, thus weakening the Clippers’ defense against the Spurs’ potent offense.
It’ll be an interesting chess match, and we’ll see how often and how soon Pop employs it.
(And be ready for some looooooong games.)
Wing Defense
We know about the bigs, but what about the wings? Who will guard whom? How much playing time will the wings get?
The biggest question is: who on the Spurs will guard Chris Paul? Will Parker even start on him? The nice thing about the Clippers is that they have two players that San Antonio can potentially “hide” Parker on: Reddick and Barnes. Reddick is a dead-eye shooter and moves a lot off the ball, but he is barely a threat to attack the rim or to initiate the offense. So as long as Parker can stay somewhat connected to him, he can do a decent job. Barnes ranges from ‘adequate’ to ‘train wreck’ on offense, so while he has several inches on Parker, he is not always a threat to do anything about it.
So who guards Paul? There are obviously two choices: Green or Leonard. The logical answer is Kawhi, as we’ve seen what a wrecking ball he can be guarding ball handlers. But he does sometimes have trouble with really small and really quick PGs. If Paul can consistently get by him, that would cause issues.
Green, on the other hand, has had a lot of success guarding PGs. In particular, he’s done great on Paul in the past. (Especially in the 2012 playoffs.) Paul sometimes has trouble with extra length, and Green (and Leonard, obviously) offers that. Putting Green on Paul also allows Kawhi to freelance a bit, play the passing lanes, and shut down the entire weak side, which is sometimes a more effective defense against Paul. As is often the Spurs’ strategy against these types of PGs, they will shut down everything else and make them into scorers first. Paul is a great scorer and has perhaps the best midrange jumper in the game. But his instinct is not that, and if he can beat the Spurs by himself, more power to him.
How much will Green play, though? We know Pop has a short leash with him in the regular season, and will often ride Manu or Marco for longer stretches, particularly when the team needs offense. Manu and Marco are both willing and sneaky defenders, but nowhere near Danny. Plus, Danny is the best long-range shooter of the three (though Marco can often give the team short bursts of important potent offense). I really hope that we get to see Green play longer minutes to fortify the team defense, and that Marco is mostly used almost exclusively against opposing bench players.
The defense on the wings could be critical in this series, and Kawhi and Danny offer the best option.
Other Questions
–The Clippers have the most efficient offense in the league. Will that be able to hold up as everything slows down and tightens up in the postseason?
–How much desire and motivation exists in the Spurs after last year’s career-crowning achievement?
–The Spurs were secretly pretty average on the road and really great at home. Can they turn up their play away from the ATT Center?
–Will the Clippers melt down either internally or externally? They are the most complain-y team in the league and it’s an open secret that the refs kind of hate them. It’s also an open secret that Chris Paul kind of wears and grates on his teammates, and the players might finally be fed up with him. The Spurs aren’t the right opponent for an emotionally vulnerable team.
–How will Pop manage the back-up PG? Both Mills and Joseph have shown flashes of brilliance and flashes of near-incompetence. Night-to-night, it’s hard to know who will be the better option. The wrong choice could derail a game; the right choice could be the tipping point for a victory. Mills’ outside shooting could be critical, but Cory’s ability to hound Paul full court for a few minutes each half could also be critical.
The Spurs like to talk about the season as a journey, a process. This is where that journey is leading; this is the end result of the process. It’s time.
The Spurs’ playoff journey tips off Sunday night.
Go Spurs Go.
