The beginning of the end for the Spurs ?
2 weeks ago I started wondering what’s going on with the Spurs. They just lost on the weekend to the Rockets despite Duncan having 25 points and 17 rebounds. The other 2 Spurs stars weren’t bad either. Ginobili had 21 points (6-13 FG) , 5 reb, 4 ast. Tony Parker had 16 points (7-15 FG), 4 reb, 4 ast. On Houston’s side McGrady played only 25 minutes and scored just 9 points on 4-12 shooting. Yao was good but not spectacular with 21 points (7-10 FG), 14 reb and 2 blk. Other then Alston (16 points) nobody from Houston scored in double digits. Houston as a team shot 38.6% from the field. How did they lose that game ? Well, other then Duncan, Manu and Parker, everyone else on the Spurs pretty much sucked. Finley, Oberto and Bowen “contributed” a combined 6 points in 80 minutes on the court. That’s how much Ben Wallace scored the same night in 26 minutes. Whenever Ben Wallace scores 3 times more points per minute than you, you suck.
The Spurs sucking this bad is pretty uncharacteristic so I started asking myself: is this the beginning of the end for the Spurs ?
The numbers seemed to suggest so. They started the season hot and on the 10th of December they were 17-3. Since then, they were 8-10 till the 20th of January. But why were the Spurs playing so …. average ?
None of their 3 stars seems to have a down year. Duncan’s scoring is down 1.2 points compared to last season, slightly above his production in 2005-2006. His FG% is down to 50.6%, slightly above his career average. His other stats are more or less the same. If anything, these variations are just about what you’d expect from the robot also known as Tim Duncan in his attempt to fool you into believing he’s human.
Duncan’s slight drop in scoring isn’t a concern anyway, since Ginobili and Parker more then picked up the slack. Ginobili is having a career year with 19.6 points (up 3.1), 4.6 reb (up 0.2) and 4.1 ast (up 0.6) in under 30 minutes per game. He’s 5th in the league in PER, trailing only Lebron, CP3, Amare and Garnett. That means he’s above the likes of Dwight Howard, Kobe, Bosh, Dirk, Nash, Yao Ming and, of course, Tim Duncan himself. Tony Parker hasn’t been too bad himself with 20.1 points (up 1.5) on a 49.1 FG%, 3.1 reb (down 0.2) and 6.5 ast (up 1). So the 3 stars are doing their part. And the rest of the cast, despite having graduated from the same class as Tutankhamun, is not really bad enough to explain their play.
But just as I was thinking that the age of the Spurs might be starting to show, I remembered I’ve seen the exact same thing one season ago. The Spurs were looking old, and slow and tired and …. well … old. On February 11th they were 33-18 for a winning percentage of .647, below the .658 the Spurs had after the recent Rockets loss. But then they went on a 13 games winning streak, lost a couple of games they shouldn’t have lost against the lowly Bucks and Celtics, and then sandwiched another loss between 6 games winning streaks. And they went on to win their 4th title in 9 years.
Can they do it again this year ? They never got back to back titles, so history works against them. Speaking of history, they are 1 year older which can’t be good for such an old team. How old are they ? Their rotation players are: Duncan (32 soon), Ginobili (30), Parker (almost 26), Oberto (33 soon), Bowen (36), Elson (32 soon), Finley (35 soon), Barry (37), Horry (37), Booner (28), Udoka (30). And they just brought Damon Stoudamire (34) as a back-up PG. That’s a lot of players closer to 40 than they are to 30. Can they put up another run after the All Star Break ? Can they fight through what promises to be a grueling playoff ?
This season, the West is even tougher. For the past seasons, it’s been the Spurs, Mavs and Suns that were battling for the Western Conference crown. The other teams were good, but not really good enough. But now, things have changed. The Jazz showed last season that they belong. They couldn’t really put up a fight against the Spurs, but they are a young team and they keep improving through the growth of their players and small but smart trades. The Hornets seem to be the real deal with Chris Paul playing like an MVP. And the Lakers just got a whole lot better by trading half of glass of soured milk and a month old newspaper for Gasol.
So all things considered, I doubt the Spurs will be able to finally get a repeat. They are bound to make a run come March. But it may come a little too late for them to get a top seed. And without home court advantage it will be even harder to face off all the pretenders to the throne. They will be tough, they will be savvy, they will use all the tricks in their book, but at the end of the day, I don’t think they will come out on top from the West.
That’s not to say they won’t come back next year. Their front office proved itself to be way more capable than most front offices in the NBA, so through a number of well thought trades and free agents signings using their exceptions, the Spurs may bring in the fresh blood they need to keep them in the elite of the league and contending for a title.
