Details, margins of error, and inflection points in the era of Wembanyama

San Antonio has been so close, yet so far away from what it wanted to accomplish this season. And the clock is ticking.

Story art courtesy of Dakota Mitchell and Campeche Collective. Click link below for more designs and Spurs gear!

---

Anthony Davis faced up against Victor Wembanyama in the left mid-post with about four minutes remaining the first half, jabbed right, crossed left toward the baseline, put a shoulder into the rookie and buried him in the rim with a nasty dunk before letting out a scream in the face of anyone within shouting distance.

All that hype, all those blocked shots, all the early signs of what this kid is going to become — none of it mattered in the face of a bully who’s been on the block for a while. In that moment, Davis seemed to find something personal with the matchup, as if to say ‘Oh, you want to put this kid at the five, Pop? I got something for you.’

With the Lakers up 53-38 at that point, it felt like one of those deflating instances that could’ve broken a young team, let alone a 19-year-old who had just been dunked on in front of a national audience. But there’s something to Wembanyama that exists beyond the skill set, beyond the inexplicable overall talent a man of that size possesses. He has a nasty streak that belies his calm demeanor, and he seemed to take that moment personally in his own right.

Wembanyama would go on to score 25 points over his next 20 minutes of game action — two of which came on a get-back slam over Davis later in that second quarter — before finishing with 30 points, 13 rebounds, six blocks and three steals, and the Spurs as a whole outscored the Lakers 81-69 over the final 28 minutes of play in an eventual 122-119 loss. After what had been a brutal, often stagnant first half Gregg Popovich called “sloppy” and uncompetitive, they had finally found some energy and purpose.

But even following the Wembanyama dunk on Davis, which kicked off an exhilarating sequence that included two blocked shots and an alley-oop in what felt like the blink of an eye for the rookie phenom, there was a small lapse that led to an easy Los Angeles basket in the middle of San Antonio’s quick run.

See if you can spot the mistake (that isn’t the obvious Tre Jones turnover):

At the 43-second mark, Wembanyama jumps out at Davis’ pump-fake as Keldon Johnson is racing over to double on the high side (a call that had been made), giving up an easy strong-hand drive for the Lakers’ big that Devin Vassell doesn’t even attempt to contest as the low man on the play.

Even though it was only one little basket in a 48-minute game, it was a microcosm of what’s been killing the Spurs all season: For some reason, there’s always been a segment of game that’s undone everything positive they'd previously accomplished, and they’ve struggled like crazy to find the remedy for that ailment. In this situation, despite Wembanyama’s ridiculous talent cleaning up an additional San Antonio mistake that could’ve led to more Los Angeles points at the buzzer, that one score felt like a gut punch to a crowd that was ready to go berserk.

“I don’t know the answer, but the reality is we have those stretches where we’re maybe not as focused. I don’t know. Or we make these mistakes when we want to try something (different), and the only explanation I can see is youth and lack of experience,” Wembanyama said. “But there’s no excuse there. If we’re young, and we’re not making shots, we need to match the opponent’s intensity and make them struggle to play against us — being active on defense in all those areas which don’t require anything technical, just effort.”

The issues that impact them most within this new layout schematically are fairly predictable. With Wembanyama playing the five, the Spurs are going to need guards and wings to rebound whenever their big man is compromised as a shot defender, and Wembanyama is going to have to learn to deal with bigger — or more accurately, wider — players going directly into his body to clear space and get to the rim. He’s also going to have to alter his tendency to get up on perimeter players if he’s the last line of defense; and as tempting (and important) as it is for him to contest shot attempts, he’s got to stay down MUCH more often without another big behind him protecting the rim. Zach Collins isn’t playing alongside him anymore, so the job description changes drastically.

It seems ridiculous to talk about this stuff considering the defensive numbers this guy is putting up, but these things matter when discussing a team with zero margin for error that’s continuously being beaten over the head in the details, because those small moments lead to significant crisis escalation.

But defense on the whole hasn’t really been the issue for the group of Wembanyama, Johnson, Vassell, Jeremy Sochan and Malaki Branham that’s started the last three games. During that stretch they’ve allowed opponents to score just 97.4 points per 100 possessions, per NBA Stats, which is a superb number even in a small sample size. The problem is, that wasn’t the reason San Antonio made the change in the first place, because the original starting lineup had also been quite good on that side of the ball.

The two-big group with Collins at center has allowed just 110.8 points per 100 possessions in 88 minutes this year, which would rank seventh in the league relative to other team defenses on the season. Pop made the decision to switch things up because Collins’ shot had abandoned him, spacing became crunched as a result, and that group simply couldn’t score consistently. So he opted to create more room around on offense scoring just 93.8 points per 100 possessions and struggling to find any oxygen to breathe on the interior. Besides, things couldn’t possibly have gotten any worse…

But in the 49 minutes of court time the new group has spent together, it’s scoring just 90.4 points per 100 possessions despite a much higher pace and seemingly more scoring avenues. May I present to you the 2023-24 San Antonio Spurs, where things can seemingly always get worse!

Still, this look deserves more time, and will likely get it.

The 20-game mark was always going to be the inflection point for the first round of testing, so we’re probably going to see more than three games of the current project on the laboratory table. Popovich believes in sufficient sample sizes for the decisions he and his staff make, for run rates that give his team the requisite data points off which he believes adjustments can be made when it comes to rotations and lineups. Call it a necessary move, call it a hunch, or call it the next experiment in line after the Point Sochan trials failed to deliver adequate results, but it seemed inevitable all 7’4 of Wembanyama would eventually be made the man in the middle sooner or later.

Recent struggles probably haven’t been a result of that element in the equation, though; and even if in some alternate universe they were, we likely wouldn’t see some big change at this point. Not only has Wembanyama been good at the five despite being pushed around here and there, but the loss of Charles Bassey to a torn ACL changes things from a lineup perspective and limits the Spurs in their ability to match up with certain opponents. San Antonio now has only two players it feels comfortable deploying at center regularly, so the minutes are going to have to be managed. Even if Collins starts hitting 3s again — he’s connected on four of his last five since being moved to the bench, by the way — the idea of reinserting him in the starting lineup now would feel like a nonstarter given the problems it would create on the back end of the rotation. Perhaps Dominick Barlow gets more chances in the near future, but I wouldn’t count on that being a normal thing anytime soon.

The bullet many are waiting for the Spurs to bite, however, is the one sitting in the “start Jones” chamber. But there’s real concern in that building about what in the world would happen to the bench should they make that move.

Prior to the recent shuffling of lineups, San Antonio’s reserves were posting the worst net rating in the league among benches (-6.5). And given the fact Doug McDermott, Cedi Osman and Julian Champagnie rely so heavily on assisted scoring opportunities, the idea of taking Jones away from those units is understandably scary. Perhaps the inclusion of Collins’ passing in that group might start to alter the level of consternation there, but it’s difficult to tell if that will be enough to really change minds.

The Spurs are carefully moving puzzle pieces around in an effort to find the right fits; but the second they place one in the correct spot, they’re left scratching their heads in search of its replacement. In short: If it’s not one problem, it’s another. And for now, at least, there isn’t a ton this team can do to clear up all the blemishes that exist with this current roster.

---