'There's always something': Spurs searching for foothold in pile of defensive problems

As teams continue to rack up points and more losses flood in, San Antonio knows the first step toward finding consistency on defense has to be taken 'between their ears.'

Courtesy of Bally Sports Southwest

Prior to the start of the Spurs’ recent road trip to the West Coast, Gregg Popovich was as blunt as he was illuminating in his answer to a question about why early season struggles on defense had been a trend.

“Because basically players don’t want to play (defense),” he said. “You’ve got to convince them as the year goes along that you’re going to win the battle.”

But for a 6-15 San Antonio team in the middle of an eight-game losing streak, that task has become more and more difficult to accomplish. With the exception of Saturday’s loss to the Lakers, games have been getting away from the Spurs almost immediately on a nightly basis, leaving them in a hole without a star scorer to pull them above ground. And while the offense has its own built-in issues that will likely present obstacles all season, it’s been the other side of the ball that’s left them with so few chances to actually compete in the battles to which Pop referred.

Things have been messy defensively, and the effects of that reality have bled into all other aspects of the team’s performances.

“(The slow starts are) usually when you’re taking the ball out of the net every possession. Basketball is fun when you can get up and down and get shots that are random, and not have to work for everything,” Doug McDermott said after his team’s recent loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. “But it’s really hard to do that when you’re constantly taking the ball out of the net, because they can set their defense.

“It kind of just wears on you mentally when you get off to starts like that.”

Prior to their most recent loss, the Spurs had been outscored by an average of more than 10 points in the first quarter alone over the course of their previous seven games; but without Anthony Davis deterring shots at the rim on Saturday, San Antonio looked more like the team that started 5-2 than the one that’s been stuck in a free-fall for weeks. There was constant penetration, plenty of ball- and player-movement, an abundance of transition opportunities and, theoretically, more than enough shot-making.

But once again, the Spurs simply couldn’t string together the defensive stops necessary to win the battle. Even before the mass exodus of players that plagued San Antonio that evening — injuries to Jakob Poeltl and Jeremy Sochan, the ejection of Zach Collins, and six fouls for Isaiah Roby — the Lakers hardly struggled to score on their way to a 143-138 win.

There are a lot of areas one can point to in an effort to identify the team’s defensive deficiencies, but we can begin with the most obvious of them.

Lineup inconsistencies

The carousel of players rotating on and off the injury report has left San Antonio devoid of the type of consistency required to effectively execute the type of switching scheme it’s adopted this season. The starting group of Poeltl, Sochan, Tre Jones, Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson is the only five-man lineup that’s played more than 40 total minutes together this season, per NBA.com — a stat I had to double- and triple-check to confirm — and beyond that, only four five-man lineups have amassed more than 20 total minutes on the court 21 games into the current campaign.

Fostering on-court relationships is a process that takes time, and it’s difficult to maintain that process when it’s constantly being interrupted by the rigors of an NBA season. But the Spurs are not in a rush, and health-permitting, they know eventually this group will reach that desired level of familiarity.

“Building chemistry, building the team atmosphere is important, so hopefully we get guys back and we can get everybody out there so that even when we have different lineups everybody’s used to playing together,” Johnson said recently. “The main thing is just communicating. We’re a team that loves being together off the court, so let it carry over to the court. Talk it up, have fun, play defense and get after it.”

But while players and coaches have all acknowledged the lack of continuity has made things more difficult, it’s been categorically pushed aside as the reason for the poor defensive performances.

“It shouldn’t be (the reason for struggles). You should be able to find it, but that’s the growth of a young team. It’s hard to win in the NBA for any team,” Keita Bates-Diop said. “Everybody has to be ready . We practiced enough in training camp and shootarounds, whatever it is, that we should keep that communication up no matter who’s in the game.”

Switching schemes have become commonplace in the NBA, especially as team’s have moved toward the position-less roster-building approach. When everything is clicking, they make life extremely difficult for offenses that want to utilize screens to break down the defense. But to execute these schemes at the highest level, the understanding of job responsibilities and crystal-clear communication are critical; and regardless of time spent together during training camp or the limited practice opportunities the regular season affords, there is no replacement for real game action.

The results can be ugly when those elements are lacking, particularly off the ball. Cutters can break free in an instant if there’s even the slightest bit of confusion, movement shooters can get open along the perimeter if defenders don’t properly navigate and/or switch off picks, and defensive rebounding can be an adventure if players aren’t properly marking potential glass-crashers.

San Antonio has done a decent job containing pick-and-roll ball-handlers so far this season, giving up just .88 points per possession at that initial point of attack. That lands them in the 58th percentile among all teams, a solid number for such a young group. But the real problems have manifested themselves after that first action, when offenses are eating the Spurs alive with their second and third options in the half-court.

In descending order from most- to least-frequent play types per Synergy, the San Antonio defense is allowing 1.109 points per possession to spot-up shooters and dribble-drive attacks off closeouts (7th percentile), 1.465 ppp to cutters (3rd percentile), 1.254 ppp to roll men (7th percentile), 1.109 ppp in dribble-handoff situations (worst in league), and 1.01 ppp to shooters and scorers coming off screens (23rd overall).

These numbers are easy to believe even if you’ve been a casual observer this season. The miscommunications and subsequent scrambles have been obvious, and the defensive results have spoken for themselves. The Spurs’ 118.0 defensive rating is the worst in the NBA, and with the statuses of Poeltl (sore quad) and Sochan (quad contusion) currently up in the air, the team hasn’t caught any breaks in recent days.

San Antonio’s roster is full of players who are or project to be above-average-to-good defenders in the NBA (or in the case of Poeltl, great), so it’s been a bit confusing from a personnel perspective to watch them struggle so mightily. But youth, inexperience and unfamiliarity can create issues that only continual film breakdown, improved communication and more court time can fix. This isn’t going to happen overnight.

Transition defense can kill young teams

As troubling as the defensive execution has been in the half-court, the transition opportunities allowed have been the nails in the coffin for the Spurs through 21 games. But this is the area of the game where young teams tend to struggle most often given the context of the play type.

The Spurs have given up a league-worst 1.27 points per possession in transition, with such plays making up 17.6 percent of their defensive pie chart, the seventh-highest percentage in the league. Communication is critical to a defense no matter the context, but in transition the pressure is ratcheted up to a different level. Responsibilities change in the open court, and considering the speed of the NBA game, adjustments have to be made at light speed if there is to be any success in thwarting the opposing attack. And the more often a team is subjected to that pressure, the more damaging it’s going to be to the bottom line.

Again, this is where youth, inexperience and the lack of multiple true ball-handlers come into play. San Antonio has turned the ball over on 16.3 percent of its possessions (fifth-highest percentage in the league), and when those giveaways have been of the live-ball variety, the opposition has made them pay dearly. Defenses have stolen the ball from the Spurs 8.5 times per game (sixth most allowed), and they’ve scored 1.41 points per possession off those thefts (sixth most given up).

But perhaps even more alarming is the damage opponents have done in transition off live-ball defensive rebounds, where San Antonio has given up an additional 2.6 points per 100 possessions — the second most in the league, per Cleaning the Glass. When teams have grabbed the ball off the rim and run against the Spurs, they’ve had a ton of success. And considering San Antonio has allowed a number of its players to regularly attack the offensive glass in search of extra opportunities, this will continue to be a problem until the back end of the equation is solved.

Much like the fix for issues in the half-court, defensive improvements in transition will come with development. Understanding all assignments and knowing how to execute when the game moves into the open floor is part of the learning curve, as are the growing pains.

Effort and physicality

It’s not easy to measure effort from an outside perspective, nor is it necessarily the fair thing to do. There isn’t a team in the NBA emptying its energy reserves at this point of the season, and the bigger, long-term perspective remains the priority for everyone across the league. Contenders and playoff hopefuls understand the truly critical court time is still months away, and teams like the Spurs — the ones emphasizing player development over team record — want to do their best to stay healthy during a season that isn’t going to end with the Larry O’Brien Trophy in hand.

Still, for a team that doesn’t have the offensive firepower to keep up with many of the NBA’s star-laden sides, defensive energy has to be its lifeblood. This is a group that will become more cohesive with time, but San Antonio has been at its best this season when it applies pressure, gets steals and deflections, and finishes off possessions with defensive rebounds to afford itself opportunities to fly out in transition and semi-transition before the opposing defense has had a chance to set itself.

But in the NBA, the difference in gaining the advantage on any one play is just a step or two, and all too often the Spurs have been on the losing side of that struggle.

“I thought we were pretty soft. We weren’t physical, we weren’t going for 50-50 balls, we weren’t communicating. So that’s one thing we know we need to pick up as a team,” Sochan said last week after the team’s recent road trip. “Defense isn’t individual. You can have one good defender, two good defenders, but if the team isn’t playing together you’re not going to be able to defend well. So as a team in general we need to be more physical and more aggressive.

“It’s always gonna be a challenge (with) different players in and out, but I think there’s no excuse. There’s a standard. We have to do it.”

If there’s one area that sticks out more than any other it’s that opponents have been relentlessly attacking the rim against the Spurs. No team has given up more attempts inside the restricted area, and while they’re defending those shots at close to an average rate — San Antonio has allowed 66.4-percent shooting at the rim, which ranks 18th in the league — the constant pressure in the paint has made everything more difficult.

It’s the same concept on which the Spurs have built their own offensive identity: Create penetration, collapse the defense, and either look to score or kick the ball out to force defenders into a constant loop of helping and recovering. San Antonio is getting scrambled from the inside out, and until it’s able to dig in and cut off ball-handlers, take away passing lanes, stick to movement shooters and cutters, and consistently secure rebounds — an area in which it’s actually steadily improved during the losing streak — every night is going to be a long one with essentially zero margin for error.

“We’re a little bit on and off this season when it comes to defense. We’ve had a couple of games where we just seem to be asleep. We’re not into guys, we’re giving up easy buckets, we’re giving up offensive rebounds or transition points — there’s always something,” Poeltl said recently. “But we’ve had a couple of really good games as well. I think it’s about getting in that mindset, and getting into it from the jump. We have to be dialed in. We can’t give up big leads to teams with a lot more talent on the roster than us.”

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There’s no hiding the fact the deck has been stacked against the young Spurs from the start of the season. The front office traded their All-Star point guard for draft picks over the summer, their coach said during media day player development would be the primary goal and ultimately the barometer for success in the months ahead, every injury regardless of severity has been treated with the utmost caution, and oh yeah, all anyone can talk about outside the team’s locker room is Victor Wembanyama.

It’s impossible to escape the sort of inevitability these players are facing on a daily basis, but they’re going to have to tune it all out if they’re going to achieve whatever level of success they’re aiming for this season. They have to be able to convince themselves they will eventually win the battle of which their coach spoke, and that fighting through this process will be worth it in the end. Besides, as Pop said recently, “It’s their job.”

“I don’t think the team is committed defensively in their mind, between their ears, the way they need to. I think that is their big challenge, to mentally and intellectually understand that part has to take place,” he said. “Not turning it over, playing defense, those basics are really important.”

Basketball is a game of fundamentals, and it’s all those little things that have to be mastered before the next step can be taken.