Weekend Wrap-Up: The good, the bad, and the Benny Hill theme music
The Spurs' 'Biggest 3' is showing us some things, a disappointing trend is rearing its ugly head, and the wonderful chaos that is early season NBA basketball.
San Antonio winning both games of a back-to-back after getting “thumped” at home on Wednesday was not something many people had written down on the calendar. Vegas sure as hell didn’t have it in their sportsbooks.
But, as is typically the case in this sport, if you take care of the ball and shoot lights out, good things are going to happen. And after a miserable 7-for-34 performance from deep against the Hornets, the Spurs went 33-for-69 from the 3-point line on Friday and Saturday nights combined on the way to their first two victories of the season. Sometimes just making your shots is the ultimate elixir.
While the 137-134 win in Indianapolis — which came with a wonderfully chaotic ending you will read more about later in this newsletter — was impressive in and of itself after an ugly loss on opening night, it was the game in Philadelphia that raised the largest number of eyebrows. The 76ers, who entered the season as a team on the short list of title contenders, were 13.5-point favorites headed into that game. Turns out it didn’t matter. San Antonio won 114-105, and per ESPN Stats and Info, it was the biggest single-game upset of the Gregg Popovich era since his team won a game as 14.5-point underdogs during the 1996-97 season — which just so happened to be the terrible campaign that led to the drafting of Tim Duncan.
Parallels!
The Spurs played at a breakneck pace on Saturday, running circles around an older, slower Philadelphia team that couldn’t come up with enough counterpunches to knock San Antonio from its groove and take control of the game. Any time the 76ers would go on a run, the Spurs would bite back, often before Philly could even retreat to set a defense that had turned up the intensity in the second half. Even after makes, San Antonio was flying down the court, zipping off screens and taking shots in the first available open windows.
Doug McDermott, in particular, was throwing flames.
“He was basically our offense, especially down the stretch. If he didn’t make those shots, we would’ve been in trouble because they had cranked up their defense,” Gregg Popovich said. “He did a good job. They were attacking us at the other end and scoring. But, if he wasn’t doing that, we wouldn’t have won the game.”
Philadelphia had just taken a one-point lead on a Joel Embiid dunk with 8:04 remaining in the game when McDermott began the barrage. Dougie McBuckets buzzed off a pick in semi-transition to hit a 3-pointer less than eight seconds after the Embiid dunk, then followed it with a backdoor cut for a layup on the next possession, and then another 3-pointer on the next trip down the floor. He scored eight points in 50 seconds to give the Spurs a 95-90 lead, and they would never look back from there.
“That’s just my role. I need to come in and provide a spark, whether it’s making shots or getting other people shots by running around a ton out there,” McDermott said. “That’s just kinda what the coaches tell me to do, so if I can do that I’m going to. We really needed it tonight when things got stagnant.”
McDermott’s move to the bench this season has been a welcomed role change, both for him and for the benefit of the team. A guy like that who never stops moving and will destroy you from the 3-point line if he’s got even a sliver a space is a rough cover for second units. Additionally, it has allowed the Spurs’ starting lineup to play bigger and with more versatility on the defensive end. It was a no-brainer move, and the one thing you worry about when veteran players accustomed to starting are moved to the bench, morale, is a nonfactor here. McDermott has been great, both on and off the court, and San Antonio’s rotations are better for it.
Now, on to the wrap-up.
The Good
The ‘Biggest 3 the Spurs have’ was excellent over the weekend. Keldon Johnson has been a different player athletically, showcasing a new-found first step, splitting double-teams, attacking tight angles around the rim, and perhaps most impressively, displaying some playmaking chops as a passer off dribble-penetration.
Johnson is passing the ball on 33 percent of his drives (up from 26 percent last season), per Second Spectrum data, and one summer removed from averaging a paltry 3.9 potential assists per game, he’s affording his teammates scoring chances more than eight times per contest through his first three outings.
While his added spark athletically and improved touch around the rim have been obvious boons for his game offensively, it’s the improvement as a passer that elevates Johnson’s impact beyond what we’d previously known it to be. It’s a very long season, so only time will tell if this is a blip or a trend. But based on the way players and coaches talked about his passing in camp, on top of the early eye-test results, I’m leaning toward the latter.
Speaking of living up to camp hype, sheesh Devin Vassell.
As impressive as Johnson’s improvements have been, he’d already made enough of a leap to justify a shiny new contract extension from the Spurs over the offseason. Vassell, on the other hand, is just now taking his turn.
The Spurs have been doing everything they can to pump confidence into this guy over the last couple of years. Whether it’s been behind the scenes, on the mic or in front of a camera, they’ve been imploring Vassell to go get his shots, especially considering the new role he’s now occupying. They need him to score, and ever since the brutal 3-for-15 shooting night against the Hornets, he’s been obliging.
This hasn’t been the same guy who likes to stay in his comfort zones spotting up from the 3-point line and getting to his mid-range pull-ups. Vassell has been in attack mode. Last season he averaged just 4.4 drives per game, a number that has ballooned to more than 10 per contest through three games. On top of that, he’s getting fouled on nearly 20 percent of those forays into the paint, a huge number for a team that has posted a poor free-throw rate ever since the departure of DeMar DeRozan.
This version of Vassell is going to score a lot of points, but like Johnson, he’s also added the passing element to his game. On top of hunting shots, he’s dishing on more than 40 percent of his drives and assisting on 12.5 percent of them. As defenses have committed to him, he’s been looking to set up his teammates and doing so with success. If he keeps this up, there’s going to be a sizable payday awaiting him next summer.
And then there’s good ol’ Jakob Poeltl.
I’ve written more about Poeltl over the last few months and years than any normal person probably should (you can read a couple of recent pieces here and here), so it’s no surprise to this publication he’s performing the way he is. The dude is a rock, the foundation of both the offense and defense. Without him, Johnson and Vassell aren’t playing with this type of efficiency on offense, and the Spurs wouldn’t be able to implement this aggressive switching scheme defensively.
I won’t get too deep into all of that now, because what I’ve written about him in recent months still holds true exactly the same as it did then. He’s still setting up teammates, playing aggressively around the rim — his motor was on full tilt down the stretch against Embiid on Saturday — and just working his ass off in general, as usual. Instead, let’s talk about him weathering the Hak-A-Jak storm in Indy on Friday.
Poeltl’s previous career high for free throws attempted in a game headed into his team’s matchup with the Pacers was only 10, which was a bit surprising, even when you consider he’s not exactly some low-post beast. But though teams have resorted to this in the past, Pop has always been pretty quick to pull him when they do.
Not on this night!
With Indianapolis down by 14 points with only 5:19 remaining, Rick Carlisle decided to make life miserable for the notoriously poor-shooting big man, and frankly, everyone else watching. (I am actually one of the weirdos who likes the Hack-A-Shaq stuff. The mental games are really entertaining to me. There’s a strange drama that falls across the arena with every miss and make and I am HERE for it.)
To that point, Poeltl had gone 3-for-5 from the stripe, which basically tracks with his career average. But then came the fouling. Poeltl was being hugged, getting his jersey pulled or taking a slap on the back every time down the floor, going to the line 16 times during a three-minute stretch and converting on 10 of the attempts. San Antonio, it turned out, would need pretty much all of them.
But we were almost deprived of the free-throw show. Following the first intentional foul, Pop brought Keita Bates-Diop off the bench, almost certainly to send him in the game for Poeltl. But as KBD got to the scorer’s table, there was a change of heart, and the backup forward returned to his seat.
“We weren’t going to take (Poeltl) out of the game no matter what,” Pop said afterward. “He needs to be in those moments and live through it.”
Considering what this season is all about — development, improvement, experience — there was something to appreciate about the coach’s approach in this moment. If you’re a cynic who’s all in on Wankin’ for Wemby, maybe he misses them all and your team loses; if you’re an optimist, you saw your young(ish) big man deal with a type of adversity he’d never really dealt with before, and he did so admirably. Shooting 62.5 percent from the stipe isn’t a great number, but putting up 1.25 points per possession down the stretch is fantastic.
This season was always going to be an adventure, so what the hell, why not embrace it?
The Bad
If you really want the worst of the weekend (or perhaps the best, depending on what entertains you), you can skip to the next section, where we address the wonder that was the final minute of Spurs-Pacers on Friday. But first, there’s an ongoing issue.
For all the praise we’ve heaped on Vassell, there is a concerning trend that’s already reared its ugly head. For some reason, even after displaying massive amounts of confidence and aggressiveness in the early going, the disappearing act he displayed all too often late in games last season has resurfaced.
So far, Vassell’s 26.6-percent usage rate in the first half of games leads the team, and he’s been relentless in taking the ball and attacking throughout the flow of the game. He scored 20 points before halftime on Saturday, which was just four points away from besting his current career high of 23 points set THE NIGHT BEFORE.
But he would score just two points the rest of the way, and that is where things get at least mildly alarming.
Vassell’s usage rate has dropped from 26.6 percent in the first half of games to 17.4 percent in the second, and even further to 13.1 percent in the fourth quarter. It’s only been three games, but this isn’t a new thing. The trend of his touches dropping precipitously as the game grinds on has been a problem. It’s been convenient to pass this off as ‘his teammates just aren’t getting him the ball,’ but at a certain point, that’s not how this works. If Vassell is going to be a go-to guy, he has to go get it.
Based on the way players and coaches have talked about him over the last couple of years, this really seems like a confidence thing. It’s far too early in the career of a guy who was a 3-and-D player in college to be labeling him in any sort of way, but if he is to take that next step, addressing this issue will be hugely important. Still, considering the way he’s taken incremental steps in asserting himself during his young career, you’d think — or in the Spurs’ case, hope — it’s only a matter of time.
The Benny Hill Theme Music
Of all the bits of analysis poured over and picked apart ahead of this adventure of a season, one area I failed to take into account — because it’s professional basketball — was the Spurs’ press break.
The damn press break. The stuff that typically takes up a chunk of practice time at the high school and college level. The part of the game that makes March Madness … ya know, mad. The game situation you rarely even think about in the NBA because these guys are just too good to be bothered with full-court pressure over and over and over again.
But here come the 2022-23 Spurs.
We knew this team was thin at point guard and on top-level ball-handlers in general after the trade of Dejounte Murray, and we knew that scoring late in close games was likely going to be an issue without ‘The Guy’ initiating offense in clutch situations, but we did not anticipate this inability to break a full-court press. At least not to this extent. This is a part of the NBA game we as viewers take for granted, because these players generally make it seem so easy. Rarely does pressure create a turnover in the backcourt or an eight-second violation in this league, as opposed to every other level of basketball where it happens frequently. But San Antonio sure did struggle with it Friday.
Indiana had just cut the Spurs’ lead to eight points, 133-125, on a Tyrese Haliburton layup with 1:04 remaining in the game, which is where things got kooky. The following all happened within a span of 57 seconds and is intended for a mature audience, viewer discretion is advised.
In case you weren’t keeping track, the Spurs turned the ball over four times during that span after having already given the ball away two other times in the minute prior. On top of all of it, because of the difficulties San Antonio had during that minute prior to the above highlight reel, Gregg Popovich had already used both of his remaining timeouts and had no way of stopping the mayhem as it unfolded. It was early season basketball at its very finest.
The thing about press offense: I wasn’t kidding when I said it’s not typically a priority until teams really get into the weeds late in the year and into the playoffs.
“I think I needed 10 timeouts,” Pop said with a grin. “Because we’re not exactly ready for the full-court press at this point of the season.”
As bad as it looked Friday, these guys aren’t somehow incompetent in that area of the game. Tre Jones, who’s going to be the guy most often tasked with handling the ball against pressure, is capable of doing just that. He just hasn’t been in this role for very long. Breaking the press depends on the little cohesive elements of the game: taking the right angles to the ball so you can stay on the move without getting trapped in the corner, making precise passes as the inbounder when your teammates are cutting, and just understanding where your outlet is at all times so you can pass immediately when trouble arises.
This is all basic stuff they know, they just haven’t ironed it out with one another quite yet. San Antonio has had more pressing issues to work on in camp, but I do wonder if the team rented out a ballroom in their Philadelphia hotel on Saturday to run through things a little bit.
How the Spurs handle full-court pressure will be something to keep an eye on going forward, especially against bigger, more athletic opponents. The team will likely watch some of that tape to assess the breakdowns and figure everything out before it gets jumped again, but in the meantime, they can celebrate the fact they still won the game and provided some wacky entertainment while doing so.