In wake of injuries, the bar for Tre Jones continues to be raised
With Devin Vassell and Keldon Johnson banged up, defenses have begun to home in on the Spurs' point guard. Now he must learn how to adjust on the fly yet again.
Following the shorthanded Spurs’ tightly contested 121-116 loss to the Boston Celtics on Saturday, Gregg Popovich sat down at the dais and gave an unprompted assessment of his team’s performance in the absence of the injured Keldon Johnson, Devin Vassell and Jakob Poeltl.
“Great game. Could not be more proud of them. Jayson [Tatum] did it at the end of the game. He got us. But taking care of the ball, rebounding, playing with effort — I couldn’t be more proud of our guys,” he said. “A great game for them to be participating in and play the way they did. So, lots of great contributions from everybody on the court.
“Over time, we’ll get everybody back, but these guys should be very proud of what they did.”
Then, he put his hands on the table in front of him, wished everyone a good night, and left the room without fielding any further questions.
Pop has made post-game remarks without taking questions at times in the past, but that’s generally only happened when he’s been particularly upset by his team’s performance. Clearly that wasn’t the case on Saturday, when I suspect he kept it short because he had a date to meet former Spur and current Celtic Derrick White’s 7-month-old son, Hendrix, who was at the game in a nearby family room.
But on most nights, even though Pop has been more than gracious with his time despite the many losses, a quick synopsis of the game’s events is pretty much all that’s needed in San Antonio these days. There are standout performances and obvious points of progress that warrant attention along the way, but the same questions can only be asked so many times, and one can certainly grow tired of giving the same answers over and over again.
Comments about effort, energy, defense, hustle, development, stick-to-itiveness and “grunt” have been commonplace, and in a league where storylines tend to change by the game, things have been fairly routine in San Antonio this season (for the most part).
This is just the reality of the Spurs’ existence at the moment, one in which success is measured over the course of weeks and months, not on a night-to-night basis. So you’ll have to forgive Popovich and his players if the answers sound repetitive from time to time. When you’re contractually obligated to give daily progress reports on a year(s)-long project, updates are liable to bleed together.
But there has been definitive progress, nonetheless, and you don’t need to look ages into the past to see it.
Prior to the Spurs’ matchup with Boston on Saturday, at least one member of the Johnson-Vassell duo had appeared in all but one game this season. On Nov. 2, the one night they’d both previously missed with injuries, San Antonio got demolished by the now-sliding Toronto Raptors, 143-100 — the most lopsided loss of Popovich’s career. Fast-forward a little more than two months ahead and the Johnson- and Vassell-less Spurs are playing competitive games against the Celtics and the Memphis Grizzlies, two of the best teams in the NBA.
The talk of silver linings may get old, but it isn’t some type of misdirection or veiled effort from the involved parties to placate the masses. Popovich said prior to the season success would be measured by team and individual development, not the win total. And so far everything is going according to plan in more ways than one (win total included).
Take Tre Jones for example, who on Monday night became the focal point of the Memphis defense down the stretch.
Heading into the season, the idea that the key to beating the Spurs on any given night would be getting the ball out of Jones’ hands is one you were probably better off keeping to yourself in order to save face. But after giving Tyus Jones the assignment of guarding his younger brother for most of the night, the Grizzlies switched course and deployed their best and most physical perimeter defender Dillon Brooks to defend Tre on every possession during the final four-plus minutes of the game.
And it wasn’t just a half-court, one-on-one kind of matchup. Brooks was pressing Jones the full length of the floor at times, even denying him the ball whenever it landed in the hands of Jones’ teammates. This type of treatment down the stretch is generally reserved for the stars, but on a night when San Antonio was without its two best offensive players, Memphis homed in on the new head of San Antonio’s snake in those high-leverage moments.
The Spurs had fought back from a 12-point deficit late in the third quarter to take a 103-98 lead with about nine minutes remaining in the fourth before the game began to bounce back and forth again. But during those decisive final four minutes, Jones — who finished the night with 18 points and seven assists — scored two points from the free throw line and did not register a single made basket or assist.
The Grizzlies made his life hell, and in doing so slowed the Spurs’ hyperactive pace and chopped down any momentum they’d built. This is the type of situation to which the team is referring whenever it discusses ‘learning experiences’, because that is certainly not a scenario Jones is accustomed to experiencing.
And the problems would just snowball from there. San Antonio had as many turnovers (four) as it did points in the final five minutes, and while Memphis wasn’t a whole lot better — it scored just nine points during that stretch — the shots it made felt like back-breakers considering the Spurs’ struggles on the offensive end.
“We clawed our way back in and took the lead — that unit that was out there to start the fourth (quarter) played their butts off — but they just hit shots down the stretch,” Jones said Monday. “With how physical they are, it’s tough to keep the lead when they’re hitting the boards the way they were. And then, we turned the ball over a few times. When we’re doing that it’s going to be tough to beat a team like that.”
All things considered, the expectations for Jones this season have been wild. He took on more than enough responsibility when he became the Spurs’ starting point guard following the trade of Dejounte Murray, and then came the release of Joshua Primo and the injury to rookie Blake Wesley. Jones has been the team’s only true point guard since late October, and while most of his teammates have missed chunks of time due to injury, he’s played in all but one game he missed because of an illness.
Now, with Vassell expected to be out for more than a month following his knee procedure scheduled for Wednesday, and Johnson nursing a tight hamstring he pulled against the Detroit Pistons on Friday, Jones is going to have to shoulder an even larger burden. But the difference in this version of the Spurs and the one that got crushed by the Raptors earlier this season is both the continued growth of Jones as an offensive initiator and the cohesiveness of the group around him.
This team knows itself much better now, and it’s showed over the last couple of games. Memphis and Boston boast the second- and seventh-best defenses in the league, respectively, and San Antonio stuck right with them despite the injuries. In the fashion of so many Popovich-coached teams before this one, eight players scored in double-figures on Saturday, and eight players passed the nine-point threshold on Monday. The ball is zipping around, players are constantly moving, and suddenly this young group is holding its own despite being shorthanded.
“Obviously they are an extremely well-coached team. Teams like that are dangerous, kind of playing carefree (with) the pace that they play at,” Jayson Tatum said after Saturday’s game. “They don’t necessarily have an agenda — just pass, cut and try to get the best shot. Constant movement.”
That’s how the Spurs have to play without Vassell and Johnson in the lineup,, and it all starts with Jones. But what they learned on Monday is other teams are starting to understand that, too. At this point of the season, contenders are no longer in their own carefree experimental stages. They are going to be locked in on most nights, and defenses are going to adjust to any little thorn in their sides when the games get tight.
But if San Antonio has provided evidence of anything this season, it’s that it will soon learn how to counter opponents who try to take away its point guard. On Monday, the move to put Brooks on Jones seemed to throw the Spurs for a loop, as though Memphis’ strategy was unexpected. And frankly, how could it not have been? Perhaps these guys knew better than the rest of us the type of leader he’d become, but that kind of attention had to surprise even his most ardent believers — at least a little bit.
Still, San Antonio will continue to grind away, as it’s done all season. For all its shortcomings, playing hard and reacting to the newest obstacles in its way have not been problem areas.
“It’s definitely our mentality — every single night, how hard we’re going to be playing. It’s something we have to do to give ourselves a chance, but it’s something we want to build on as well,” Jones said. “We don’t want to be a team that just depends on making shots and trying to play pretty, we want to be in there getting ugly, trying to be the team that plays harder every single night for all 48 (minutes) as well.
“Hopefully it continues to show. I think we’ve been doing it more and more throughout these games, and we’ll continue to try and do that moving forward.”
The Spurs will face the Grizzlies again in the same building on Wednesday, except this time Ja Morant might be playing. But watching this young team play the same opponent in back-to-back games provides an opportunity to see how quickly it can learn. San Antonio is likely years away from a playoff appearance, so these situations offer the most similar analogues to those scenarios that require on-the-fly, game-to-game adjustments against familiar foes.
Perhaps the Spurs will add a wrinkle or two to their gameplan, but more than anything it’ll be on the players to react accordingly to any schemes thrown their directions. And in Jones’ case, the extra attention just means the bar has been raised yet again.
But there’s nothing new about that at this point.