A fix for what ails defense?
It’s a good time for NBA’S worst offensive team to visit with squad allowing plethora of points
Defense alone doesn’t win in the NBA anymore. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich knows this better than most.
League rules have evolved as such to favor the offense, and the courts across the world are rife with a generation of scorers primed to take advantage of them.
Even the best defensive teams will find it impossible to hold opponents to point totals in the 80s, as Popovich’s championship teams of the early 2000s routinely did.
Popovich understands this. It does not mean he has to like it.
“It is frustrating,” Popovich said. “But at some point you have to be realistic and it is what it is.”
With that in mind, Popovich is willing to grade his team’s defensive performance on a curve.
Even so, Popovich’s generosity had its limits.
“We just can’t give up 139 points — the margin of error is too small,” Popovich said after Indiana titled the AT&T Center scoreboard in a 139-133 overtime victory Saturday. “The 139 points killed us. End of story.”
It could spell the end of the Spurs’ playoff hopes if they cannot figure out how to patch holes in a defense that is nightly taking on water.
Spurs opponents have crossed that not-so-magical threshold four times through eight games of a nine-game homestand that ends Monday against Cleveland.
Saturday’s loss to the Pacers was the Spurs’ second in a row to go to overtime, joining a 134-129 defeat against Atlanta that took a pair of extra periods to complete.
Three OT frames in the past two games have served to inflate opponents’ point totals, but it wasn’t as if the Spurs were locking down on defense in regulation of those contests.
The Spurs averaged 125 points in the past three losses. It doesn’t take a basketball savant to pinpoint which end of the floor has been letting them down.
“The defense was the problem,” center Jakob Poeltl said after the Pacers became the latest visiting team to set the AT&T Center nets aflame. “They are good in transition. We also had a couple of too many turnovers, so we probably made it a little too easy on them.”
It is fair to point out with a little bit of luck in the Spurs’ past two overtime games, they might be riding a three-game winning streak into Monday’s game against the Cavaliers.
Instead, they will look to salvage what is left of the longest homestand in club history after starting 2-6.
“In a close race like this, there’s a lot of teams bunched up fighting for the playoffs, so it’s tough losing these games,” Poeltl said. “We have to play better throughout the 48 minutes so it doesn’t come down to one or two plays at the end of the game.”
The Spurs have a chance to right their defensive ship against a Cleveland team that ranks last in the NBA in offensive efficiency.
It will be the consummate battle of resistible force vs. movable object.
It was only a little more than two weeks ago the Spurs went to Cleveland and pulled out a 116-100 victory that put them at a season-best six games over .500.
The Spurs were in a better place then.
Keldon Johnson starred in that game with a monster 23-point, 21-rebound double-double. Demar Derozan scored 20 points in his return from a four-game absence following the death of his father.
The Spurs departed Cleveland in sixth place in the Western Conference, a spot that under the NBA’S new format would allow them to make the playoffs outright instead of needing to win play-in games.
The team the Cavs will meet in Monday’s rematch has little in common with the team that won March 19 in Cleveland.
The Spurs have lost seven of nine games since, dropping to eighth in the conference standings with Memphis a half game back in ninth.
“I’m definitely still optimistic,” Poeltl said. “I feel like we give ourselves a chance.”
In order to maximize that chance, the Spurs will need to rediscover their defensive form from earlier in the season.
Beginning in training camp, Spurs coaches made improvement on defense a daily touchstone. For a while, that attention to detail appeared to pay off.
Even with their recent spate of sieve-like play, the Spurs still boast the No. 10 defense in the NBA, allowing 110.7 points per 100 possessions.
During the first eight-games of a disastrous homestand, they are surrendering 115.8 points per 100 possessions. Only Oklahoma City and Golden State have been worse on defense over that stretch.
It isn’t just opposing stars scorching the Spurs. Indiana got 26 points on Saturday from Caris Lavert, but it was 18 off the bench from T.J. Mcconnell — including six of the Pacers’ 13 in overtime — that doomed the Spurs.
“We’ve got to communicate better and we’ve got to guard better,” Johnson said. “We have to guard for each other. It’s all the things that we can fix and get better at.”
Again, Popovich knows better than to expect a miracle at the defensive end of the floor.
This isn’t 1999 anymore. “The rules are tilted toward the offense, and that makes it a little bit easier for a talented player to have his way,” Popovich said. “It seems like offense wins. Defense can keep you in games, and if you don’t play defense it’s going to be an ugly night.
But when it comes to winning time?
“Offense has become more important than it ever was in the past,” Popovich said.
Popovich isn’t demanding his team shut down opposing offenses althogether. He is only asking the Spurs keep the other team under 130 points.
It shouldn’t be too much to ask.