Popovich questions dedication to defense
Jeremy Sochan is only 19 games into his Spurs career, but it hasn’t taken long for the 19year-old rookie to pick up some of coach Gregg Popovich’s lexicon.
Asked to assess the state of the Spurs’ sagging defense during their six-game skid, Sochan dropped one of Popovich’s longtime preferred descriptors when his team lacks grit on that end of the court.
“I think we’re pretty soft,” Sochan said.
Given how poorly the Spurs have fared on defense lately, soft might count as an improvement.
The Spurs enter Friday’s game against the Los Angeles Lakers at the AT&T Center amid their longest losing streak of the season.
Five of the six losses in that stretch have come by double figures. The Spurs have allowed at least 117 points in each of them, giving up at least 120 five times and at least 130 twice.
“I don’t think the team is committed defensively in their mind, between their ears, the way they need to be,” Popovich said.
The numbers bear that out, as does the eye test.
Over that six-game stretch, the Spurs have been the worst defense in the NBA, allowing 124.2 points per 100 possessions.
They are coming off a 129-110 loss to New Orleans on Wednesday in which they offered little resistance to Zion Williamson and Co.
The burly All-star forward barely seemed to break a sweat on his way to a season-high 32
points.
Twenty-eight of them came in the paint, the most in the NBA this season in a single game. Williamson's other four points came from the foul line.
Afterward, Popovich acknowledged not many teams will have an answer for the 6-foot-6, 285-pound former No. 1 overall pick.
“There is a reason he got picked where he got picked,” Popovich said. “He's pretty good.”
Still, even as the overmatched Spurs try to navigate a painful rebuilding season, Popovich wants players to build healthy habits that will serve the team well in future seasons.
That starts on defense, where the Spurs have been as soft as left-out gouda.
“It's the little things,” forward Keita Bates-diop said.
“Even though we are a young team, most of us have been around long enough to pick up habits, the right things to do.
“We do them for stretches, but it is a 48-minute game. You have to do them for the entire game.”
If Popovich could crystallize his defensive message into one four-word marching order, it might be this:
Be like Jakob Poeltl. “He's the one consistent defender we have,” Popovich said of the Spurs' starting center.
Poeltl's absence helps explain at least one of the Spurs' recent defensive flops.
The 27-year-old Austrian missed the Spurs' game against the Lakers in Los Angeles on Sunday while nursing a sore knee.
With a gaping hole in the middle of the Spurs' defense, the Lakers ran away with a 129-93 victory that by far ranks as the most lopsided in season full of bad losses.
It came with star forward Lebron James out with an injury of his own. James is expected to return to the Lakers' lineup after a five-game hiatus in Friday's rematch at the AT&T Center.
“We know it has been a tough stretch here, and hopefully we can come out with a ton of energy against the Lakers,” forward Doug Mcdermott said. “We know we are not going to win every single game this year, but we've got to give a little bit better effort out there.”
A return to defensive competency, Popovich said, starts with a commitment from individual players.
“I think that is the big challenge ... to mentally and intellectually understand that part has to take place because we are not going to score every night,” Popovich said. “We don't have one-on-one players, that kind of thing. So not turning it over, playing defense — those basics are really important.”
The proof is in the Spurs' record.
When they have shown up on the defensive end, they have been a fairly tough out.
Four of the Spurs' six victories have come when they have held an opponent to 106 points or less.
On Nov. 11, the Spurs held a Milwaukee team down Giannis Antetokounmpo, Khris Middleton and others to 93 points and won by 18.
It is the team's only victory in a 1-11 month.
“Definitely it's our defense we need to focus on first,” point guard Tre Jones said. “Offense will come and go. Shots, we will hit some nights and not hit other nights. But defense you can control every single night.”
This is something even a player as young as Sochan knows well.
The eighth pick in last summer's draft out of Baylor, Sochan arrived with the reputation of being a pesky and versatile defender.
It is the place he first hopes to make his NBA mark, and his view of the Spurs' porous defense carries weight.
“We weren't as physical, we weren't going for 50-50 balls, we weren't communicating,” Sochan said. “That's one thing we need to pick up.”
He hopes to see every member of the roster get the message.
“Defense is not individual,” Sochan said. “You can have one good defender or two good defenders, but if a team is not playing together you're not going to defend well.”
Popovich, for one, is optimistic the Spurs can shake their self-anointed “soft” label on the defensive end.
“That's the only way you can be,” Popovich said.
Time will tell, starting Friday against the Lakers.