Great post. Thanks
timvp.
With the Diaw/Splitter pair, Spurs are only grabbing 69.7% of the defensive rebounds. It surely explained a lot of the defensive issues.
Offensively, it's a little more complicate than that:
Splitter/Diaw playing with Parker and/or Ginobili (367 minutes): 113.9 pts/100poss
Splitter/Diaw playing without both Parker and Ginobili (99 minutes): 83.3 pts/100poss
The Splitter/Diaw pair needs to be with at least one of Parker and Ginobili to be efficient offensively. Otherwise it's a disaster. It seems to be somewhat logical: Diaw and Splitter are team oriented offensive players and they need a great offensive guard to set them up.
DRB% for Spurs bigmen pairs including Diaw:
Diaw/Blair (93min): 80.8%
Diaw/Duncan (506min): 75.4%
Diaw/Bonner (64min): 71.2%
Diaw/Splitter (466min): 69.7%
My guess about why Diaw and Splitter struggled on the defensive boards when paired is that both are more focused on boxing out that going after the rebounds.
A crazy stat about Green:
+/- for Green playing with both Duncan and Parker (781 min): +188
+/- for Green playing without the Duncan/Parker pair (428 min): -39
The Green/Parker/Duncan trio is scoring 111.3 points while allowing 99.2 points per 100 poss. It's very comparable to what the Parker/Duncan duo is doing (111/98.5). Another stat that show Green dependence to the Parker/Duncan duo is that 53% of his field goals are assisted by either Parker or Duncan.
Green is a strict role player and when he has to do too much either offensively or defensively, he struggles. He has to stay in his pigeonhole.
+1
Ginobili offensively pairing aren't that great but you aren't helping him when comparing to last season. Ginobili eFG% was .618 last season. His second best year was 07-08 with a eFG% of .540. This season, he is at .528 which is close to his career average of .523.
Manu had an amazing regular season last year at shooting the ball and he won't do that again. It surely hurt his pair offensive numbers. Saying that, when you look at what Manu did before last season, his pair offensive numbers should be a little higher.
Looking at pair stats with Ginobili doesn't give a clear picture on the backup PG situation because there are lineups like Parker/Neal/Ginobili.
The offensive ratings/defensive ratings playing with Manu playing SG are:
Neal (148 min): 102.0/100.0
Mills (79 min): 117.5/96.8
De Colo (76 min): 117.2/98.1
Sample sizes are small so it's hard to really draw conclusions but it seems that Neal at PG with Manu at SG doesn't work offensively. Mills and De Colo are about the same.
Neal has never been good in +/-.
On his career:
- In regular season, Spurs are +4.5 with him per 100 poss and +9.5 without him
- In playoffs, Spurs are -9.8 with him per 100 poss and +11.1 without him.
The bottom line with Neal is that he really hurts the defense and he doesn't help that much the offense. What he add with his individual offense is partially neglected by what he costs to the team offense.