Obviously everyone knows how great the Spurs have been defensively. They have by far the #1 defense in the league with a 97.8 DRTG. Most people just stop there and chalk it up to having guys like Kawhi, Duncan, and Green. But the interesting thing is, the Spurs are elite defensively no matter who they throw out there.
For reference: Hawks are 2nd defensively with a 102.1 DRTG, Heat are 5th with a 103.6 DRTG, and the league average DRTG is 106.1
Spurs with Kawhi and Duncan (1059 minutes): DRTG = 94.8
Spurs with Kawhi, no Duncan (983 minutes): DRTG = 98.3
Spurs with Duncan, no Kawhi (195 minutes): DRTG = 98.4
Spurs with Kawhi, no Duncan or Green (536 minutes): DRTG = 96.5
Spurs with Kawhi, no Duncan or Green or Aldridge (210 minutes): DRTG = 94.5
Spurs with no Kawhi or Duncan (979 minutes): DRTG = 101.7
Spurs with no Kawhi or Duncan or Green (609 minutes): DRTG = 103.5
Spurs with no Kawhi or Duncan or Green or Aldridge (514 minutes): DRTG = 103.4
Spurs with Diaw and West (499 minutes): DRTG = 100.5
If you don't get where I'm going with this, pretty much every lineup the Spurs throw out there is elite defensively. Take out 4 of the Spurs' best defenders and they still play defense at a level that would be top 5 in the league. That's absurd. Keep in mind we're talking about lineups featuring Mills, West, Diaw, etc...not all-world defenders.
Throw in the big guns like Kawhi and Duncan, and the defense turns into something the league has never seen. The best defense of all-time (going by lowest DRTG relative to the league average) is the '64 Celtics team with a DRTG 10.8 points better. than the league average. If you look at the best defenses since the 3-point line was introduced, it's the '04 Spurs with a DRTG 8.8 points better than the league average. Spurs with Kawhi and Duncan on the court have a DRTG that's 11.3 points better than league average.
tl;dr: Obviously guys like Kawhi and Duncan deserve a ton of credit for what they're doing...but god damn does it seem like Pop and the other coaches have mastered defense
Obviously some of the numbers are skewed by certain players and lineups playing against bench units. If those lineups played against starters full time their stats wouldn't be quite as high, but they would still be above average. Impressive numbers. It really goes to show how good of a coach Pop is. He gets absolutely everyone to buy in. Thanks for putting this together.
He did a great job on Paul last night in the second half.
Well, bench units for other teams tend to be much worse statistically, so the idea that they're just "carrying the torch" is somewhat faulty.
Only a few teams in the league have regular legitimately solid defensive rotations on the bench.
Really nice post OP. The Spurs play as a team, and it's great to see. What's more amazing is the falloff when Duncan leaves the game if Kawhi isn't in. That's otherworldly for someone Tim's age. He should easily be considered a top 5 player of all time, and if the Spurs ring this year I don't see how you could have him lower than 3rd.
I think when he and LeBron retire, we'll have a top 4 in NBA history that will hold for a long while. MJ, Kareem, Duncan, and LeBron. That's gonna be hard for anyone to break into.
Really enjoyed this write-up! Thanks for putting this together- this is precisely the kind of information that puts this year's team into perspective. Apparently we have the best defensive line-up in the NBA- even historically speaking. We all should enjoy this while we can! We aren't too shabby on offense with Kawhi and LMA on the floor either.
Props to the Jedi Defence Master Messina!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It wasn't like he made many large adjustaments to stop him in the second half, just one move, put Kawhi on him.
SpursFan86 which site are you using for your 3man, 4man, 5man unit data, etc..trying to see if there are discrepancies on what I've seen (not to nitpick you)
Love the defense, but it's biggest flaw is switching on picks so easily. You can't do that against Curry and Lebron. Against Steph, you're going to have to do what Cleveland did which was doubling Steph on the P&R and eliminating passing lanes. Spoelstra was great at that, and Lebron borrowed it
Is there an easy source for ORtg and DRtg for each team in NBA history? Bkref has it for each season but it would have to be aggregated manually.
What I would like to see is how many standard deviations the Spurs' D is ahead of league average (easy) and how that compares to the best D in the league each season (time-consuming). That would be a better indicator than DRtg "points" below average.
Great write up! Kawhi is an absolute monster and the general public is underestimating Duncan because he's not asked to do much on offense (at least scoring wise). Best D in a decade.
http://www.basketball-reference.com/.../2016/lineups/
You can also use nbawowy.com if you want to hand-pick units and get more detailed information (bkref only shows net rating for example, nbawowy will show you ORTG and DRTG specifically).
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