Rebounding, not defense, biggest concern

[Jimcs50]

You mention the Clippers, Jim, and holding them to low shooting percentage. That will be tough to do. In fact, that's the most scary thing to me when I think about matching up with the Clips. They can shoot so well. Alley-oops aside, their perimeter scoring can be really good and they played the Spurs tough in the regular season. The Spurs were fortunate to come way 2-1 against them (remember the OT game with the Gary Neal steal and 3?).

The Clippers can kill you from 12-24 feet with Mo Williams, Butler, Foye and Paul. So even if the Spurs shoot 50+%, LAC can match that. No doubt Griffin and Evans can rebound and that's a concern but the Spurs will need to do more than just box those two guys out. One thing is for sure, if Chris Paul comes off that high screen, the Spurs must make the right FT-line-extended their no-fly zone. The right elbow jumper is his comfort spot, especially in crunch time.

Defense must be there vs the Clippers.

All true.

However, SA seems to be able to adapt to every team the last 2 months, and they will came up with the right game plan to maximize their advantages and minimize their shortfalls against each opponent. Pop is coaching his ass off this year.

[Solid D]

All true.

However, SA seems to be able to adapt to every team the last 2 months, and they will came up with the right game plan to maximize their advantages and minimize their shortfalls against each opponent. Pop is coaching his ass off this year.

Yep.

The one type of team that has given the Spurs trouble over the years is the team that can shoot well from mid-range and in the seams. I failed to mention Nick Young earlier, but he adds to that mix. If the Spurs end up playing LAC, it will take hard work and effort defending them. The Spurs can't over-commit or over-play to any one area (except the right-elbow for CP3). They will need their rest because they will get tired playing D against that team.

[jiggy_55]

I suspected this when it became apparent that Diaw was going to be bought out and the Spurs were going to sign him and alter their rotation. Defensively, Duncan's minutes increasing, Diaw replacing Blair in the rotation, Jackson replacing Jefferson, Neal's minutes being halved, as well as no one pacing themselves and actual rest, recovery and practice time, have predictably led to defensive improvement. How significant, we'll find out in round two, particularly if the Clippers do what they're poised to do and finish off the Grizzlies.

Yes, the Jazz were the fourth highest scoring team during the regular season and seventh in offensive efficiency, but they were mostly playoff neophytes, clearly just happy to be there and lacked any semblance of outside shooting. That said, the Spurs defensive numbers in the series were outstanding (86.3 ppg, 4th fewest, .382 opp. fg %, 1st, . 200 opp. 3pt %, 1st) and they're to be commended. And while I'm not convinced they've suddenly transformed into an elite defensive outfit again, I am convinced that, combined with their league best offense, they're good enough defensively to win a championship.

But whereas the rotation changes have predictably improved the defense, they've just as predictably hurt the rebounding. The Jazz bludgeoned the Spurs on the glass. Only the Magic, who are literally playing without anything resembling a center, have a worst rebounding rate in the playoffs. Sure, the Jazz were third in rebound rate during the regular season and at times, they played three plus rebounding bigs together, but one look at the road ahead shows it's going to remain difficult in this regard. The Clippers (T-6th), Grizzlies (11th; Randolph missed 38 games), Lakers (2nd), Thunder, (5th) and Heat (T-6th) are all strong rebounding teams. Granted, the Spurs were T-6th themselves, but that was with Splitter playing more, Leonard playing more and Blair in the rotation (the only positive is Duncan is playing more). So if you're looking for a potential achilles heel of this team, look to rebounding, not defense.

TD 21, you have to realize that the Spurs did a great job mostly against Utah, and that no other NBA team has as big a lineup as that 3-man front court of Millsap (he's a power forward playing small forward), Favors, and Jefferson. All are above average rebounders at their position and all shared the court together for quite a lot of minutes especially late in the series. You cannot expect a team like the Clippers, Lakers, or Thunder to ever play with a lineup with 3 guys who can easily average over 10 rpg in a season.

[MI21]

The Spurs defensive rebounding is generally elite because they don't leak out to much on the break and do a good job of boxing out.

I think sometimes it's because they give up multiple offensive rebounds in one possession around the rim. This is a particular problem against the big teams. While those plays don't happen a lot and the opposition go through long patches without getting offensive boards, those plays with 3/4 in a row really make it seem worse than it is.

[MI21]

Yep.

The one type of team that has given the Spurs trouble over the years is the team that can shoot well from mid-range and in the seams. I failed to mention Nick Young earlier, but he adds to that mix. If the Spurs end up playing LAC, it will take hard work and effort defending them. The Spurs can't over-commit or over-play to any one area (except the right-elbow for CP3). They will need their rest because they will get tired playing D against that team.

Yeah, good points Solid.

Those Milwaukee teams that consistently beat the Spurs from the early 00's were the worst. Big Dog Robinson, Ray Allen, Sam Cassell and Tim Thomas and moving on to Michael Redd, Mo Williams, Delfino etc... all guys with nice in-between games that are a bit unique. Detroit with Billups and Hamilton as well.

For the Clippers I can really see that being an issue especially with the Spurs PnR defense on ballhandling PG's not being particularly wonderful over the last few seasons. As you mentioned, Paul, Young, Williams and even Butler have nice midrange games. I'm hoping the ineffectiveness of the Clipper bigmen offensively outside of Griffin can help the Spurs in dealing with those seam and pocket jumpshots.

[100%duncan]

Clippers are playing great right now but before the PO's most of us chose them for the Spurs to play in the second round, right?

[Dr Cox]

I don't want anyone to get hurt but I hope things get a little testy this series, that way we can see Jackson thug side come out. : )

[Yuixafun]

Jax and Martin scrappin

[GSH]

First, I want to remind a few of you about something. Remember earlier in the season when the experts were saying that the Spurs were "lucky" because their opponents were missing so many 3-pointers in the fourth quarters? I took a large ration of for insisting that it wasn't just luck - that when any team is shooting 3's at the end of a game (when they're behind) their 3P% is going to be a lot lower. My point was that the Spurs had benefitted from being ahead in so many late game situations. Well, here is an article from 82games.dotcom, and a short excerpt that confirms what I was saying:

http://82games.com/lawhorn.htm
The league average for 3-point FG percentage (last full season) is 35.5%; however, late-game shots are known to have a higher degree of difficulty than the typical 3-point attempt... Therefore, with 10 seconds or less left in the game, and a 3-point deficit for the offensive team, the league-wide 3-point shooting percentage is 20.0%.


What does that have to do with the Spurs' rebounding? Nothing, and everything. I've said it enough other times: the numbers don't lie - but they don't always say what you think they are saying.

I'm sorry, but I don't care what the stats appear to say, the Spurs are not the league's best rebounding team. Offensive or defensive. (And, please, I wrote a long thread a few years ago about how the Spurs sacrifice offensive boards to get back on defense. Don't condescend - I'm more than aware of it.) You don't have to be a professional statistician to see that there are at least a few teams that are better at bringing down rebounds than this Spurs team, on either end of the court. So if the stats say that the Spurs are the best, there's a good chance that something else figures into the equation.

How many times this year have you seen teams take inidscriminate jump shots, because they knew that they had a great chance of getting the offensive rebound and scoring? I don't have an exact number, but we've all seen it. And how many times have you seen teams take 2,3, and 4 shots on the same possession, because they just kept scraping the offensive glass? Do you see any other teams doing that to the Clippers, Lakers, or Heat?

I don't have any way to prove it yet, but my thought is basically this: the Spurs do a pretty good job on the boards against most teams in the league. But against a few truly good rebounding teams, they get their asses kicked. And, unfortunately, several of those truly good rebounding teams are still in the playoffs. (I'm sure that's no coincidence.) If you look at the thread I linked to above, I said exactly that.

One last thing - I mentioned a thread I wrote a few years ago, talking about how the Spurs sacrifice offensive boards, in order to get back on defense. But that was when the Spurs were a defensive juggernaut. The theory was that, if they could get their defense set up, they could hold any team to a relatively low shooting percentage - and that they could shoot a higher percentage themselves. But the Spurs aren't that team anymore. This is an offensive team, and I'm not so sure that they are abandoning the offensive glass quite as consistently as they used to.

[DesignatedT]

I think rebounding is definitely an area that the Spurs can improve on but I don't think it's necessarily a huge concern. The Spurs are doing a great job of "group" rebounding with KL, Danny and Jack getting in the mix for some boards. Utah with that big lineup hurt us a little but nobody else is going to be playing 3 PFs at the same time.

if we were t6th in the regular season I don't see how that goes down? Duncan will only play more and he's by far our best rebounder.

IMO our perimeter 3 pt shooting defense is what I'm a little concerned over. The Jazz might be the worst shooting team in the league but they got a lot of open looks that the Clippers would knock down with ease. Maybe it was by design but we have to guard that perimeter against LAC because they have guys who will knock those shots down.

[Solid D]

http://82games.com/lawhorn.htm
The league average for 3-point FG percentage (last full season) is 35.5%; however, late-game shots are known to have a higher degree of difficulty than the typical 3-point attempt... Therefore, with 10 seconds or less left in the game, and a 3-point deficit for the offensive team, the league-wide 3-point shooting percentage is 20.0%.

While I see what you're saying, GSH, I'm not feeling the 10-seconds or less stat from 82-games. Maybe a different stat would prove your point more realistically...because for every game the Spurs had leads in the last 10 seconds and the opponent taking a 3-point shot, there were games where the Spurs had leads and the Spurs dribbled out the last 10 seconds with possession of the ball. It's an interesting point but it needs more development from my view. How many games did the Spurs have leads of 3 Pts or less in the last 10 seconds?

[tesseractive]

IMO our perimeter 3 pt shooting defense is what I'm a little concerned over. The Jazz might be the worst shooting team in the league but they got a lot of open looks that the Clippers would knock down with ease. Maybe it was by design but we have to guard that perimeter against LAC because they have guys who will knock those shots down.

I agree that it's a legit worry, but I'd like to think that a lot of those open looks were there because we were playing the Jazz, so we didn't have to defend them. We'll see how it goes.

[skulls138]

Maybe good defense means being worse at rebounds. Look at the Celtics. They are the best at defense but worse at rebounds. When everybody is trying to swarm, not letting people make layups that makes it difficult to block out. To me its the sum of defense and rebounding together and holding opponents to low scoring that matters most.

Another point Id like to make is when Bynum had 30 rebounds one game and in the next 2.

Diaw is an upgrade over Blair defensively so many of the stats are misleading.

Spurs defense is much improved, Utah's scores were 80,83,90,91, thats pretty good for a team that was 4th in scoring.

[TD 21]

We has this conversation during the RRT when you were concerned about rebounding. Bruno and Solid D carry the same view I had then...and I still agree with them now. Furthermore, if you are going to force a team to shoot 38% for the series then there is a good chance you are going give up some offensive boards. Mix together the bricks(which equal more offensive rebounding opportunities) with the fact that the Spurs don't actively look for offensive rebounds on the other end and you get what happened in this series.

I don't know if I was concerned about rebounding then so much as I was pointing out that they weren't as good a rebounding team as you thought (and by the sounds of it, still think) they are. I was concerned when they went altered their rotation, but that concern dissipated when Diaw and Jackson were posting higher defensive rebound rates than Blair. Unfortunately, they both came crashing back down to earth against the Jazz.

I'm well aware that the Spurs have always sacrificed offensive rebounding for transition defense and that the Jazz' poor shooting obviously gave them plenty of offensive rebounding opportunities. But at the same time, the Spurs did not do a good job on the defensive glass. They grabbed 68% of available defensive rebounds, good for 14th in the playoffs and a whopping full 8% drop from their lofty regular season standards. And as I outlined, they're going to continue to be in tough from here on out.

I'm not suggesting that this is bound to be their undoing, I'm just saying, barring injury, if they're to have an undoing, this is more likely to be the reason why than defense is at this point.

[benefactor]

I don't know if I was concerned about rebounding then so much as I was pointing out that they weren't as good a rebounding team as you thought (and by the sounds of it, still think) they are. I was concerned when they went altered their rotation, but that concern dissipated when Diaw and Jackson were posting higher defensive rebound rates than Blair. Unfortunately, they both came crashing back down to earth against the Jazz.

Teams that lead the league in defensive rebounding percentage are good rebounding teams. Not sure what's hard to understand about this.

I'm well aware that the Spurs have always sacrificed offensive rebounding for transition defense and that the Jazz' poor shooting obviously gave them plenty of offensive rebounding opportunities. But at the same time, the Spurs did not do a good job on the defensive glass. They grabbed 68% of available defensive rebounds, good for 14th in the playoffs and a whopping full 8% drop from their lofty regular season standards. And as I outlined, they're going to continue to be in tough from here on out.

I'm not suggesting that this is bound to be their undoing, I'm just saying, barring injury, if they're to have an undoing, this is more likely to be the reason why than defense is at this point.

Again...for cir stances previously stated in this thread(Splitter out for a game and a half, garbage time for blowouts, etc.) I think you are overreacting. Doing work on the defensive glass has not been a problem all year. I don't see it being their downfall now. The only Spurs downfall will be an injury.

[maverick1948]

I don't know if I was concerned about rebounding then so much as I was pointing out that they weren't as good a rebounding team as you thought (and by the sounds of it, still think) they are. I was concerned when they went altered their rotation, but that concern dissipated when Diaw and Jackson were posting higher defensive rebound rates than Blair. Unfortunately, they both came crashing back down to earth against the Jazz.

I'm well aware that the Spurs have always sacrificed offensive rebounding for transition defense and that the Jazz' poor shooting obviously gave them plenty of offensive rebounding opportunities. But at the same time, the Spurs did not do a good job on the defensive glass. They grabbed 68% of available defensive rebounds, good for 14th in the playoffs and a whopping full 8% drop from their lofty regular season standards. And as I outlined, they're going to continue to be in tough from here on out.

I'm not suggesting that this is bound to be their undoing, I'm just saying, barring injury, if they're to have an undoing, this is more likely to be the reason why than defense is at this point.

I do hope you folks taped the games for future watching. I did. I watched the game live and then on tape. In each of the games where the rebounding number were high offensive rebounds for the Jazz, they had at least three possessions that they took 4 to 5 shots. A couple of times they played rebound, bounce off the back board and rebound again. Those putbacks count as rebounds.

Now something you should take a look see. In 66 games, there are 15840 regular minutes. When per game averages are figured, they use 66 games. The Utah Jazz for the season had 2916 rebounds to the Spurs 2836. They averaged almost 1.2 more per game than the Spurs. But did they really out board the Spurs that much? Per game, yes. Based on the number of minutes it took to get there, NO !!!!!! The Jazz use 16,165 mins to the Spurs 15,940. The difference in mins means the Jazz outboarded the Spurs by .5 per game.

That is why stats are sometimes misleading. That goes for the scoring Denver outscored the Spurs by 31, but needed 100 extra mins to get them. That extends to 43 extra points for the Spurs. Extend other stats if you like.

Bring it home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Knoxxx]

Perhaps the Jazz offensive rebounding is inflated due to their poor outside shooting, especially from 3 which often results in long (randomly placed) rebounds.

[Knoxxx]

Spurs defense is much improved, Utah's scores were 80,83,90,91, thats pretty good for a team that was 4th in scoring.

Especially since you gave them 10 extra points for game 4.

[shorttotry]

I do hope you folks taped the games for future watching. I did. I watched the game live and then on tape. In each of the games where the rebounding number were high offensive rebounds for the Jazz, they had at least three possessions that they took 4 to 5 shots. A couple of times they played rebound, bounce off the back board and rebound again. Those putbacks count as rebounds.

Now something you should take a look see. In 66 games, there are 15840 regular minutes. When per game averages are figured, they use 66 games. The Utah Jazz for the season had 2916 rebounds to the Spurs 2836. They averaged almost 1.2 more per game than the Spurs. But did they really out board the Spurs that much? Per game, yes. Based on the number of minutes it took to get there, NO !!!!!! The Jazz use 16,165 mins to the Spurs 15,940. The difference in mins means the Jazz outboarded the Spurs by .5 per game.

That is why stats are sometimes misleading. That goes for the scoring Denver outscored the Spurs by 31, but needed 100 extra mins to get them. That extends to 43 extra points for the Spurs. Extend other stats if you like.

Bring it home!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Very, very good point.

[TD 21]

Teams that lead the league in defensive rebounding percentage are good rebounding teams. Not sure what's hard to understand about this.

Yeah, but it's one thing for them to hold their own against teams with three high level rebounders for one game during the regular season, it's another to have to do it for an entire series. Particularly as a team that only has only high level rebounder themselves.

Again...for cir stances previously stated in this thread(Splitter out for a game and a half, garbage time for blowouts, etc.) I think you are overreacting. Doing work on the defensive glass has not been a problem all year. I don't see it being their downfall now. The only Spurs downfall will be an injury.

It was an issue while the games were still in hand. In fact, it's the exact issue that kept the games that eventually got out of hand, in hand as long as they were. I don't see it being their downfall now either, I'm just saying it's now the number one thing to watch for that could be, barring injury of course. That's a change from the past few seasons, when spotty defense (an issue for much of this season, too) and an over reliance on three's, were.

[therealtruth]

Yep.

The one type of team that has given the Spurs trouble over the years is the team that can shoot well from mid-range and in the seams. I failed to mention Nick Young earlier, but he adds to that mix. If the Spurs end up playing LAC, it will take hard work and effort defending them. The Spurs can't over-commit or over-play to any one area (except the right-elbow for CP3). They will need their rest because they will get tired playing D against that team.

The problem the Spurs run into is they want to allow midrange jumpers because their inefficient but at the same time you still have to contest them otherwise guys can get hot and develop rhythm.

[td4mvp3]

i was big on the defense-is-the-issue club but then i was checking out the points-against stats for the regular season and happened to glance at the fg % against. if i read it right, we actually hold teams to like 30 % shooting, a lower fg % than miami, which is ranked like 4th defensively. that struck me as odd and so i tried to think about why we would allow teams to score more than miami but hold teams to a worse fg %. our rebounding numbers seems like a good bet to me.

[Solid D]

i was big on the defense-is-the-issue club but then i was checking out the points-against stats for the regular season and happened to glance at the fg % against. if i read it right, we actually hold teams to like 30 % shooting, a lower fg % than miami, which is ranked like 4th defensively. that struck me as odd and so i tried to think about why we would allow teams to score more than miami but hold teams to a worse fg %. our rebounding numbers seems like a good bet to me.

No, that's not correct. The Spurs' Opp FG% was 45.2% (ranked 17th) during the regular season. Miami's Opp FG% was 43.4% (ranked 5th). Boston had the lowest, an impressive 41.9%.

[Solid D]

Here are the stats for regular season, the first 44 games and then the 22 games at the end of the regular season with the 3 new additions (Jack, Boris and Patty) in uniforms, the Spurs were as follows:

ALL 66 GAMES
FG% OPP FG%
.478 ..... .452

1st 44 GAMES
FG% OPP FG%
.467 ..... .453

FINAL 22 GAMES
FG% OPP FG%
.500 ..... .449

[td4mvp3]

olp, you're right, i was looking at the postseason stats.
great, now i can worry about the defense and the rebounding