Flipping the Calendar and the Season: 2023 versus 2024

[Seventyniner]

I compiled the stats for the 8 players with the most minutes in 2023-2024 split by calendar year. This is roughly the point at which Pop shuffled the starting lineup to remove Collins and add Jones and the monthly splits on bkref were the easiest way to put everything together.



Notes:

• The orange cells are raw points per game, not pace adjusted
• ORtg and DRtg for individual players are pace adjusted
• The Spurs' overall pace of 101.1 possessions per game means that per-game and per-100-possessions numbers will line up pretty closely
• I listed the players in rough order of how the lineup changes affected their minutes and place in the starting lineup
• 2023 means the Spurs' first 32 games this season, from October 25 to December 31

What stood out to me:

• While the Spurs' offensive numbers didn't change a whole lot from 2023 to 2024, the defense was way better in 2024 (not shown on this chart: opponents' 3 point shooting went from 39.3% in 2023 to 35.8% in 2024)
• Collins lowered his 3 point rate a lot in 2024, but his 2 point shooting dropoff more than offset his slight bump in 3 point %
• Tre Jones's ORtg in 2024 is eye-popping, and his overall offensive numbers were great, albeit on low usage
• Keldon bumped his 3 point rate when he moved to the bench, but his numbers didn't change much overall
• Champangie's individual offensive numbers went down overall when he became a full-time starter, but his ORtg numbers show that the offense as a whole didn't suffer
• Branham just plain sucks
• Sochan was inefficient on offense all season; he traded bad 2 point shooting in 2023 for bad 3 point shooting in 2024
• Vassell wasn't affected much by the lineup change, which makes sense because his role stayed the same
• Yes Victor is that good defensively, but he was pretty bad on offense in 2023
• Given the point differentials, the Spurs' expected record in 2023 was 6-26 and in 2024 was 20-30
• That means the Spurs played like a 15-win team in 2023 and a 33-win team in 2024

Perhaps my biggest takeaway is that the lineup change was not the only catalyst for the team playing much better in 2024 than in 2023. Victor himself made big strides (no pun intended) throughout the season, and the team got more experience with him on the floor. I see the big jump in point differential as a good sign for next season.

The knee-jerk narrative of "the Spurs added Wemby to a 22-win team and ended up with a 22-win team, therefore they made no progress" not only ignores the nuances, it's just plain incorrect.

[scott]

Great post, thank you for your service in putting this together.

Also, crofl bran ham.