One day the NBA playoffs will begin with the San Antonio Spurs watching on television. This will likely occur sometime around Tim Duncan’s 45th birthday, in 2021, when a 38-year-old Tony Parker no longer has enough in the tank to effectively distribute the ball to 36-year-old Tiago Splitter in the post and 33-year-old Danny Green on the wing, while the heroics of 29-year-old Kawhi Leonard won’t be quite enough to carry the team to an eighth seed in the NBA’s Western Conference. When that day comes, Gregg Popovich will be pissed, 43-year-old Manu Ginobili will sadly shake his head from his couch in Argentina, and the rest of the NBA will breathe a sigh of relief more than two decades in the making.
This year, though, the Spurs will enter the playoffs as a top-two seed in the West, chasing “one for the thumb”—Duncan’s fifth championship ring. The rest of the NBA knows exactly how they plan to get it—the Spurs’ great “secret” is well-orchestrated team basketball, with Duncan and Parker running the smoothest pick-and-roll since Stockton and Malone—but stopping them is another matter entirely.
To playoff opponents with title dreams, the Spurs of April and May are the NBA’s rush-hour gridlock; they’re the weather in February and your first attempt to file your own taxes—nasty, unpleasant and unavoidable. The “machine” analogy is used too often in sports, but it’s never been more apt than when it’s applied to the Spurs’ 15-year reign of sustained, ruthless efficiency. The last time there was a debate about whether the Spurs had both the talent and the system to win the title was in Duncan’s rookie season—the only question since has been about their health, and in later years, if their stars have the legs to run with the younger pups when the second season rolls around. This year, the answer is an emphatic “Yes.”
The 2012–13 Spurs may appear older than ever, but that’s only if you’re looking at their biggest names. Sure, they are led by Parker, Ginobili and Duncan, an ancient trio when compared to the top lines of the other contenders. But in terms of contributions up and down the roster, the Spurs haven’t been this young in a decade or more, with Green, 25, emerging at shooting guard, Splitter, 28, finally growing accustomed to Popovich’s system, and Leonard, at 21, looking like he’s ready to lock down the small-forward spot for the next decade. All of them are improving rapidly enough that the Spurs have been able to rest their older stars without suffering a three-game losing streak all season.
This newfound depth has been a boon to Popovich, the NBA’s longest-tenured head coach, who sat Duncan for a game last season and listed him on the official scorer’s sheet as “DNP—Old.” For 2012–13, perhaps prompted by his team seemingly running out of gas against the younger Thunder in last year’s West finals, he’s taken that sentiment to heart. Of the Spurs’ core players, only Splitter suited up for every one of their first 80 games. Whether the rest came by design—Popovich has held out some or all of his big three for the second half of back-to-back games, including one against the Heat that cost the club a $250,000 fine from the NBA—or by necessity, as Duncan (knee and ankle), Parker (ankle) and Ginobili (hamstring) have all missed stretches with injuries, the Spurs will be ready to roll. If their record doesn’t intimidate their opponents, the first-ballot Hall of Fame forward who says he feels like he has fresh legs “for the first time in a while” certainly should.
Even with the post-season looming and Ginobili sidelined with that hamstring injury, Popovich refused to lengthen the leash. After two down-to-the-wire games against the Clippers and Heat over a weekend at the end of March, Duncan admitted that he’d have to fight off his coach in order to play the following Monday aganst the Grizzlies. Popovich won that fight. Duncan sat, missing his 12th game of the year.
The Spurs’ winning percentage without a day off between games this season is .506. With a day off, that number jumps to .750. Give them two or more and it’s .867—two losses in 15 games. It’s clear that rest is critical to the Spurs’ championship aspirations and the structure of the playoffs is tailored to their liking. During Miami’s run to the 2012 title, the Heat played 13 games on a single day of rest and seven more on two or more days—they didn’t face a single back-to-back. That distribution would give these Spurs a .791 winning percentage.
There are no easy wins against basement dwellers on the playoff schedule, however. The Heat and Thunder are daunting opponents, and will certainly be the trendy picks. But you could fill out a lengthy list of losers who have been trendy picks to beat the Spurs over the past decade and a half.
