Everyone agrees that star power is the biggest factor in who wins and who loses in the NBA. A glance at the standings every season bears this out. The best teams in the league have perennial all-stars like James Harden, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and LeBron James. The cellar dwellers are annually led by relatively lesser players like Justin Holiday, Dennis Schroder, and Willie Cauley-Stein.
Soobum Im-USA TODAY Sports
Most also agree that luck plays an inordinate role in determining the fates of teams in any given season. How this most often bears out is in terms of injury, especially within the NBA’s vast middle class. Healthy teams tend to climb past teams whose most important players suffer injuries that knock them out for critical parts of the season. We have seen multiple teams this season already get bumped out of playoff contention due to injuries (the Clippers and Grizzlies).
But not every team that suffers a major player injury falls apart. It’s this factor — injury resiliency — that could be the most consequential attribute within this framework. How do teams that survive injuries do it? How entangled is that resiliency in star power? Or is it coaching? Roster construction? Something even less tangible?
Consider the Warriors. Stephen Curry will miss at least two weeks with an injured ankle. For most teams, losing an MVP-caliber player for two weeks would mean a losing streak is on the way. But no one expects Golden State to miss a beat against most opponents. The Warriors have exceptional injury resiliency. Why? Because their star power is so enormous that they remain one of the most talented teams in the league even with Curry sidelined. The same was the case when Kevin Durant sat for a while late last season. The Warriors’ injury resiliency is wrapped up in their star power. It is indistinguishable.
Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
But what about the Spurs? Kawhi Leonard has yet to step on the court this season, yet San Antonio is 16-8, a solid No. 3 in the West. Leonard was the only Spur on the all-star team last season; and the only other honor of note for the crew was Danny Green’s second team all-defense nod. LaMarcus Aldridge was the team’s No. 2 scorer, but he’d been dismissed by analysts as a diminishing relic of an old league. Pau Gasol and Tony Parker, too, continued to lose luster. The Spurs’ success was chalked up to Kawhi’s two-way brilliance, an impenetrable defense, and the superior team-building and team-managing of head coach Gregg Popovich and general manager R.C. Buford.
Without Kawhi, the Spurs are still winning. The defense is still awesome. The team just fits together really well. Aldridge has been excellent in a larger role. Rudy Gay has fit well, and Dejounte Murray has come along. But truly, San Antonio’s injury resiliency has not been due to its star power: Aldridge should be an all-star this season, but no one would pick him as one of the top 20 or 25 players in the NBA in a vacuum. He is a second-tier star who has done his job admirably well in the absence of a first-tier star. The Spurs aren’t surviving because they have multiple top-flight superstars.
The Celtics are similar, although it’s trickier to assess expectations, credit, and blame given that so much of the roster is new. It was expected that Gordon Hayward and Kyrie Irving would be Boston’s two top-flight stars this season. Hayward went down in Game 1. The Celtics have been spectacular anyways. Is that due to Irving — who has been explosive and particularly good in close games — or is it due to the team’s overall defense and solid depth? How much is due to head coach Brad Stevens?
Memphis had a second star when Mike Conley went down, but Marc Gasol could not carry a larger load effectively (and in fact faltered himself during Conley’s absence, leading to his coach getting fired). Doc Rivers had to juggle not just the loss of Blake Griffin, but the loss of both of his point guards and Danilo Gallinari. Could any team be resilient in the face of that many talent losses?
If you are not blessed with a one-two-three-four punch like the Warriors, how do you build injury resiliency?
Some of this is tied up in the concept of depth. Teams without it — like Memphis — have to rely more heavily on their better players, adding stress to their performance. Teams with good depth — like Utah, who survived Rudy Gobert’s four-week absence in tact — can rely on lesser-used players to fill gaps instead of crushing their normal contributors with overwhelming loads.
But that’s only part of it. Having a great ninth man to step into the rotation when your star goes down can only do so much. You need to replace what that star gives you. This is where the Spurs have thrived, and where coaching, player fit, and all the other factors we can’t pin down come into play in concert. This is where the resiliency magic happens.
Figuring out how to mimic the Spurs’ injury resiliency is a task worth undertaking for the rest of the NBA. Not everyone can turn to a Kevin Durant when their Steph Curry goes down. Sometimes, you have to depend on your LaMarcus Aldridge.
