The San Antonio Spurs have finally embraced speed

For the past 23 years, the San Antonio Spurs have benefited from precise ball and man movement, methodical discipline, and a collective focus that most teams don’t have the patience to overcome. Under Gregg Popovich, their strategy was contingent on opposing players making mental mistakes, a commitment that required both a fetish for half-court basketball and a healthy suspicion of any tempo that’s too fast to control.

Over the past 16 years, the Spurs finished 20th or slower in transition frequency — a stat which measures the percentage of a team’s possessions that start with a transition play — 13 times. Last season they were dead last. Aside from a blip towards the beginning of this decade when they snuck all the way up to fifth in pace, Popovich has always been more comfortable grinding through the 82-game schedule, dragging opponents into the mud with an understanding that any team interested in winning multiple playoff series can not be less scrupulous than their opponent.

We’re not even one month into the 2019-20 season, but San Antonio’s philosophy may be changing. Even as LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan cling to stale two-point jumpers, Dejounte Murray and Derrick White are nudging San Antonio towards an aesthetic it has long avoided.

According to Cleaning the Glass, the Spurs are now sixth in transition frequency. They’re pushing the ball hard after misses and off turnovers: Last year they ranked 26th in seconds per possession after grabbing a defensive rebound and 29th after a turnover; right now they’re up to ninth and first, respectively. The Spurs are also tied with Milwaukee for the lead in fastbreak points per 100 possessions, and only two teams finished worse in this category than they did a year ago. (Their highest ranking in the past 11 years was seventh, which was also the only time they finished above 13th.)

It’s one thing to run. It’s another thing to run and actually score. The Spurs are more efficient than anybody else in transition and adding the most points to their cause.

On the surface, DeRozan and Aldridge don’t jibe with a faster pace. Both need time to set themselves up for the shots they prefer, and their presence doesn’t let the Spurs turn every possession into a drag race. But when Murray’s muzzle gets ripped off it opens doors neither all-star could otherwise walk through.

The percentage of Aldridge’s shots taken with more than 15 seconds on the shot clock is up to about 25 percent, noticeably higher than previous years. The jump is even greater for DeRozan, who’s attacking more in transition, exploiting mismatches created by his own sudden urgency.

Plays like the one seen below don’t occur often enough to be reliable, but the Spurs will see them more than other teams this year. (Related: The way Murray disrupts an offense is beyond rude, and congress should retroactively outlaw the Kawhi Leonard trade just so we can see what happens when those two trap a ball-handler at midcourt.)

Murray is a razor blade in the open floor, and only Eric Bledsoe increases his team’s transition frequency more dramatically. He’s constantly looking to set teammates up on a secondary break, but when he’s looking out for his own shot it adds a dynamic dimension to a team that desperately needs it.

There’s still value in forcing a defense to think its way through a hedge-maze of screens: It’s mentally and physically exhausting — an easy way to pick up a cheap foul. This isn’t to say San Antonio will desert their old ways entirely, because they don’t sprint off makes like other teams do. But it no longer makes sense to slow things down, especially when defense is no longer the backbone of your success. Coming off their worst defensive season since the beginning of time, these Spurs can no longer rely on stops like they once did, and their shot profile stays antiquated (they’re first in long twos and second to last in shots at the rim and behind the three-point line).

The Spurs rank 18th in half-court offensive efficiency, too. It’s early, but so far that struggle helps rationalize their desire to find easier buckets. Not to isolate one mistake and use it to diagnose a fundamental imperfection, but watch this miscommunication between Trey Lyles’ brian and the play Popovich had just drawn up in a timeout.

Running through a script 20 times a game is hard, especially when so many new players are being incorporated into the system, and a bunch of them are really young.

Who knows whether the Spurs will keep their foot on the gas all year, or how they’ll adjust to opposing teams that realize pressuring Murray full court and slowing him down might cut the head off a snake. (The Los Angeles Lakers recently made use of that strategy by hounding Murray with Avery Bradley.)

Either way, adopting a faster style has generally been a good thing. It won’t take them to the NBA Finals, but will minimize their self-inflicted spacing issues and reduce the pressure that comes with having to execute in the half-court, over and over again. Furthermore, the Spurs like to play all-bench units more than any other team except the Denver Nuggets. It makes sense for them to get up and down, ever closer to modernity in their own disciplined way.