Digging a bit deeper into the San Antonio Spurs success

San Antonio Spurs' Tim Duncan (21) is pressured by Dallas Mavericks' Samuel Dalembert (1) during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Sunday, March 2, 2014, in San Antonio. (AP Photo/Eric Gay)

I profiled on Tuesday the San Antonio Spurs who, no, I'm confident now saying, are never going to let age catch up with them and get bad ever.

One of the things I pointed out about San Antonio is that, despite playing a more subdued, conservative style and ranking just about at the bottom third of the league in shot attempts per game, the Spurs still score the ninth-most points per game in the NBA.

Part of the reason for that is they shoot three-pointers very well – better than anyone else in the league, in fact, at 39.1 per cent as a team. They also shoot free throws very well, at an NBA-wide fourth-best 78.9 per cent.

But that doesn't tell the whole story. The Spurs only rank 17th in three-point field goal attempts and they sit all the way down in 28th in the league in free-throw attempts. Basically, they take a proportionate amount of threes compared to their overall shot total and don't actually draw shooting fouls very often, despite their proficiency from both the three-point and free-throw lines.

Part of that is probably, as I wrote, because the Spurs are not the most athletic or talented team anymore, but have long been among the NBA's smartest. If they all of a sudden started chucking threes at a high frequency or playing at a quicker pace and drawing more fouls, their fundamental style would be altered (and they very likely wouldn't be nearly as good).

So how do San Antonio score so many points, then?

The reason, of course, is that they have the league's second-best field goal percentage as team, at 48.8 per cent, behind only Miami.

The charts below, courtesy of the invaluable NBA.com/stats, tell us how they manage that. Pretty much, they pound the rock inside and score it most of the time they do. (click to enlarge)

Playing around with the numbers from the seven best teams in the NBA (Miami, Indiana, Oklahoma City, San Antonio, Houston, the Clippers and Portland) there are a couple obvious trends - they go inside and score, and they jack corner threes (the most efficient shot in basketball, statistically) and score.

Miami, not surprisingly, are especially adept at this. They've attempted 481 corner threes this season, far and away more than any of the other top-7 (this is almost literally the only thing Shane Battier does anymore, and the bulk of what Rashard Lewis does), hitting 44.28 per cent of them while going close to the basket on 42.85 per cent of their shot attempts and converting them 65.76 per cent of the time (tops among the NBA's seven best teams, very likely tops overall).

This is nothing new with the Heat gameplan. Surround LeBron James and Dwyane Wade-on-his-good-days with a bunch of shooters and Chris Bosh kind of filling the middle.

San Antonio thrive though not by having LeBron, but by almost more than anyone else in the league except the Rockets (more on them in a tick) focusing their offence inside.

Of the Spurs' 4,939 attempts this year, over half (2,540) have come from within that zone closest to the basket or been a corner three. They shoot from one of those three zones on the floor 51.43 per cent of the time. The Spurs draw their attempts purely from the inside 43.63 per cent of the time (2,155 attempts).

It's pretty much in line with Miami, who have taken 2,394 of their 4,464 total attempts from those places (53.56 per cent). Both teams are much more aggressive with it than Indiana (45.25), Oklahoma City (47.71), Los Angeles (46.27) and Portland (43.06).

Houston lap the field, of course, taking shots around the basket or corner threes a ridiculous 60.39 per cent of the time, because they go inside with over half their shots (52.86 per cent of the time).

(The Rockets' six most-used players, ranked by percentage of shots taken inside: Dwight Howard, 93.26; Terrence Jones, 73.63; Chandler Parsons, 49.86; Jeremy Lin, 44.23; James Harden, 38.00; Patrick Beverley, 35.10. Even their guards take it in at unusually high rates – Harden has created a remarkable 850 attempts close to the basket this year. It's almost reminiscent of how baseball's A's forced their batters to take walks as detailed in the book Moneyball.)

Obviously, even with Howard largely playing inside and Jones getting down low, the Rockets owe their dominance at creating inside shots to their guards who are so good at getting to the hoop.

San Antonio don't have those same kind of slashers, with only Kawhi Leonard (43.13 per cent of 422 chances inside, 14.45 from corner threes) really mimicking what Houston's inside-out players do.

Instead, the Spurs kind of spread it around for a Houston-lite effect.

Their guard rotation of Patty Mills (18.82 per cent of 477 chances inside, 14.26 per cent from corner threes), Marco Belinelli (25.44 per cent of 515 chances inside, 11.46 per cent from corner threes) and Danny Green (20.17 per cent of 357 chances inside, 21.00 per cent from corner threes) play a pretty rounded inside/corner game.

Tiago Splitter (93.59 per cent of 234 chances) and Boris Diaw (57.51 per cent of 433 chances) largely stay around the basket to do poor man's imitations of Howard/Jones.

That leaves Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, and Manu Ginobili, who pretty much combine to do the heavy lifting that pushes the Spurs into the NBA's upper-echelon of inside-scoring teams.

The three have combined to create 877 attempts inside, over 40 per cent (40.70, to be exact) of San Antonio's total inside shot attempts, making 520, good for a 59.29 per cent success rate.

Taken in all, it's pretty clear the Spurs employ a simple team effort that focuses first on getting inside (their 2,155 total atempts inside and 43.63 per cent rate of taking inside shots are both second among the NBA's big-7 behind Houston) and then asking the role players to sink their share of corner threes.

They succeed at it because everyone's pretty good at it.

The Heat (65.76 per cent as team inside) and Clippers (61.21 per cent) make a higher percentage of inside shots thanks to LeBron (975 shots taken inside, a ridiculous 76.48 converted) and Blake Griffin (1,051 shots inside, 63.59 per cent made).

Houston take a higher percentage of their shots inside thanks to a collection of slashers and Dwight Howard.

With the Spurs, though, it largely comes down to the fact that coach Gregg Popovich asks every player to go inside reasonably often, and they all do it reasonably well. Check it out –

Mills:

Leonard:

Belinelli:

Diaw:

Green:

San Antonio go down low effectively (among the NBA's seven best, they're second in shooting percentage inside to Miami and second to Houston in frequency), and then make their share of corner threes. Pretty simple old trick for an old dog.