Final Regular-Season Grades for Every San Antonio Spurs Player
Months ago, it would have seemed crazy to suggest that the San Antonio Spurs could enter the 2015 playoffs with the West's second-best record.
Having struggled as a team due to poor individual play from a handful of key contributors, the Spurs appeared poised to finish toward the bottom of the Western Conference playoff picture. Yet with one game remaining in the season, San Antonio can realistically capture that No. 2 seed.
The team has been flawless over the past month, having not only won its last 11 games, but doing so in dominant fashion.
The late surge is the result of a team effort, but it's also a reflection on each player's personal improvement since the season's start.
The year hasn't been a walk in the park, but San Antonio is once again primed to compete for a title thanks to a handful of dynamic contributors.
Note: Grades were established based on success relative to pre-season expectations as well as the player's general performance over the course of the season.
The Other Reserves
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Marco Belinelli
Marco Belinelli's tenure with the Spurs seemed to have peaked in the opening half of his first season with the team, but the second-unit scoring spark has continued to be crucial to the team's success. Patty Mills' struggles have opened the door for Belinelli to make a greater impact off the bench, something he has certainly accomplished by averaging 9.3 points in just 22 minutes of action.
Grade: B+
Cory Joseph
Cory Joseph dazzled in the opening quarter of the season as he filled in for the injured Mills. The fourth-year guard showed off an expanded and polished offensive game to go along with his stellar perimeter defense. Though he fell out of the main rotation when Mills returned, he has since regained his position as the leading backup point guard.
Shooting the ball efficiently, Joseph is certainly deserving of his spot in the rotation. Though his playoff contributions could certainly change things, 2014-15 was a breakout season for the Texas product.
Grade: A-
Aron Baynes
Aron Baynes isn't a superstar, but he accomplished everything the Spurs needed from him this year—and then some.
Emerging as a legitimate fourth big man, Baynes proved himself to be a rotation player with an offensive game that showed major improvements. Consistently setting new career highs over the course of the season, Baynes has been one of the nice surprises of the season.
Grade: A-
Patty Mills
Patty Mills was put in a position to succeed when he returned after missing the opening part of the season recovering from shoulder surgery. After a breakout 2013-14 campaign, Mills was immediately thrown back into the primary backup point guard position despite stellar play from Joseph.
However, inefficient shooting from the floor and from deep has hurt Mills' value, as he no longer provides the scoring punch off the bench that was so crucial last year. He has since fallen into the third-string slot and will likely remain there for the postseason.
Grade: C-
Matt Bonner
Matt Bonner continues to be an end-of-the bench locker room guy with little responsibility other than to simply shoot threes. He isn't doing that at his usual 40-plus percent clip, though, and still struggles defensively against opponents in the post.
Grade: C
Kyle Anderson
Rookie Kyle Anderson got the Joseph treatment and spent the entire season yo-yoing between San Antonio and its D-League affiliate in Austin. He averaged 21.3 points, 8.7 rebounds and 4.8 assists, making his first season a success even if it wasn't spent primarily on an NBA stage.
Grade: B
Jeff Ayres
Jeff Ayres only saw time in blowouts, and even then he managed to frustrate Spurs fans. His was the most frequent name in the rumor mill, as it appeared that he would be cut—like Austin Daye—in order to clear room around the trade deadline. Nothing developed on that front, but the fans' collective view of Ayres didn't change.
Grade: D
Reggie Williams
Reggie Williams was a late-season addition to fill Daye's roster spot. He remains a roster-filler with too small a body of work to be graded.
Grade: N/A
Key Reserve: Boris Diaw
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Boris Diaw struggled in the opening months of the year, as Spurs fans became worried that his breakout 2014 postseason campaign was primarily a fluke.
He shot the ball poorly, especially from deep. His inability to make defenses pay from the perimeter took its toll on the rest of his game, as opponents guarded the paint more closely knowing Diaw would be hesitant to shoot.
However, much like others on the San Antonio roster, the last month-and-a-half has seen a gradual improvement in Diaw's game. He's shooting the ball better, opening up more opportunities for the rest of the team elsewhere on the court.
Andrew Snyder of Hoops Habit weighed in on Diaw's turnaround:
"As the end of March draws near, and the playoffs beckon, Diaw is starting to look like the Diaw that destroyed the Thunder in Game 6. In his last five games, he has averaged 14.6 points per game on 58.9 percent shooting. The Spurs are 4-1 in those five games, all wins coming against teams currently in line for a playoff berth.
His shooting stroke has also returned, he has drained six of the ten three-pointers he has attempted during this stretch. The small sample size caveat applies, but it looks like Diaw has his mojo back.
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While it seems unlikely Diaw can duplicate his accomplishments from Game 6 of the 2014 Western Conference Finals, his recent slate of games forecast a promising playoff campaign for the backup big man.
He remains an impact player in every facet of the game and, despite rough patches through the season's first half, is still one of the top second-unit frontcourt players in the league.
Grade: B-
Sixth Man: Manu Ginobili
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In his 19th NBA season, Manu Ginobili has finally set his sights on retiring, telling the Argentinian newspaper La Nacion that he'll have officially called it quits by the end of next season at the latest (HoopsHype).
In a separate interview with the site, he admitted that 19 years has taken its toll on both his body and his love for the game (h/t Project Spurs' Jeff Garcia):
"Every day, every game, I have to do a lot of things to get to the arena, everything hurts. The competition and every day lost some meaning and although I’m passionate when I’m on the court, basketball is not the first thing on my list of priorities. Therefore, the two or three months that I have for vacation, plus the pains that I have, make that selection not my priority. I do not feel well.
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But even if the game is no longer kind to Ginobili, he's still a crucial component to San Antonio's formula. Despite playing limited minutes, the veteran guard is among the most dynamic scoring sparks in the league. He serves as both the primary playmaker and scorer of one of the league's strongest second units.
Though he no longer takes over on a nightly basis, Ginobili is still good enough to single-handedly give the Spurs an advantage over other benches throughout the league. His ability to play a variety of roles has made him an invaluable piece to the puzzle given the injury bug that struck San Antonio early in the season.
However, it's evident that age is catching up to the former All-Star. He's certainly on his way out, but there's no denying he'll be among the league's most dynamic bench sparks until he officially hangs it up.
Grade: B
Point Guard: Tony Parker
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Tony Parker didn't play very much middling basketball this season.
While his 2014-15 statistics—14.2 points on 48 percent shooting—might indicate consistent mediocrity, his night-to-night play was rarely pedestrian. Rather, Parker's performances ranged from subpar to stellar, with few falling between the extremes.
His increase in productivity from February to March alone tells the story. Parker's scoring average climbed from 12.5 to 18.2 and his field-goal percentage jumped from 39.6 to 55.5 percent despite comparable playing time over the two months.
It can be argued that Parker—who suffered a hamstring injury that sidelined him for much of December—wasn't entirely healthy until the past month or two. He struggled to finish underneath and lacked the explosiveness with which fans have come to associate him.
But as his superstar finish to the Spurs' up-and-down season shows, the team's overall success is reflective of his individual play. When he's on, the entire offense clicks into a higher gear—though the opposite holds true when he's failing to create good spacing and open opportunities for both himself and his teammates.
So while his play over the course of the season was—depending on the stretch—either superstar-caliber or uncharacteristically awful, Parker's overall performance was neither of the two extremes. The playoffs provide an exciting new chapter for Parker to either boom or bust, but his regular season—for all of its fluctuations—can be collectively judged as mediocre.
Grade: B
Shooting Guard: Danny Green
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For the most part, what Danny Green contributed this season was neither pleasantly surprising nor disappointing.
The shooting guard is now recognized as one of the league's premier three-and-D specialists, and his season averages of 11.8 points and 41.8 percent shooting are certainly consistent with the offensive reputation that he has developed.
His solid perimeter defense was also a critical (if expected) part of the Spurs' success.
However, Green continued to impress people with an expanded repertoire of other offensive moves. He's slowly coming into his own off the dribble and has begun to attack the basket with a greater tenacity.
Nevertheless, he remains a lethal long-ball shooter before everything else. Having broken the Spurs' single-season record for three-pointers made, his floor-spacing contributions have ultimately proved to be his most valuable to the team.
He's still streaky but as a whole enjoyed another fine season as a standout role player on a talent-filled team.
Grade: B+
Small Forward: Kawhi Leonard
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In case you've been living under a rock this season, I'll reiterate what nearly every NBA fan has come to realize:
Kawhi Leonard is really, really good at basketball.
People expected Leonard to continue his growth this season, but few could have expected the 23-year-old to become such an integral piece so fast. Despite a crowded roster filled with veteran stars, Leonard led the team in scoring while also leading them defensively along the perimeter.
He's become one of their top options, something that Parker discussed last week, via Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News:
"It’s like me and Manu back in the day. We have to share, you have to wait your turn and sometimes I won’t see the ball for a long time, because Kawhi is unbelievable and it’s going to be Kawhi’s team anyway. Like Timmy transitioned to Manu, Manu transitioned to me and now it’s going to be transitioned to Kawhi. I’ll try to do my best to stay aggressive and be involved, but Kawhi is going to be the man. He’s playing great and sometimes I’ll have nights like this where I have the ball, but most of the time it’s going to be Kawhi. We have to transition to that. He’s young, he’s playing great, and he’s going to demand double teams. So I’ll play off him, like all those years I did with Timmy.
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In the last two months alone, Leonard is playing like a top-10 player after struggling offensively for a while. As noted by Bleacher Report's Stephen Babb:
"Beginning with a 22-point outing against the Phoenix Suns on Feb. 28, Leonard topped the 20-point mark in six consecutive games for the first time in his young career. Earlier this month, he tied his career high of 26 points in consecutive games—games in which he played just 24 minutes apiece.
Things have been going well, with averages topping 19 points per game in March and April. Leonard made 53.1 percent of his field-goal attempts during the former and an even gaudier 57.3 percent with one game remaining in the latter. That's crazy efficiency for a guy who suddenly gets the lion's share of his buckets from the mid-range and beyond.
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Even if it took him the full season to get there, Leonard has officially made the leap to warrant a max contract over the summer. Given how important he has been to San Antonio's success, the team would be foolish to even hesitate wrapping him up long-term.
Grade: A
Power Forward: Tim Duncan
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Tim Duncan is just 10 days away from his 39th birthday, though you'd hardly know it from his play in 2014-15. To put it simply, Duncan was brilliant this season, not only in relation to expectations but compared to the rest of the league.
From the season's start, the veteran big man has been among the league's most effective defenders in the post. ESPN's Marc Stein.com picked Duncan to be the Defensive Player of the Year after the season's first trimester, and now, with the postseason just days away, he remains a legitimate candidate.
He has been a force offensively too, at times. Though the team's depth kept his averages grounded, Duncan came through as a dynamic scoring option in critical contests—such as his 29-point (12-of-15 from the floor) effort in the Spurs' 104-103 win over the Houston Rockets on April 10.
In fact, like many players on the roster, Duncan appears to be closing the regular season on a high note. He was named the Western Conference Player of the Week after posting weekly averages of 17.3 points, 9.8 rebounds and 3.25 blocks.
It was a fitting end to a fantastic regular season from the league's second-oldest active player, who proved again that experience can, in fact, trump youth. A dominant playoff run would seal the deal, but even looking at his success thus far, Duncan's 2014-15 accomplishments are among his most impressive.
Grade: A+
Center: Tiago Splitter
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Tiago Splitter's court time has been limited this season. The big man opened the year with a calf injury and has played in just 52 games as a result.
Even when he's made an appearance, Splitter has been used sparingly, averaging under 20 minutes per game.
Initially, Splitter struggled on both ends of the floor. He failed to anchor the defense as he did in previous seasons and looked to have regressed offensively.
He fell out of the starting lineup for a short while but ultimately found his way back into the team's leading unit and subsequently excelled. As Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News noted in March, Splitter's return helped spark one of San Antonio's many turnarounds this season:
"Splitter’s return to the starting lineup on Feb. 27 reunited the unit that anchored the Spurs’ Finals teams in each of the past two seasons.
In 116 combined minutes since then, the starters are shooting 58 percent together while limiting opponents to an average of 91 points per 100 possessions. Splitter is averaging 9.0 points, 5.4 rebounds and 0.9 blocks while shooting 56.6 percent in that span.
The group has a net rating of plus 25.4 points per 100 possessions in 182 total minutes this year, fourth in the NBA among 176 five-man units that have played at least 100 together.
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He isn't a superstar, but as long as he's playing solid defense and hitting open shots, Splitter remains an essential cog in the machine.
Grade: B
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