If Poeltl hadn’t become an abhorrently, historically bad free throw shooter-after making nearly 60 percent at the line during his final season in Toronto, he’s now down to 31.6 percent, one of the 10 worst charity-stripe marks ever among rotation players-he’d be a linchpin starter.
RUDY GAY DEFENSIVE RATING FULL
Opponents shoot just 53 percent at the rim when the 25-year-old Austrian is patrolling the middle, a full 10 percent below league average he has been, by far, the stingiest basket protector among defenders to contest at least 100 up-close shots. Poeltl ranks ninth in the NBA in blocks per game and fifth in block percentage, rejecting 5.8 percent of opponents’ 2-point attempts. (Well, except Spurs fans and herbs like me.) They also funnel everything toward Poeltl, whom San Antonio retained for the relative pittance of three years and $26.3 million in restricted free agency last offseason-and who remains the best defensive big man that nobody ever talks about. Gay and Mills work in concert, rotating on a string and interrupting opponents’ flow the full quartet combines to generate 12 deflections per 36 minutes of floor time.
Gay continues to age gracefully in his Millsap-esque third act, using his size and savvy to capably defend power forwards and centers (plus the occasional 3, here and there) and help out on the glass, grabbing more than 20 percent of available defensive rebounds. The 32-year-old Mills isn’t quite as disruptive as he was earlier in his career, but in addition to everything he brings on the offensive end-13.2 points and 2.7 assists in 25.4 minutes per game, a blistering 46.5 percent on catch-and-shoot 3s-he remains an active, energetic pest on defense. These are a pair of long, tenacious, smart individual and team defenders who can guard across the positional spectrum and wreak havoc in passing lanes. Vassell stands 6-foot-5 with a 6-foot-10 wingspan, and has from the start of the season looked like every bit the plug-and-play defensive difference-maker that draftniks projected he leads the rookie class by a mile in defensive box plus-minus, and is one of only three players averaging more than three steals and one block per 100 possessions. Murray stands 6-foot-4 with a 6-foot-10 wingspan, and already has an All-Defensive second team nod under his belt. To put that in context: The league-leading Lakers defense allows 106.5 per 100. The Murray-Mills-Gay-Vassell-Poeltl lineup has vise-gripped opponents to the tune of 80 points per 100 possessions in its limited run. This year’s model, though, has been whooping ass on the defensive end-before four positive COVID tests put the whole team on ice for a week, anyway. You might recall him turning to a Mills–Marco Belinelli–Davis Bertans–Bryn Forbes unit a couple of years back to shake the Spurs out of the starters’ midrange morass with an infusion of ball movement and 3-point bombing. We’ve seen Gregg Popovich use his bench as a change of pace to lift San Antonio out of holes before. (As I mentioned in my All-Star reserves column, those ugly splits hang largely on Aldridge, whose declining speed and quickness have made him a glaring defensive minus.) (Having that Ginobili guy around didn’t hurt.) Nor is it breaking news that San Antonio’s recent starting fives built around veterans DeMar DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge have struggled: Lineups featuring that tandem were outscored in 2019-20, and have been rinsed by nearly 10 points per 100 non-garbage-time possessions this season. That’s been one of their calling cards since before Vassell was born: San Antonio has finished in the top 10 in bench net rating every season since 1998-99, with 16 top-five finishes and seven seasons leading the league. To be fair, it’s not exactly shocking that the Spurs have a good bench. And sometimes it’s one that makes you do a double take, refresh the page a couple of times, and make sure you really read that right. Sometimes it’s a five-man lineup that suggests a team is starting to find its identity, like the Kings’ small-ball lineup that runs De’Aaron Fox, Buddy Hield, and rookie Tyrese Haliburton alongside Harrison Barnes and Richaun Holmes. Sometimes it’s a unit propped up by the heroics of a singular superstar, like an injury-wrecked Blazers lineup that rests on the shoulders of Damian Lillard. This season, for example, the lineups that have outscored opponents by the largest number of points are the preferred starting fives of the 76ers, Jazz, Clippers, and Lakers-the teams with the four best records in the NBA. These carefully curated five-man units represent the cream of the league’s crop-all marquee names and central-casting role players anchoring teams with a real shot of hoisting the Larry O’Brien Trophy. The list of the NBA’s best lineups often maps fairly neatly to the top of the standings.