Free Chasing Perfection: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the High-Stakes Game of Creating an NBA Champion by Andy Glockner

positive, and the players in positions four through nine were highly positive contributors.
    The initial jump in the Spurs’ curve comes from the number two through five players being very close in minutes, along with Kawhi Leonard’s (number five in overall minutes) emergence as a bona fide star. The curve beyond that, though, tracks on a path similar to the NBA average, just three to four net points above the trend for every spot. The result, according to Levy, is that “spreading minutes more evenly is not the sacrifice for the Spurs that it is for most other teams in the league. In fact, if you use the ratings of each Spurs player from last season, but redistribute their minutes so as to match the league average pattern, their projected net rating changes a whopping . . . 0.1 points per one hundred possessions. That difference is small enough that it wouldn’t even affect San Antonio’s win projection across the entire season. Their sacrifice really isn’t a sacrifice at all.”
    Basically, because of San Antonio’s quality of depth, the way in which they shaved minutes for their main players and allocated them to supposedly lesser ones didn’t impact them at all during the regular season. Popovich, in 2013–14 at least, was able to make sure his best players got as much rest as they could, and saw no impact on the Spurs’ overall record. That’s an amazing advantage, especially in a league where being healthy in the playoffs is paramount. The relative freshness showed up in profound fashion in the final three games of that season’s NBA Finals, when the Spurs played some of the best offensive basketball in recent memory to vaporize a worn-down Heat team, closing Miami out in five games for the franchise’s fifth championship.
    While the conclusions are compelling on paper, it still takes proper man management from Popovich and buy-in from all of his players to make things work. While it may seem from the outside that the Spurs make it easy, plugging and playing whomever to cover for the absence of someone else, it’s not, and on this night in Denver, after a99–91 Spurs victory, Duncan explained how the series of injuries—especially at the point guard position—was affecting these Spurs.
    “It does impact us. It impacts us tremendously, but we find a way to adjust,” he said. “We’re not going to sit back and complain about our depth. Those guys are going to step up, and luckily we have some guys like Manu [Ginobili], who’s been here for a long time and understands what [the team] wants and needs to be done. Marco [Belinelli]’s still figuring out his way, but we trust him with the ball, as well. And luckily, we run an offense where a lot of people touch the ball, so we’re not needing one guy to sit there and set everything up for us, so that plays to our strengths.”
    Before the game, Popovich noted that he had been “managing” the Spurs through NBA seasons for two decades, so this particular one—while daunting—didn’t provide any challenges he hadn’t seen before. Duncan, who arrived for Popovich’s second season on the bench and has never left, agreed that the way Popovich managed the team makes a lot of sense for them.
    “Pop’s a master of that,” Duncan said about his coach’s ability to strategically utilize the roster. “He’s been through enough seasons that he understands what we want to do and we have to rest at times. The guys, the players, we want to go out there and play every game, but that’s really going to wear us down at some point, so there’s a happy medium there somewhere. We can keep minutes down and sometimes [when we] play back-to-backs, sometimes the older guys can’t. We just have to play it by ear and see how everyone feels.”
    Does Duncan, who has forged one of sport’s most powerful and successful bonds with his head coach, get any say in when he rests as the team’s enduring superstar and eldest statesman?
    “No, I’ve never gotten an