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

opinion,” he semi-deadpanned, going against published accounts of his relationship with Popovich. “I just show up for the games.”
    As much as the coach played it down and the star player joked about it, though, all of the injuries and the schedule and their ageseemed to take a toll on the 2014–15 Spurs. While only Leonard ended up playing more than thirty minutes a game for the season (Duncan ended up at 28.9 minutes), there was a much bigger concentration of production in San Antonio’s top three minutes guys (including Green) than the year before, along with a huge drop-off in support from the players in spots four through twelve.
    All three of Leonard, Duncan, and Green finished with box plus-minuses (BPM) of at least 5, which placed all of them in the top thirteen in the entire NBA for players who played at least one thousand minutes. The trio more than tripled the previous season’s combined BPM for the team’s top three in minutes played. But after that, San Antonio was a mess.
    Parker never really fully found his health or his stride and turned in the poorest season of his career, his diminished offensive productivity no longer offsetting his steadily worsening defense as he ages at what’s now a very athletic position across the league. Boris Diaw, who had been a huge positive the season before, was barely positive at a BPM of 0.1, and four other players besides Parker also finished with a negative BPM for the season. The Spurs’ BPM curve got much, much steeper than the season before, and the back end of the team’s rotation became much closer to an average NBA bench than an elite one.
    The combination of all of that ended up being too much to overcome. The Spurs lost at Memphis on the final night of the regular season to drop from the number two seed to number six in the ultra-compact Western Conference playoff order. They then were beaten in the first round after seven incredible games with the Los Angeles Clippers. In that series, neither Leonard’s nor Green’s performances were of the same caliber as their regular seasons, and Parker went from bad to abysmal, shooting just 36 percent from the field while not making a 3-pointer the entire series (on nine tries). And with Popovich distributing minutes in a more staggered fashion than during the regular season (Duncan and Leonard both played almostthirty-six minutes a game in the series), even improved play from the back of the rotation wasn’t quite enough to save them against a very good opponent.
    It’s no coincidence that the Spurs subsequently re-signed Leonard and Green to long-term contracts, then lured former Portland Trail Blazers standout forward LaMarcus Aldridge in free agency. While no one knows when the Tim Duncan era will finally end in San Antonio, the Spurs did everything possible to make sure his supporting cast was much better than it was in 2014–15.
    The 76ers and Tanking’s Sneaky Side Benefits
    The question was posed while sitting in the well-appointed office of Philadelphia 76ers (and New Jersey Devils) CEO Scott O’Neil, a handful of long outlet passes away from the Wells Fargo Center in the Philadelphia Navy Yards complex hard by the Delaware River. Would the team’s notoriously tight-lipped and media-averse general manager, Sam Hinkie, be willing to discuss the club’s analytics approach that’s fueled the most hotly debated team rebuilding strategy in sports?
    O’Neil pondered the request briefly before saying, somewhat matter-of-factly, “Yeah, Sam probably won’t talk to you. He doesn’t talk to anybody.”
    That much is unequivocally true. Hinkie, who came to the franchise from the Houston Rockets in 2013 after having worked under chattier statsmaster Daryl Morey, does not talk on the record (or, really, very much off the record, either) about the masterplan for the 76ers, who at the time of this conversation were moving through the second season of a radical long-term overhaul. Hinkie’s reticence, though,