I’m not going to lie, I came into this game a bit disgruntled. First, I found out that Victor wouldn’t be playing in the team’s first contest against a competent opponent in some time. Second, the OKC-Lakers game had started, and it was already abundantly clear that the Spurs weren’t going to be gaining any ground in the standings via this game. Put simply, I found myself reflecting on the real possibility that San Antonio could lose against the Clippers, which – together with OKC’s win over the Lakers – would have just about slammed the door on any chance of the Spurs securing the #1 seed.
Thankfully, this iteration of the Silver and Black is exceptionally deep came to play last night despite their best player being out. As a result, San Antonio mostly cruised to yet another blowout victory. On top of that, they managed to produce a box score with a number of interesting gems:
What are Team Graded Box Scores?
Very briefly, these box scores grade winner-loser differentials for basic box score statistics, with the grade being based on the winning team’s differential relative to other NBA winners during a defined reference period. Think of it like a report card for understanding how a given winner performed relative to other winners. The reference period used runs from the start of the 2012-2013 season to the latest date of play, including only games in the same season category (i.e., regular season and playoff games are not compared to each other).
Data Source: The underlying data used to create these box scores was collected from Basketball Reference. In all cases, the data are collected the morning after the game is played. Although rare, postgame statistical revisions after data collection do occur and may affect the results after the fact.