The Spurs have turned into a FORCE... (and it's scary)

The Spurs have now won eight straight games, tied for first in the West with an 8-2 record, and they are turning into an absolute force. And the lineup that is doing it is one people have been telling them to change since the start of the season. Kenny Smith, Charles Barkley, just two among a vast sea of people questioning this three-guard group, saying either it's too small or it won't hold up or the bench just won't be able to score at the same pace without one of them there. But this five-man group, the three guards, Harper, Castle, and Fox, alongside Vassella and Wemby, have played more than any other five-man group in the NBA. And not only that, they top every five-man group in net rating as well. Not a single other five-man lineup across the whole NBA has done what they've been able to do. The lineup that a lot of people have been vocal against, the lineup that a lot of people, let's be honest, wanted gone, is literally the best one in the league that has played any more than like nine or ten minutes together. So here's why it's proving everyone wrong and why the whole league absolutely needs to be nervous. The Spurs have gone from 0-2 to an absolute force. Eight Eight straight wins. By 119 points combined, nearly 15 points per game of those wins. Six of those eight wins were by double digits, 10 points or more. Four for four on the road in that stretch. We're talking Dallas, Utah, Sacramento, Portland. And for the season, the Spurs are scoring 118.4 points a game. Meanwhile, the defense is solid as always, only allowing 108.1, outscoring teams by over 10 points every single night. And while their record is tied for top of the West, they sit second because OKC has the tiebreaker. But any team with a bad starting lineup or a questionable starting lineup, it just is not able to do this. But we do have to remember where this all started, because that's where a lot of the doubt was seeded. The Spurs lost their first two games, 116-104 to OKC, 114-110 to Houston, and then Wemby shot one for 13 in the opener. But now the Spurs sit at 4-2 at home, 4-0 on the road, and the only losses came when you were figuring out your rotations, figuring out everything at the start of the season. That's where the calls to change the lineup started, but now the question is, what are these five doing that people calling for a change are missing? Well, let's go back a little bit. Let's look at the first week of the season. You beat Sacramento by 27 points. Wemby scored 29 points on 14-21 shooting. In only 27 minutes, all five starters were plus 12 or better. Next night, Utah. Closer game. OT, 117-111. But the five starters played between 37 and 39 minutes. Wemby's highest minutes total of the season, 36-14. Vassell at 21. Once again, every starter was a plus in that game too. This is a team that finishes games with the same five on the floor usually. They win. You look at games like Minnesota, Fox had 22, Wemby had 43, Castle scored zero, and you still managed to win. That's the thing about this special group. Every night, even if somebody is cold, it doesn't matter. They are able to still be net positives and still have a huge impact on winning. This lineup, I know it has its questions, but right now it's leading the Spurs to be in a tie for the best record in the league. And I still think 55, even 60 wins is a possibility. And if you think so too, you can get quite a bit on Calshi. If you trade $25, this video is brought to you by Calshi, where you're trading against real users, not the house, like traditional sports books. You're buying yes or no contracts on real life events. Like the weather, like politics, like sports. How about Wemby MVP? Right now, he's tracking for it. I know Luka's doing Luka things, but Wemby is Wemby. If you're interested in trying out Calshi, use the link in the pinned comment or description down below. Use code DIGESTNBA to get $55 when you trade your first 25. Thank you to Couchy for sponsoring this video. Why not just continue down this season? Utah came to San Antonio, they lost by 20 because every starter for the Spurs was a plus in that game too. Vassell, team high, plus 26. Castle, plus 24. Wemby was actually the lowest plus minus of the starters. Then you win in Sacramento and Portland on back-to-back nights, 124-109, then 125-103. In Portland, Wemby only needed to play 24 minutes and the game was over. Every starter continues to be a huge net positive every single night. This last one, the lowest of the starters, was Castle at a plus 19. It's unbelievable to watch this. And every night it feels like, other than maybe Wemby, a different starter manages to get theirs. So. There's nobody for a defense to take away. These guys are tackling from all different angles, whether it's Wemby going to the rack, whether it's Fox controlling the pace, whether it's Harper putting up 15 or 20 points a game. Even though Steph Castle has had some issues that we're going to dive into in a minute, this team just cannot be stopped, and the Spurs have now not lost since October 24th. Here's your Spurs group. Fox, Harper, Castle, Vassell, and Wembinyama. They score 114.5 points per 100 possessions. Their defense only gives up 107.6 points per 100 possessions. That's a net rating of plus 7. Plus 7 in 106 minutes played together, which, as I mentioned earlier, is the most minutes of any five-man lineup in the whole league. The offense, 1.8 points per 100, better than league average. The defense, 5.1 points per 100 possessions, better than league average. The group some people have called too small or too strange is still stopping teams. Now, a lot of that is thanks to Wemby, but this defense has held three different teams to 103 points or fewer. Utah 97, Sacramento 103, Portland 103. It's crazy. Before this last game against Portland, the Spurs were actually second in net rating, still first among any team that had any more than 30 minutes together. But even after this game in Portland, they still jumped the Grizzlies lineup of all lineups with Ty Jerome, Isaiah Stewart, Wells, Coward, and Boozer. They actually have a pretty good net rating at 5.9, but the Spurs were so good against Portland that they fully jumped them. And now not even a minutes restriction. I think it's like any lineup with more than nine minutes, eight minutes. The Spurs are at the top. If you sort by one or two minutes played, some lineups get these outliers, but San Antonio is doing something that no other team can do. But again, it's not just what the lineup is doing. It's the sample as well. Like if you look at any other, the next closest lineup with at least 50 minutes played, the next closest lineup with half as many minutes played is the Lakers with Luka, Theibel, Reeves, Kessler, and Laravia. They are at a net rating of plus 4.3. Reminder, the Spurs are at plus seven. Most groups in the league are not even close to the 106 minutes, and yet the Spurs are still firmly at the top of the list. Just for reference, the only other team that has a five-man lineup with at least 100 minutes played is the Hawks, with Alexander Walker, Okungwu, Jalen Johnson, Dyson Daniels, and CJ McCollum, and they're only at a plus 1.7 net rating. Far cry from the Spurs. Every one of those 106 minutes has Victor Wembanyama in it. With him on the floor, the Spurs net rating is ridiculous. The Spurs sit at a net rating of plus 26.5 over 303 minutes with Wemby on the floor with him off minus 15.5 over 182. Do you know what kind of swing that is? That's a 42 point swing. Look at what he does for this lineup that people were at times worrying about with Wemby on the floor. The Spurs allow 98.6 points for 100 possessions. That is genuinely insane. That is 14.2 points for 100 possessions better than league average. With him off, they allow 123.2. The offense goes from 125.1 points for 100, which also is 12.4 points for 100 better than league average, all the way down to 107.7 with him off. This 42-point swing is insane. And he's on the floor for 303 of the Spurs' 485 minutes, which is 63% of them. And this is all considering he- Shot one for 13 in the opener. He's had some games where he hasn't been quite himself. But over these last nine games, he's been averaging 31 points. And the advanced metrics are absolutely almost like unimaginable. Right now, what we're learning is that the three-guard group is not too small, right? Like, it's four players who can handle the ball, shoot, they can stand around the best rim protector in the league, and if you put four shooters and playmakers around him, every team has to decide what to give up. But there is a bit of a caveat with the shooting right now, because that is maybe the one area where this lineup could afford to improve a little bit. So let's dive deeper into the three guards and maybe less so on the Wemby impact. Harper is the Spurs second leading scorer behind Wemby, putting up 17, 21, 19 and 13 over the last four games. Fox is averaging about 14 points and six assists through 10 games, making his free throws, getting to the line about five times a game. Not too bad. He's playing steady, solid basketball, even though he only put up eight and six against Portland. He was still a plus 23. And when a guard scores eight and still moves the game by 23 points, he's doing the work that often doesn't show up in the points. And I think his steady play has really helped contribute to San Antonio's success so far. Vassell, some nights he's on. He had five threes against Sacramento, five of six from three, which is pretty good. He was a plus 26 in Portland. But there is a question about Steph Castle. Right now, he's just not quite getting to the level that we want. But there is a bright sign for his future too. Castle was the best spur in the opener, by the way, 24 points on nine of 21 with five threes. But right now he's shooting only 32.8% from three, very close to last season's 33.2%. But as we know, Castle in the second half of last year was a lot closer to 40% than he was to 30%. So far this year, he just hasn't got it going, but he's also been shooting a lot more 6.7 threes attempted per game instead of just the 3.6 last year. But what is maybe more alarming is that his free throw attempts per game have fallen from 5.6 down to 1.9. There's a great article about this on Air Alamo that discusses the drop in Castle's offensive effectiveness. And this is the one number that definitely stood out to me. Right now, he's kind of a guard still trying to find his job in this lineup. And we knew it wasn't going to be smooth sailing. The Spurs are winning. They're winning their time very clearly when these guys are out there. But all that said, these three guys are all sacrificing a little bit to their own numbers. And Castle is still kind of floating around, not finding that same rhythm that he was in last season. He was a plus 24 against Utah, plus 19 against Portland. So the issue isn't his impact. It's that the way he was scoring last year. It's just not really happening this year. He's not shooting as well at the rim. He's not getting to the line nearly as much. His three-point shooting has continued to struggle despite double the attempts. And with all that said, I would say that's even good news because we know this is not going to stay this way for the whole year and the Spurs are still fantastic with him on the floor. In fact, with Castle and Fox on the floor together, the Spurs are a plus 23.6 net rating over 202 minutes. That's pretty good. Even the Air Alamo piece on Castle's new role asks for more trips to the line. Not a new starting five, right? Like no one's calling for Castle to get benched. Like no one is calling for that. But there are things that we can all improve with the starting lineup. And I think that's why other teams might want to get nervous because there are a lot of things that we haven't seen yet with the Spurs lineup. Castle figuring his offense out a little bit. Fox putting up some more points. The Spurs bench not. Just bleeding points every time Wemby goes out. Tobias Harris. All these things together and the Spurs still winning eight in a row is incredible. It's a force right now. This is not a fluke that the Spurs are winning these games. And if you want to break this lineup up still, you'd still have to bench someone. Harper has scored 13 or more in all 10 games. Fox, Vassell, Castle, they continue to have great plus minuses. Vassell, the best shooter of the group. He's had some hot days, right? Like you can't get rid of the shooting of Vassell. Fox is just very, very steady. He's maybe the one that people want to put to the bench. Or if you want to keep his steadiness. Then you say Castle to the bench because he hasn't been playing well, but I think that's ridiculous because Steph Castle is still looking like an all-world defender. I mean, some of these games, I'm like, man, he legit has a chance for all defensive first team. And look, these guys know that they're good too. Harper said on November 5th that the lineup has so much talent, the defenses are forced to, quote, pick your poison. Castle said the same thing. We have so many weapons and so many things we know teams can't guard. And way back on October 14th, Wemby said, after the first game with this group, just as confident as last year, Nobody got worse. Mitch Johnson said on October 23rd that he was confident in the Fox, Castle, and Harper group and that it needed just some more time together. Now, they've had that time. We're 10 games in, they played 106 minutes together, and the Spurs are 8-2 while this lineup is the most used and the most effective five-man lineup in the entire world. So Michael, we got to just leave this alone for now. Look, eventually there might be more questions that come up about this lineup. And I'm sure there will be. I'm sure there are players that, well, show up in this lineup like Tobias Harris that might change the dynamic. We might end up working things around. We might have injuries. But for now, like, how do you mess with something that's working? And I know a lot of these games have been against. Lesser caliber teams. Portland was a real team that, you know, we saw last year in the playoffs. And they have Damian Lillard now. And like, yeah, they've been hurt a little bit as well. Yeah, sure. I mean, that's fair. But still, like San Antonio to crush them, to crush all these teams the way they're crushing them. Like, you're not just skirting by like you did against Dallas. That was kind of a one-game outlier. This lineup, like, how can I disagree with the numbers? Again, a lot of it, you could argue, is Victor Wembanyama's ridiculous impact. I'm There's something special going on right now. starting And the defense, especially with this five-man lineup, is why it's winning, right? The offense is good. In the shooting, maybe you could hope for a little more. And that's where guys like Champagne and maybe even Tobias Harris can come in and out of this lineup, sure. But like, Wemby is a big reason to this lineup can work and can win together. speak And while 106 minutes over the course of a full season, Is a bit of a small sample. They're still screaming like out to everyone. now. Guys, look at what we're doing. No team in the league is comparing to us in net rating in terms of the minutes we've played. Like, and there's still a lot of room to grow. Like I said, with Steph Castle starting to live at the rim a bit more, maybe get him some more free throws, knock down a couple more threes. Look, people have been making their cases to switch it up. Like we saw that interview of Dylan Harper after the Spurs last win, not the one against Portland. Say, hey, you know, like. You know, or after the, that was after the Wemby 50 piece, I think. And so I guess Dallas, um, and, and Chuck was like, Hey, you know, like you're, you're confused by this three guard lineup too, right? Look, I think a lot of those questions, if the Spurs keep doing what they're doing, are going to go out the window. Now, when you see a bit of a tougher stretch of games coming up, then maybe you'll, you'll figure some other things out, but let us know down below as well. Is there someone that you think needs to step up even more first? Is it maybe Fox scoring more? Is it Castle scoring more? Is it someone else? Is it someone on the bench? Maybe I know we can go back to Luke Cordell, but let us know down below. And if you want this group to keep winning, make sure you hit that free subscribe button. I'll see you all in the next one.