Wrapping Up the Season: Months, Quarters, and Wide Open Threes

How did the San Antonio Spurs fare this season by month, in quarters, and when shooting or defending wide-open threes?

Photo credit: Reginald Thomas II, Spurs.com

With the San Antonio Spurs’ season wrapping up last Sunday, I’ve started closing out my databases from the regular season. I’ve already compared the Spurs’ game tracker from this season to last, and I looked at each player’s shot chart.

Now, I want to analyze three other areas from the Spurs’ season: how the team played in each month, how the team fared in each quarter of a game, and how the Spurs shot wide-open threes compared to their opponents.

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Month by Month

Here are the Spurs’ offense, defense, and net rating numbers for each month of the season, plus their ranking for that month. I combined October and November since October had just a handful of games.

As we see here, the Spurs were at their best in the first three months of the season. They opened with the 11th-ranked defense and then had a slightly below-league-average offense from October to December.

In those first 19 games, most of the core rotation players were healthy and playing, except Jeremy Sochan and Devin Vassell. Vassell had a late start to the season due to injury, and he only played in five games from October to November. Sochan sustained an early thumb injury and only played in seven games during that stretch.

In December, the Spurs had almost everyone healthy and playing in games from the roster pre-trade deadline.

In January, the Spurs’ defense slipped, falling to 19th. All the rotation players were mainly available except for Sochan, who played in just six games that month. The team did have a busy schedule that month, plus they went to France for a two-game series against the Indiana Pacers.

February was the Spurs’ worst month of the season in basketball scoring, and the team had some significant changes. For one, during February, the Spurs acquired De’Aaron Fox. Victor Wembanyama played in just six games that month after the Spurs announced he would have to miss the remainder of the season due to a blood clot, while the Spurs were resting during the All-Star break.

In March, without Wemby and then Fox, who played in just seven games to undergo season-ending finger surgery, the team had its best month of the season scoring the ball, but at the same time, without Wemby for a whole month, they were dead last defensively.

April was a shorter month with just eight games. During that time frame, the Spurs saw Sochan miss the entire month, while Vassell and Keldon Johnson missed some games. The team also played some opponents who were resting key players in different games.