When I think about basketball, I often think about puzzles. It is common for the sports media to refer to a player as "the missing piece" on a certain team, and so the jargon fits. If you've ever built a puzzle, you know that the first step once the pieces are all out of the box is to turn them over and locate the corners. After the corners, you can work on filling in the outside edges of the picture. Once the outside edges and corners are intact, you can work your way inward piece by piece until the entire puzzle is complete. As you build your puzzle, you constantly refer to the picture of the completed work on the box. You know what the end product should look like. You just have to get all the pieces to fit together.
A modern NBA team is an extremely complex puzzle. In the salary cap era in which every team has a finite amount of money in which to spend, general managers must try to fill out their rosters in a way that maximizes wins while minimizing cost. Pay too much to one or a set of players and there won't be any more money available to complete the puzzle. But fail to attract anyone worth paying a lot of money to obtain and your puzzle will permanently lack the corners and edges needed to get the puzzle making process off the ground. To make matters worse, the pieces are constantly moving and shifting. A shiny solid piece one day can become completely unusable the next, while a piece that you brought in thinking was a certain shape can change that shape and in turn its ability to fit with its surrounding pieces at a moment's notice.
All of these vast potential problems with individual puzzle pieces inhibits most NBA teams from ever getting close to completing a championship puzzle. But for those that can solve their individual puzzle piece issues, their reward is to enter a much more difficult phase of the game: trying to fit those pieces together. There are many strategies used by coaches to get their pieces to fit together, but this too is a part of the game that has extremely high difficulty, especially in an era where players are paid so much and their egos are often so high.
Pat Riley has his work ahead of him this off-season to try to keep this current Heat team in tact
Every puzzle is so fragile and can break at a moment's notice. This is well chronicled throughout NBA history. The Celtics of the 70's, The Bulls of the 90's, the Lakers of the 00's. Every puzzle looks like it is built to last forever. Until it immediately crumbles. This is why the San Antonio Spurs championship puzzle that was created in 1999 and has stayed in tact while taking many different forms and is held together even today is so unbelievably impressive. Instead of breaking apart and rebuilding from scratch during this run, RC Buford, Greg Poppovich, and the entire Spurs staff has found a way to constantly reform the puzzle as the pieces have shifted and changed.
But even more than this, they have found a way to make the puzzle better. You see, in the NBA there is no box that you can stare at and refer to during the puzzle building process that helps you visualize the exact look of the whole puzzle. Instead, coaches blindly work with pieces and hope that they can fit them together long enough to get close to completing the whole picture. The Spurs, remarkably, have managed to build a box that truly works as a model for them in building their puzzle. And this isn't the same box that they have been using for the last 15 years.
The Spurs have won five NBA Championships in the last 15 years (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2014)
From the time Tim Duncan was drafted in 1999 until the Spurs were swept out of the playoffs in 2010, the strategy was to use the extremely sturdy corner of Tim Duncan and build the whole puzzle around him. In 1999, Tony Parker became a 2nd corner piece. In 2001, Manu Ginobli a 3rd. And then, for the next 13 years (and counting), the Spurs built their puzzle around these three corner pieces. The corners were so strong that the other pieces could be easily swapped out and fit into the whole and a successful championship picture was always either in tact or just a piece or two away from being formed again.
But like all puzzle pieces, these three pieces didn't stay new and shiny forever. This especially goes for Tim Duncan, who was the sturdiest and most frequently used corner piece from the time that he was drafted in 1997. Every puzzle piece that was added was somehow connected to him. So, the puzzle making Spurs staff decided that they once again had to change the picture. Duncan must take a smaller role and shrink the size of his piece. The inner pieces must be enlarged, and the size of the puzzle as a whole must grow. More pieces, with each piece taking on a more equitable role. It took four years, but the Spurs have done it. They have their box. It's quite the colorful picture, and it looks like this:
( Here is the plan: have a fast, smart, well shooting point guard run the offense. Surround him with a sniper shooting guard, a jack of all trades small forward who can guard the best opponent's player and make open shots, a stretch four power forward who can score inside and out, and a rebounding big who can also pass the ball well from the high and low post and occasionally score in isolation situations. In addition, every one of these pieces must buy into the idea that they are only a single piece of the whole puzzle, and therefore they are not more important than the picture as a whole or any other piece.
Via NBA.com: The Spurs have transformed from a slow, methodical Duncan led offense to a European Style Powerhouse without sacrificing anything on defense.
Of all the pieces in this puzzle scheme, it turns out that one is the most uniquely shaped and difficult to find. And it's surprisingly not one of the age old corner pieces. Instead, the rarest piece is the one that is large enough to rebound well, but smooth enough to pass with precision and at times run the offense. It is sharp enough to hit wide open shots, and durable enough to post someone up and occasionally score over them. This is the piece of the ultimate Spur, the purely versatile piece that can fit in anywhere in the puzzle. This piece might forever be known simply as "the Boris Diaw."
The importance of Boris Diaw to the 2014 Spurs is impossible to understate. What is more concrete is the difficulty of finding a similar piece to fit into the puzzle once his piece retires or moves onto another team. Lots of players are 6'8 or 6'9, but how many can score inside AND outside? And of those few players, how many of them can pass like a point guard? How many can fell comfortable filling every one of these roles and switching between them effortlessly from moment to moment?
As good as Tony Parker is, Patty Mills has shown that he is eventually replaceable. Danny Green and Kawai Leonard are the future for the Spurs at their positions. As great as Tim Duncan has been in his career, his current role as a double double guy who can pass from the high or low post is replaceable as well. In time, maybe that guy will end up being Tiago Splitter, who is already on the roster under a long term contract and who continues to make huge improvements in his game year after year.
But how do you replace Boris Diaw? A 6'9 Power forward point guard?
(blogs.sacurrent.com)
I couldn't believe my eyes, but a few weeks ago I heard of a player who was described as a 6'9 "point-forward." A guy who was the "best passer in the draft," the "most versatile player," and unbelievably, quite prophetically..."the next Boris Diaw." His name was Kyle Anderson. I was so unbelievably happy when I found out that he existed.
I immediately dove into Kyle Anderson research. His stats in his senior season at UCLA seemed almost too impossibly Spur like: 14.6 points, 8.8 rebounds, and a Pac-12 best 6.5 assists per game!? And only as a sophomore!?!
Digging deeper, the Spurs parallels just kept coming and coming. There is a video of him telling a group of young kids about the Spurs and how they should value watching them. Everyone who watched the Spurs destroy their opponents in the 2014 playoffs saw it as well. Look no further than his own twitter feed for proof:
The perfect player to replace a seemingly impossible to replace piece of the puzzle. The next Boris Diaw.
Only, their was a catch. He was so highly regarded that every mock draft had him getting drafted before the Spurs picked at 30. Some drafts even had him going as a lottery pick. Could the Spurs do as they did for Kawai Leonard and trade up to get him? If they did, who would be the guy they would give up? Who would be this year's George Hill? No, I didn't see them doing this. So I watched the draft and just prayed. I prayed that every other team would focus on the corners and the edges and leave the most valuable and rare Spurs piece alone. Let him fall to #30 Lord, please let him fall to #30.
Pick after pick went and my euphoria rose. He's still there at 20!!!!! He's still there at 25!!!??!!!!
And then....OH MY HE'S STILL THERE AT 30!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What were the Spurs staff members possibly thinking at this point!? How did he drop this far!? Did they think they were dreaming!? I sure did! I got up off the couch and started screaming,
DRAFT KYLE ANDERSON!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And then, the pick came in....I was crouched in anticipation...waiting to jump up in pure exhilaration and pump my fist...when the announcement came:
"With the 30th pick in the 2014 NBA draft, the San Antonio Spurs Select...KYLE ANDERSON!!!!!!!"
And just like that, the feeling that I had when they won the NBA title just weeks before came immediately back to me. WE DID IT!!!!!!!! WE GOT HIM!!!!! WE HAVE OUR PERFECT BORIS DIAW PUZZLE PIECE FOR THE NEXT TEN TO FIFTEEN YEARS!!!!!!!!!
I wanted to scream it from the top of the roof for all the world to hear. Yes, the beautiful offensive juggernaut of a system will continue along. And I wasn't alone. Even when Duncan and Ginobli soon retire, the Spurs will find a way to continue to replace the pieces and once again adapt the puzzle. Because of Duncan, Parker, and Ginobli's historic run as the Spurs three corner pieces for so long, the puzzle has evolved with their help to be able to eventually move on without them. And in this effort they will have the most unique piece to work with at their disposal.
Kyle Anderson, welcome to the San Antonio Spurs. For you, truly, are made to be the perfect Spur and the perfect fit in the championship puzzle.
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