MIAMI -- The San Antonio Spurs ran circles around the Miami Heat in Game 4. That phrasing is usually reserved for metaphors, but Thursday night, it described something closer to reality.
During the 107-86 loss, the Heat were habitually a step slow on defensive rotations and looked completely gassed by the end of the Spurs' assault. A team that features LeBron James, Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh shouldn't look this powerless on the floor.
The question is how? How have the Spurs trailed for just 28 of the 192 minutes in this series? How are the Spurs completely dismantling the two-time defending champions?
The Spurs are hitting the Heat where it hurts by moving the ball at a ridiculous rate. The Spurs always have made a living by giving up a good shot for a better shot. This has been their modus operandi for more than a decade. But against the Heat, they've taken it to another level. Remember, a passed ball always moves faster than gassed feet. Always.
The fatigue factor
The Heat have made the Finals four seasons in a row. They're the only team to do that in the past 25 years. Hall of Fame careers have come and gone since the Boston Celtics last did it in 1987. Actually, it has been so long that the average NBA player, at 26½ years old, wasn't even alive to see it.
But rather than cower in the face of the Heat's accomplishment, the Spurs are doing something else: They're using it against them. The Spurs look like the fresher team in the Finals probably because Gregg Popovich designed it this way. He managed his team's minutes with the long haul in mind, probably more so than any other coach in the league. Not a single player on the Spurs' roster averaged more than 30 minutes per game. It's first time in NBA history that has ever happened.
The Spurs have been ahead of this fatigue curve for years, arming themselves with injury prevention and player-tracking data to make sure they get the most out of their aging players. Three years ago, the Spurs' D-League affiliate became one of the first teams to wear Catapult accelerometer devices in games to track player workloads, heart rate and distance traveled. Almost half the league uses Catapult for practices now, and it's worth pointing out that the Heat are not one of them yet.
However, you don't need an accelerometer to uncover this startling fact: The Heat's big three of James, Wade and Bosh has played a combined 10,000 minutes more than the Spurs' big three since the 2010-11 season.
To be precise, the difference is 10,230 minutes, which is roughly equivalent to five additional NBA player seasons (2,000 minutes) on top of what the Spurs' star trio has accumulated over the same time span. The massive difference is partially a product of the Heat's winning ways, but it's not as though the Spurs have been golfing in late April the past few years. Judging by the minutes allotted to his stars, Popovich has deliberately made sure that his best guys save the best for last.
The minute management benefits the Spurs in two dimensions. Not only are Duncan, Parker and Ginobili fresher in the postseason, but the supporting cast has become empowered. The speedy Patty Mills averaged 18.9 minutes per game off the bench for the Spurs and made more 3-pointers than any Spurs player this season. According to SportVU cameras, no NBA player runs faster on average than Mills, at an average speed of 4.9 miles per hour this season. Now, he's playing better than ever. With corner 3 after corner 3, he tallied as many points in Game 4 as Mario Chalmers has all series (14).
The Heat shouldn't be the ones looking so old considering the Spurs' trio has a combined age of 104 years. But no one looks older than Wade, even after missing 28 games in the regular season. Still, as the chart above illustrates, the odometer has been pushed plenty even before the 2013-14 season. The damage might already have been done in 2012-13, when he played through a 27-game win streak despite knee issues and then needed to miss time in the playoffs because of recurring soreness.
It's hard to remember a game in which Wade looked worse. In Game 4, he shot a brutal 3-of-13 and seemingly spent more time flailing on his back than on the attack. After turning the ball over trying to dribble around Kawhi Leonard and then fouling him on the other end, Heat coach Erik Spoelstra had no choice but to bench him with 5:03 left. During the Spurs' timeout with 3:38 left in the game, a worn-out Wade sat on the bench for about a minute before joining the rest of his team in a huddle on the court.
Passing makes perfect
Wade struggled to keep up with the Spurs' ball movement on the other end, but he wasn't alone. The Spurs have whipped the ball around at such an alarming rate that it feels as if our eyeballs need a breather just to keep up.
The Spurs have been running a passing clinic throughout the series. Boris Diaw, who is stating his case for Finals MVP just two years after being waived by the worst NBA team in history, said after the game that the Heat's swarming defensive schemes play into the hands of the pass-happy Spurs.
"If we [had] to do only one dribble and find somebody open and shoot it, we'd do it, too, but they force us to make three, four, five passes," Diaw said. "I always to try to read on the floor who is going to be open. We all try to make good passes."
SportVU player-tracking data on NBA.com indicates that the Spurs have passed the ball 367 more times than the Heat in this series, with most of those gains coming in the past two games. This disparity is even more astounding once you consider that, entering the Finals, the Heat had actually passed the ball more times per possession than the Spurs this postseason, as pointed out in an earlier Per Diem. Turns out, the Spurs have given the Heat a taste of their own medicine.
"Man, they move the ball extremely well," James said after the game. "They put you in positions that no other team in this league does, and it's tough because you have to cover the ball first, but also those guys on the weak side can do multiple things."
Defending the ball movement appeared to be equally taxing for the Heat as it was deflating. According to ESPN Stats & Information's tracking of Game 4, the Spurs shot 10-of-14 (71 percent) on shots that came off possessions in which they made at least five passes. The Spurs ended up with 25 assists compared to the Heat's 13. The crazy thing? Underscoring how evenly distributed the Spurs' ball distribution was in Game 4, only one Spur had more than three assists (Diaw had nine).
The Heat have two days off before their elimination game arrives Sunday, and they'll need every minute to regroup. So far, the Spurs are proving that it doesn't matter that the best player belongs to the opposing team. They did it against Kevin Durant in the Western Conference finals, and they're one win away from doing it again in the NBA Finals against James. The four-time MVP scored 28 points Thursday, which was as many points as the rest of the Heat's starting lineup combined.
As the rest of the Heat look gassed around James, the Heat have to figure out how to turn back time and beat the fatigue. But it might be too late. As has been the case all series, the Spurs are one step ahead and now only one game away.