Box Grades: Spurs Notch Eighth Straight Win In Yet Another Blowout

The Spurs have now won three straight games by 25+ points, with a cumulative point differential during that span of +82. Since the start of 2012-2013, there are just 65 other instances in which a team has achieved a three-game point differential that high or higher at any point in the regular season. Granted, San Antonio’s competition during this period hasn’t exactly been staunch (to put it mildly), but it’s also true that the Spurs could have won each game by MUCH more had they not coasted toward the finish line.

Although blowouts like this can be a bit boring to watch, they tend to produce highly variable box scores. This is because a blowout can be generated in many ways, ranging from being marginally better at lots of things to dominating in one key area. This variability also means that games of this kind often yield rare outcomes, as was the case here:

• This contest marked yet another game in which San Antonio won comfortably without scoring more points than their opponent from distance (the last time the Spurs did so was against the Kings on March 17th, where the Spurs set a franchise record for made three pointers). In fact, this was just the 44th time since the start of 2012-2013 in which a team won a regular season game by 32+ points without having a 3PM margin above zero.
• The Spurs inability to score more than Milwaukee from three had nothing to do with poor shooting, as San Antonio went 14-of-35 (40%) from distance, earning a +9.57 percentage-point edge in 3P% over the Bucks. However, Milwaukee’s significant advantage in volume (+11 3PA) resulted in both team’s making 14 threes.
• Even though the Spurs couldn’t outscore the Bucks from distance, they had no trouble piling on points from the field in general. With a minor edge in FGA (+2) and major advantage in FG% (+11.38 percentage points), San Antonio made 11 more baskets and earned a +22 point differential over Milwaukee from the field.
• By far the most interesting part of this box score relates to fouling and the free throw line. First and foremost, the Spurs committed just SIX fouls as a team. Since the start of 2012-2013, this was just the eighth regular season contest (out of 16,778 games) in which any team (winner or loser) was charged with no more than six fouls.
• Given that the Bucks committed 12 more fouls than San Antonio, the Spurs enjoyed a sizeable advantage in FTA (+14). Even though their shooting percentage from the charity stripe was a middling 75%, this edge in volume allowed San Antonio to extent their lead by an additional 10 points.
• This was just the 32nd time since the start of 2012-2013 that a regular season winner enjoyed FGM and FTM differentials of at least +11 and +10, respectively. Across those 32 occasions, the margin of victory has ranged from 24 to 59 points, with an average of about 37. Taking this into account, the Spurs underachieved slightly in this game. However, they will almost assuredly have a crack at redeeming themselves when they face the tanking Bulls on Monday.

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.