Congrats!

I know that there’s still a few games left, and that the #1 seed in a tournament only means something if you take advantage of it (Hi there Pitt!), but 60 wins and the best record in the West is an accomplishment worth taking a minute to celebrate.

I do want to address one issue though.  All season long, I’ve heard how the Spurs have put an increased emphasis on the regular season, but I contend that the media is perpetrating a fallacy.  In my eyes, the Spurs minimum 10 game improvement over last year has more to do with health, something that Gregg Popovich repeated about a million times this year, than anything else.

I think there’s more to it than that though.  During the 2009-2010 season , the Spurs went 25-9 against teams with sub.500 records, matching their number of wins against plus.500 teams.  However, this season they are 34-2 against the losers while being bit more terrestrial against the winners at 26-17.  Both are certainly improvements year-to-year, but the 94.4% winning percentage against loosing teams is truly outstanding.  That 21% increase shows that really, what the Spurs did this year was take care of business.

postscript: There are a ton of other metrics I could wax eloquent about to  demonstrate how the Spurs improved this year; but given the wrap amongst Spurs fans that they often play down to their competition, I find this one to be the most telling.