NBA: 10 Best Frontcourts In the League
By Brad Rowland
3) San Antonio Spurs
Tiago Splitter, Tim Duncan, Kawhi Leonard
It is almost unfair to select only three players to represent the defending champion Spurs. Boris Diaw (among others) has been a vital part of the process in San Antonio, but for the purposes of this ranking, we will go with the “starters” and include Splitter, Duncan and Leonard.
Tim Duncan is the greatest player of his generation (at least in my view), and he has been the best player on five championship teams, placing him elite company in the history of the game. At the age of 37 for most of last season, Duncan was incredibly effective, averaging 15 points and 10 rebounds per game in only 29.2 minutes, and his PER remained quite high at 21.40 while maintaining his elite defensive acumen. “Counting” numbers are quite interesting given the way that the Spurs have approached playing time in recent seasons, but there is little drop-off from Duncan, and he remains an elite player when he’s on the floor.
Then, there is the NBA Finals MVP from 2014 in the form of Kawhi Leonard. Like Duncan, Leonard does not have the traditional “superstar” stat line (12.8 points, 6.2 rebounds per game), but he also averages less than 30 minutes per game, and the 23-year-old is one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA. It is impossible to forget his breakout campaign in the Finals against the Heat, but Kawhi should have been in the national consciousness long before that, and he is poised to take the reins from Duncan as the face of the franchise in the coming years.
Rounding out the trio for San Antonio is underrated big man Tiago Splitter. Many publicly shamed the Spurs after they issued a $9 million-per-year contract for Splitter, but he is a perfect role player for San Antonio as a rim protector, and he routinely posts above-average advanced statistics. Splitter is quite clearly the “number three” player among this group, but there is a reason that San Antonio invested heavily in his services, and that move has proved fruitful for the club.
In short, the Spurs keep rolling along, and they care not for your big-time “traditional” stats.