The Toronto Raptors and San Antonio Spurs Can Take Their Fingers Off the Panic Button

Apr 19, 2015; Los Angeles, CA, USA; San Antonio Spurs guard Tony Parker (9) go after a loose ball against Los Angeles Clippers forward Blake Griffin (32) and Los Angeles Clippers guard Chris Paul (3) in game one of the first round of the NBA Playoffs at Staples Center. Mandatory Credit: Richard Mackson-USA TODAY Sports

The first slate of playoff games is behind us and NBA pundits are sharpening their knives to finish off certain teams, even though everyone needs to lose at least another three times. While six of the consensus favorites won, the Spurs and the Raptors both left their first games as losers.

I want to quickly mention a few things where distancology indicates that this could be more a fluke than anything else.

And always keep in mind:

Los Angeles Clippers vs. San Antonio Spurs

To visualize each playoff matchup with distancology, I show the average offense and defense of each team during the season, in comparison to the offense between the two teams during the season (which is at least three games) and the offense during the playoffs (with a momentary super-small sample size of one). The result for Clippers and Spurs is here:

I have to admit that I haven’t seen the game yet (living on the other side of the globe is not helping here), but let me quote Seth again:

As you can see, for both Clippers and Spurs the shot frequency against each other is relatively similar for their season and their playoff matchups. The Spurs offense is at the upper part of the graph and the Clippers offense at the lower (note: upper and lower do not have any qualitative meanings in this regard).

The big difference for the playoffs is that the Clippers three-point percentage is off the charts and the Spurs shot only 10-of-30. And if we want to see, if the 30 three-pointers were well-defended (looking at average defender distance):

Air-tight defense does not seem to be the case.

Toronto Raptors vs. Washington Wizards

The one game that was at an acceptable time – and I was stuck with watching people taking contested midrange jumpers. Furthermore, Toronto shot 6-of-29 on three pointers – and just like the Spurs most of them were not highly contested.

The problems for both San Antonio and Toronto is that, of course, even one night of bad shooting can be fatal. But at least it is better than being hopelessly matched (Hello, Brooklyn!).