Elections Today
- Pennsylvania
Recent Projections
| State | Candidate | Delegates |
|---|---|---|
 Donald Trump | ||
Pennsylvania |  Joe Biden |
How much will Tony Parker's injury hurt Spurs versus Rockets?
— -- The last time the San Antonio Spurs played a playoff game without Tony Parker, they were getting swept by the Los Angeles Lakers in the 2001 Western Conference finals four championship runs ago.
Now, 16 years later, they will be without him again after he ruptured his left quadriceps tendon on Wednesday, an injury that will sideline him for the rest of the postseason.
Nearing age 35, Parker may no longer be the same driving force he once was for the Spurs, but his performance has remained a crucial indicator of the team's success.
How will San Antonio replace Parker, and how much drop-off will they see in a tight series against the Rockets tied 1-1 heading to Houston?
How important is Parker?
Before Parker went down in the fourth quarter, Wednesday night's Game 2 against the Rockets was yet another example of how tough the Spurs are to beat when he plays well. Including Game 2, when Parker had 18 points on 8-of-13 shooting, San Antonio has gone 19-2 during the regular season and playoffs when Parker posts a "game score" of 12 or better. By contrast, the Spurs have gone just 4-6 in Parker's 10 worst performances in terms of game score.
Parker's performance appears to be a bellwether for the team as a whole, possibly because of how inconsistent it has been. Nine times this season, including San Antonio's Game 3 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies in the opening round, he posted a negative game score. So the Spurs are definitely better when Parker plays well than when he plays poorly, but what about when he doesn't play at all?
During the 19 games Parker missed during the regular season, San Antonio went 15-4 (.789) with a plus-6.8 point differential, a better winning percentage than the team posted with Parker (.730), albeit with a worse point differential (the Spurs outscored opponents by 7.3 points per game when Parker played).
And, though San Antonio coach Gregg Popovich is strategic about when to rest Parker and his other starters, the Spurs actually faced a more difficult schedule in the games Parker missed. So they've shown the ability to win without their starting point guard in the regular season, as they now must do during the playoffs.
Pop's options
The "good news" for San Antonio is that backup point guard Patty Mills has slowly been siphoning Parker's minutes, averaging a career-high 21.9 per game this season -- close to an even job share with Parker, who played 25.2 mpg.
There's a strong case to be made that Mills is an upgrade on Parker at this point in their respective careers. Mills is a substantially more dangerous 3-point shooter, having averaged 3.0 triples per 36 minutes at a 41.3 percent clip during the regular season, and is more mobile defensively.
The issue is that Mills isn't a natural point guard, which is why Popovich generally prefers to pair him with Manu Ginobili off the bench. Mills started just eight of the 19 games Parker missed, as many as rookie third-stringer Dejounte Murray. (The other three starts went to Nicolas Laprovittola, whom the Spurs waived in December.)
It's possible Popovich could turn to Murray as a starter, maintaining continuity with San Antonio's bench units. That would offer the Spurs excellent size on defense (the 6-foot-5 Murray is much bigger than the 6-2 Parker and 6-foot Mills), and they went 7-1 in Murray's eight starts as he averaged 9.5 points with a .587 true shooting percentage.
Still, that's a lot to ask of a rookie who played just 322 minutes in the regular season and 23 more in the playoffs. And San Antonio could get by without using Murray at all. That would mean extending Mills' minutes -- he played more than 30 in a game just seven times in the regular season -- and using Ginobili as a backup point guard.
Spurs' chances in this series
As devastating as the timing of Parker's injury is, it's tempting to say San Antonio might be better off without him on the court. While Popovich had tilted more minutes toward Mills this season, based on performance he should have been getting the majority of playing time at the point.
What's fascinating is that Mills actually had a stronger bellwether effect than Parker this season. The Spurs are 19-0 when he has posted a game score of 12 or better -- though this effect is mitigated by the fact that they've lost the three games where he has been closest to 12 without getting there.
It's tough to analyze the dueling effects of San Antonio's two point guards. Do they mean the Spurs merely need one of them to play well in any given game? In that case, taking away one of the two options is probably a negative for San Antonio.
Besides that question, the other factor that will determine how much the Spurs miss Parker is how they fill the minutes Mills can't play. As a near-complete playoff neophyte, Murray is a question mark, and Ginobili -- who was scoreless on 0-of-15 shooting through the first four games of the Memphis series -- is no longer the reliable contributor he once was.
San Antonio's success without Parker in the regular season suggests the Spurs certainly can beat Houston without Parker, and that this injury probably won't hurt their chances much in this series -- although Houston's home-court advantage after its Game 1 blowout win makes the series a tossup, according to projection models.
Yet simultaneously, if Popovich can't get 48 minutes of quality point guard play and has few good alternatives when Mills struggle, it is certainly possible we'll look back on Parker's injury as a turning point in the series.
Related Stories
ABC News Live