After the Spurs’ home win over the Oklahoma City Thunder on December 23, Spurs’ radio announcer Dan Weiss released this remarkable stat on X:
This observation got me thinking that a seven-game winning streak with a different leading scorer in each game has probably never been accomplished before. Most teams that are good enough to win seven in a row have two or three stars that take most of the shots and score most of the points each game. Even for teams that share the ball more than star-centered offenses, the odds of this particular streak happening is very small.
One reason for this streak: Victor is happily coming off the bench so as to not to disrupt the team’s run. Another reason is something I mentioned before: former starter Keldon Johnson embracing his sixth-man role. In very related news, the Spurs have eight players averaging double figures. So you don’t have to look it up, the eighth Spur averaging double figures so far this season, other than the seven listed above, is Julian Champagnie, who is averaging 10 PPG.
As my Knicks fan Marc pointed out, the Spurs’ “winning streak” included a loss to the Knicks in the Cup Final. But if the NBA is not going to count that as a regular season loss, neither am I. Including the Knicks game would also mean I couldn’t have written this post.
Two facts — seven different players leading the team in scoring, all wins, and the eight players averaging double figures — led to me to look for another team with a similar sharing style to see if this very cool streak happened before. Completely at random, I chose the Beautiful Game 2013-14 Spurs and took a look at the history books. That team had six players average over 10 points per game, and two others, DannyGreen! and Boris Diaw, averaged 9. (See if you can guess the six who averaged 10 plus for the Beautiful Game Spurs. Time’s up. You probably got Tony Parker, the Great Duncan, Kawhi Leonard and My Man Manu, you might have gotten Patty Mills, and anyone who got the sixth is a true Spurs fan: Marco Belinelli.) Parker led the team in scoring, but averaged “only” 16.7 PPG, a low figure for a team’s leading scorer.
Remarkably, that team had eleven (!!) different players lead the team in scoring at some point during the regular season. Those eleven players were the eight mentioned above, plus Tiago Splitter, Corey Joseph and … Austin Daye. But did that team match this team’s seven-game winning streak with seven different leading scorers?
The 2013-14 Spurs had two separate streaks with five different players leading the team in scoring. First, a Manu, Parker, Belinelli, Splitter, Duncan run in early January, but the team went only 4-1. In March, the team had another five game streak with leading scorers Mills, Green, Manu, Parker and Belinelli, and the team won all five games. But the team never had a six-game streak, let alone seven in a row like the present Spurs. If that supremely balanced team, which ended the season with a 62 -20 record with a 19-game winning streak from late February to early April, including an unbeaten month in March (16-0), did not do what this Spurs team just accomplished, I am now even more convinced that no other team has done so either.
Back to the present, the Spurs needed Champagnie, or possibly Luke Kornet, to lead the team in scoring on Christmas Day to stretch the streak to eight games. Unfortunately, Champagnie had a goose-egg and Kornet had just 6 points, far short of Fox’s team-leading 29 points.
Of course, the team was not at all concerned with their unusual streak. Instead of lamenting the end of that streak, the Spurs’ third consecutive win over the defending champion Thunder had this close-knit team dancing happily as if they were in the San Antonio version of a Charlie Brown Christmas special.
