Box Grades: Sacramento’s Front Office Rejoices As Spurs Cruise To Easy Victory

After an uncomfortable win over the Clippers on Sunday, the Spurs headed north to play the hapless Kings, who are locked in a desperate battle with the Nets, Wizards, and Pacers to be the most inept team in the NBA. Even so, the second night of a back-to-back is always somewhat unpredictable, and the Kings had managed to win four for their last five games. I will admit that a little part of me worried that the Spurs would lose focus and severely damage their chance of catching OKC in the standings.

I needn’t have worried. As anyone who watched this game would know, the final score dramatically overstates the level of competition on display. To get a better sense of how quickly the contest was over, consider that ESPN’s win probability tracker first gave the Spurs a 99% chance of winning with 10:49 left in the second quarter, and that was the best odds Sacramento would face for the remainder of the game.

While satisfying, games like this are also somewhat boring in the moment. However, they do typically produce some unusual and rare statistical combinations. None of San Antonio’s individual box score differentials were extraordinary by recent historical standards, largely because the Spurs were finished trying to extend the lead by halftime. However, this dominant performance still produced some noteworthy highlights:

• Fun fact: this is just the 33rd regular season game since the start of 2012-2013 in which the winning and losing team had exactly the same number of field goal and free throw attempts. In that set of contests, there are just three other cases in which the margin of victory was 28+ points.
• San Antonio enjoyed FG%, 3P%, and FT% differentials of +7.53, +12.13, and +23.08 percentage points, respectively. As a result, they made seven more total field goals, 11 more threes, and three more free throws. Since the start of 2012-2013, only 46 other regular season winners have achieved FGM, 3PM, and FTM differentials that were all as good or better than these.
• What’s especially remarkable about the 3PM differential is that the Kings performance from distance (14 makes on 36 attempts) was actually quite good. In fact, in the set of 16,695 regular season games since the start of 2012-2013, there is just ONE other case in which the winning team produced a 3PM differentials of at least +11 with the losing team making at least 14 threes with a 3P% of at least 38.89%. Funnily enough, this other case was also a Kings game, though they were on the winning end of that exchange.
• Given the score, free throws were remarkably unimportant in this game. Since the start of 2012-2013, the average number of total free throws taken in regular season games with a combined score of 236+ is almost exactly 50, and there are just 36 other cases in which that cumulative point threshold was achieved on no more than 26 attempts. As rare an event as this has been to date, it actually happened twice yesterday, with the other case being the Knicks vs. Pacers game.

What are Team Graded Box Scores?

Very briefly, these box scores grade winner-loser differentials for basic box score statistics, with the grade being based on the winning team’s differential relative to other NBA winners during a defined reference period. Think of it like a report card for understanding how a given winner performed relative to other winners. The reference period used runs from the start of the 2012-2013 season to the latest date of play, including only games in the same season category (i.e., regular season and playoff games are not compared to each other).

Data Source: The underlying data used to create these box scores was collected from Basketball Reference. In all cases, the data are collected the morning after the game is played. Although rare, postgame statistical revisions after data collection do occur and may affect the results after the fact.