SACRAMENTO, CA - MARCH 17: Victor Wembanyama #1, Stephon Castle #5 and De'Aaron Fox #4 of the San Antonio Spurs smiles during the game against the Sacramento Kings on March 17, 2026 at Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by down loading and or using this Photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2026 NBAE (Photo by Rocky Widner/NBAE via Getty Images) | NBAE via Getty Images On February 20th, I wrote a fan post in which I introduced a metric called the Average Four Factor Index (aFFI). I won’t provide a full primer on the index here (interested readers can find one in the original fan post by clicking here), but the TLDR explanation is that the aFFI is designed to assess a team’s average performance during a defined period (e.g., the season to date, the most recent X-game period, etc.) based on the team-opponent differentials it has achieved with respect to Dean Oliver’s Four Factors of Basketball Success: effective field goal percentage (EFG%), turnover percentage (TOV%), offensive rebounding percentage (ORB%), and the ratio of free throws made to field goals attempted (FTM/FGA). Because aFFI focuses on team-opponent differentials, I add a delta symbol in front of each term (i.e., ∆EFG%, ∆TOV%, ∆ORB%, ∆FTM/FGA). View Link At the time of the original post, San Antonio was 38-16 and had the the third highest season-long aFFI value (56.98). Since then, the Spurs have added 16 more wins and just two losses, pushing their season-long aFFI to 57.87, which is firmly ahead of third-ranked Detroit, albeit still notably behind OKC. A full 30-team list of season-long aFFI values and the underlying differential percentiles behind them (based on games played through March 24th) is provided in Figure 1 above. Of course, especially this close to the playoffs, aFFI values based on the entire season to date can significantly misrepresent the outlook of a team. To get at that, we can narrow our reference period to only capture performance during a more recent period of games. Exactly how to define this window is debatable, but in practice I’ve found that the most recent 20-game window strikes a nice balance between capturing relevant performance and retaining enough sample size to prevent singular events (e.g., a really good or bad game) from distorting the results. A set of team rankings based on 20-game aFFI values through March 24th are provided in Figure 2 below. View Link As measured by its most recent 20-game window, San Antonio has been far and away the best team in the league according to aFFI, with a nearly three-point lead over second place. Quite irritatingly (for draft reasons), Atlanta sits in that second-place spot, though OKC and the Knicks are within a few tenths of a point. In comparing Figures 1 and 2, it is clear that some teams are surging (e.g., Atlanta), whereas others are currently stumbling to the finish line (e.g., Denver, Minnesota). Of course, these rankings have to be interpreted with caution and don’t account for critical details like player injuries; however, with about 10 games left to go in the season, I tend to lean on this 20-game aFFI value to assess the contender status of playoff-bound teams. Put simply, the evidence above suggests that the Spurs have been excellent all year and are the strongest team in the league heading into the postseason. However, a historical point of reference would be useful to better understand just how good this current iteration of the Spurs is. For that, I’ll echo the previously mentioned fan post and compare the 2025-2026 Spurs to the 2013-2014 championship team according to the evolution of each team’s 20-game aFFI value over the course of the season. View Link When I first made this comparison over a month ago, I noted that a defining feature of the 2013-2014 championship squad was their stunning run towards the end of the season, which included a 19-game win streak that pushed their 20-game aFFI from near league average to over 63 by game 75 of the season. At that time, I noted that this season’s team was going to need a similar run to reach the heights of the 2013-2014 Spurs, and low and behold they’ve done exactly that. With 10 games left before the postseason, today’s Spurs are exhibiting a level of play that rivals the last Spurs champions at their regular-season best. Does this mean we should view the current team as having the same championship odds that the 2013-2014 Spurs had? In terms of regular season statistical performance, I’d say “yes” without hesitation; however, I’ll be the first to admit that stats aren’t the only factor at play here. In particular, the 2013-2014 squad had decades of collective playoff experience, including a three-person core of hall of famers who had played together in every postseason dating back to 2002-2003 and won three championships together. Beyond that, they were a team hell-bent on redemption after their gut wrenching loss to Miami in the 2013 finals. In contrast, the current Spurs are rife with playoff neophytes who have never been tested in a seven-game series, including every member of its starting core outside of De’Aaron Fox (who has logged a total of just seven playoff games), plus some role player championship experience from Harrison Barnes and Luke Kornet. History strongly suggests that this lack of experience will hurt San Antonio come playoff time, and it’s hard to ignore that benchmark when trying to develop objective expectations. However, a counterargument is that this team is led by a historically unprecedented player who appears to have no qualms about redefining what’s possible. I can’t quantify the value of that, but I can tell you that it has fundamentally shaped what I think this team can achieve. ...read more read less