Ten years ago, the beginning of the San Antonio Spurs’ end was said to have taken place when the defending champions were eliminated by the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals in Los Angeles. For a decade, tales of the Spurs’ demise became an annual tradition.
For a moment, the Spurs seemed to be the one NBA organization destined to maintain its lofty perch forever.
The 2014 NBA championship gave rise to a new MVP candidate in Kawhi Leonard, whose public persona and blank face seemed to be a perfect continuation of Tim Duncan. In truth, the absence of public personality merely gave people liberties to project whatever traits they wished on the Spurs’ young superstar.
And just as the Spurs’ immortality was finally accepted as unquestionable, Leonard’s quad injured weakened. Over time, the relationship between he and the Spurs frayed in ways we thought could never happen in San Antonio.
On Friday, news broke Kawhi Leonard was seeking an end to his San Antonio tenure, preferably to his hometown Los Angeles, and specifically to the Lakers.
Tuesday, just ahead of the NBA Draft, Spurs Head Coach Gregg Popovich met with Leonard in San Diego, hoping to reconcile and repair the relationship as he did with a disgruntled LaMarcus Aldridge a year earlier.
Kawhi Leonard’s future is the biggest question for the Spurs, but it certainly isn’t the only pressing one.
5. Where would the Spurs be without the Kawhi Leonard drama?
Last summer, the Spurs returned most of its core—minus Dewayne Dedmon and Jonathon Simmons—with hopes its 61-win season and Game 1 dominance of the Golden State Warriors in the 2017 Western Conference Finals prior to Leonard’s injury was a sign it could compete for a championship.
The team re-signed Patty Mills and Pau Gasol, then added Rudy Gay.
Gasol and Mills underperformed this season. Gay bounced back from his achilles injury better than expected and recently opted out.
This was a team designed to bridge the previous Duncan era, with holdovers Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Patty Mills, and Danny Green still on hand, Leonard’s future, and LaMarcus Aldridge and Gasol as pieces to keep the team competitive in the interim.
It was a very difficult tightrope to walk, and Leonard’s injury and unhappiness shortens that timeline drastically even if it doesn’t end up destroying it altogether.
The Gasol deal is damaging, but likely would’ve been palatable or moveable (giving up assets to do so) if the season had gone well (it didn’t). Mills is a fair contract, not a bargain one.
Gay opted out, and Green has the option to do so. Losing both was essential to spending anything more than the Mid-Level Exception and to do so means creating other holes on the roster.
Manu Ginobili is on his last legs but gives better than heroic efforts, and his ability to run the second unit, even in short spurts, is a skill set the Spurs lack across the roster.
Aldridge played at an All-NBA level last season and should be a quality second or third option at center through the remainder of his deal. All of which is fine with an MVP to tie it all together, but less than ideal in a time where the best teams have multiple MVP candidates.
So much of the Spurs’ future timeline with Kawhi Leonard was already questionable, depending on the development of younger players like Dejounte Murray.
4. Will Dejounte Murray be the last prospect the Spurs develop into a star?
For 16 seasons, Tony Parker was a staple as the Spurs' starting point guard; until this season, when Popovich finally passed the torch to Dejounte Murray.
Presently, Murray is the only Spur who combines young legs with length and athleticism, making him San Antonio’s lone prospect at developing a star.
San Antonio’s point guard development program is among the league’s best. They helped turn Tony Parker into a star and produced quality rotation players in George Hill and Cory Joseph.
Murray has greater physical gifts than all of them.
Currently, he utilizes them best on defense, earning All-Defensive Second Team honors in his second season. At 6’5” with a 7’0” wingspan, Murray helped to keep the Spurs’ elite defense intact, even without Kawhi Leonard.
He already knows how to use his length as a weapon to disrupt plays, making him a formidable defensive presence even before he’s really refined his understanding of schemes, angles, and positioning. His size makes him switchable across both backcourt positions while being able to hold his own against smaller, perimeter oriented forwards; as well as a valuable help defender.
The questions all reside on the other end.
Murray brings almost center-like production from the point guard spot, averaging 10.5 points, 7.0 rebounds, and 3.4 assists over the final 34 games. San Antonio needs him to produce like a quality guard.
Fixing his jumper is the most obvious solution, but it might not be the most important one. Murray improved his ball handling and decision-making some in his second season, but for all his gifts, he lacks the same change of pace and timing craft even a young Parker had.
He’s not an explosive finisher, relying on floaters and runners. He’ll need to add some basic junk to his off-the-bounce game and improve his finishing to provide the Spurs the off-the-bounce threat they’ve sorely needed since Parker’s decline.
That’ll be the difference between the Spurs’ next All-Star and a better offensive version of Tony Allen.
3. What of the Spurs free agents?
Kyle Anderson was a solid starter all season, stepping in admirably for an injured Kawhi Leonard, using his length on defense and playmaking abilities to supplement Aldridge. But, his lack of burst and outside shooting make him more of a rotation player to eat up regular season minutes than a reliable player in high stakes playoff games.
Bertans is a sweet-shooting forward with enough life in his legs to attack closeouts. He has better mobility than expected, but he still needs to refine it all. His strength might be more in the versatility of his shot (he can hit on the move) than the purity of it and might succeed in a system with more motion and better drive-and-kick guards.
Bryn Forbes is another generic Spurs shooter, similar to Gary Neal. His greatest value might be in making a Mills deal digestible, bringing much of the same skill set at a fraction of the quality (and price).
Tony Parker knows the playbook and has flashes of quality play when his legs feel right, which is a rarer and rarer occurrence, especially as the season winds down.
All are valuable enough to keep, but maybe not quite good enough to commit long term to. Perhaps the best hope for the Spurs is to retain most on their qualifying offer and making decisions on each next summer, when the team has a better idea of its direction.
Losing Green and Gay would be problematic. Danny Green is probably in decline, but the hub of this Spurs’ team since the 2011-12 season is the length the Spurs throw on the perimeter with Leonard and Green. Replacing him isn’t going to be easy.
The Spurs landed on Gay too much at times, mostly because they lacked any other source of scoring from the bench. It’s possible he opted out for more money at a lower annual rate (a tactic the Spurs have used in the past), but it’s also possible San Antonio will have another gigantic hole in their rotation.
Losing any of these players doesn’t necessarily bring back better players for next season and committing to them might hamper the ability to seek upgrades in the future, which is why the Spurs faced many questions, even with Leonard.
2. Can the Spurs improve on last season?
The Spurs won 47 games without Kawhi Leonard in what turned out to be something of a transition year.
LaMarcus Aldridge is probably the most underrated—or, at least, under appreciated—stars in the league. He’s not a superstar and doesn’t fit into the ultra efficiency versatile unicorns rising up across the NBA.
But, he’s capable of carrying lineups woefully deficient in scoring talent towards something nearing respectable so the defense actually matters. He knows where to be on the court and is reliable on a nightly basis, especially on defense, which was enough to make him better than Karl-Anthony Towns and Nikola Jokic this past season.
So long as he’s upright, San Antonio will be competitive.
Beyond that, it will depend on Dejounte Murray and Kyle Anderson’s improvement outpacing decline across the rest of the roster (Gasol, Parker, Ginobili). The team was built around Leonard and didn’t completely implode without him.
The Spurs will add the 18th pick, their highest selection since Tim Duncan, in a deep draft; infusing athleticism and talent to the mix with a number of wings and guards going to the Spurs in various mock drafts—from Troy Brown and Donte DiVincenzo to Jerome Robinson.
There’s the mid-level exception to use (or more, if Green opts out with Gay) and maybe a run to be made at the Denver Nuggets’ Will Barton.
If Kawhi Leonard returns in good health, the Spurs are winning 55-60 games. And if he leaves? The returning pieces should be enough to keep San Antonio near 50 wins.
1. What should the Spurs seek for Kawhi Leonard?
There have been reports saying the Spurs don’t want to trade Leonard to the Lakers, and Leonard will only re-sign with the Lakers. Followed by commentary the Spurs have no leverage and should take the best deal.
The best deal, however, probably isn’t one the Lakers can offer.
Boston’s Jaylen Brown and other pieces remain the best the Spurs can probably hope for, giving San Antonio a player similar to Kawhi in the early stages of his career and other young rotation pieces or picks.
A combination of the 10th pick and Markelle Fultz or Dario Saric and pieces from the Philadelphia 76ers probably helps to keep the Spurs going for now.
The Lakers might have the worst of the bunch.
To be clear, for a rebuilding team and competitive teams alike, any deal taking back Luol Deng’s contract to make the salaries work is toxic. Any team would need to surrender a quality asset just to take on his deal; and that’s without involving Leonard.
Lonzo Ball overlaps with the Spurs’ best current prospect, Dejounte Murray. And while Ball might be a better talent, he also comes with drama San Antonio might not want to deal with having experienced public drama for the first time in years this past season.
Brandon Ingram and Kyle Kuzma are quality young pieces, but do either project into foundational pieces? And how much of this window and the future is wasted with Deng’s dead salary?
Teams never lose star players for nothing. If you lose a player, you get worse, then you get lottery picks which give you opportunities to find new stars. The question is, will Ingram and Kuzma be worth paying as two of your top three players moving forward with little to no path to a better player moving forward?
Even in a best-case scenario where Ingram is a Paul George-like player, is that enough to stake as your best player when Aldridge and Popovich are gone in two or three years?
Roster building is done in terms of windows. Teams cycle through players until a worthwhile core emerges, then you invest in it for a few years to see where it goes while, hopefully, remaining flexible enough to move off it.
Tobias Harris and two lottery picks from the Clippers might better fit the Spurs’ window of having a star (or psuedo-star) now and pieces to build on for the future.
Ten years ago, in Los Angeles, the basketball world wrote that the beginning of the end was near for the Spurs. Today, things look bleak for San Antonio in Southern California. Can they prove everyone wrong again?
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