Primer: San Antonio Spurs Enters Transition Period
By: Kristoffer Ed Bellen
Tags: News, NBA, San Antonio Spurs, Spurs, Gregg Popovich

The past NBA season has been nothing but disappointment for the San Antonio Spurs as the league’s once heralded model franchise finally saw itself away from postseason, ending a record-tying 22 straight years of playoff basketball. While the Spurs found themselves at an unusual place after a lost campaign, San Antonio did, however, showed glimpses of what their future could become as they finally transition into a new period. The Bubble restart in Orlando a few months back proved, if anything, that the Spurs were willing to adapt to the demands of play of modern basketball. Ending the season with a 5–3 record (32–39 overall), San Antonio surprised a lot of teams in the process albeit facing underwhelming competition. Whether they would maintain playing in that Bubble form moving forward will be answered early on as they face the reigning Rookie of the Year in Ja Morant and the Memphis Grizzlies to kick off the 2020–2021 NBA season.

How We Got Here…

For a very long time, the Spurs have exercised its philosophy of maintaining ‘Spurs culture’ and keeping its roster as intact as possible without negating the ability to compete, until it ultimately backfired last year. This previous offseason was not different either, and, as mentioned, although it worked wonders for San Antonio in the past two decades where they won 50-plus games almost every year, the Spurs’ inability to add talent to its roster could very well lead the team to another lottery pick next year.

After losing Bryn Forbes and Marco Bellineli to free agency, the Spurs did not add new talents to its roster from last season. Instead, it opted to re-sign players who were already more familiar to the its system by offering new contracts to promising big men Jakob Poeltl and Drew Eubanks. This was expected since San Antonio waived Chimezie Metu and guaranteed the contract of Trey Lyles. Since then, DeMar DeRozan decided to pick-up his player option and while there were rumors about the Spurs trading its veterans to try moving up in the 2020 NBA Draft, no deal never really materialized.

On draft day, San Antonio kept its 11th pick — in what had been the Spurs’ return to NBA lottery since 1997 — and drafted lengthy forward Devin Vassell from Florida State University. In two years in college, the 6-foot-6, 180-pound Vassell posted career averages of 8.4 points and 3.2 rebounds while shooting over 40 percent from the field and beyond the arc. Projected as a solid three-and-D guy with a huge upside potential, Vassell would make an elite defensive draft pairing alongside San Antonio’s second round pick Tre Jones from Duke University. Jones, who was named as a former ACC Defensive Player of the Year, could provide the spark and leadership off the bench if the team decides to move on from fan-favorite Patty Mills in the near future.

Then, ahead of the start of the season, San Antonio extended Derrick White with a four-year, $73 million contract as it also exercised its team options for Lonnie Walker IV, Keldon Johnson and Luka Samanic. Albeit missing White to a knee injury to start the season and Samanic still not being given the considerable minutes to prove himself, this year’s iteration of the Spurs will feature players who were never even been born when San Antonio won its first franchise title. Alongside veteran players DeRozan, Mills, LaMarcus Aldridge and Rudy Gay — who are all playing with their expiring contracts this year — the Spurs have an average age of 25.5 years old, the youngest of any team at the Gregg Popovich era.

At The Crossroads…

If there is one thing that the Spurs should probably be thankful for apart from realizing that it is time to move on from their outdated approach in today’s basketball, it is that the team will no longer have the pressure of making it to the postseason. San Antonio is projected by the Westgate Las Vegas SuperBook to win 29.5 games in this year’s 72-game shortened season, good enough for 12th in the stacked Western Conference and seventh worst in the league. If the Spurs does win as such amount of games, then the team would likely not mind as they can go ahead into the star-studded 2021 Draft lottery knowing exactly that they can pick another franchise cornerstone that can lead the team to possibly another dynasty in the years to come. Otherwise, if San Antonio somehow beat the odds and make the playoffs, let alone the play-in tournament, then it is only fair that the players, most especially the fans, would be hyped enough for the future of the team.

The main question posted for the Spurs heading to the new season was how much were they willing to continue implementing the brand of basketball that they played in the Orlando bubble sans Aldridge and Trey Lyles who were both nursing injuries back then. Popovich, the league’s oldest head coach at 72 years old, made sure to address that by implying that Aldridge, who lived in the midrange all throughout his 14-year career and San Antonio’s main star, had committed to shooting threes more than he has ever had. Popovich then followed this up by dropping what was probably a warning to other 29 teams that the Spurs will be back to redeem themselves this season:

“The bottom line, in all frankness, I don’t remember winning a championship last year. I don’t remember being in the playoffs. So it’s time to make a change, play a different way, demand it and move forward.” — Gregg Popovich

Across three preseason games, the Spurs have so far shown glimpses of this promise despite losing in all occasions against the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Houston Rockets. Aldridge, specifically, fired a total of 19 three-point attempts in the preseasons, with 10 of those being against the Thunder. For context, Aldridge’s most attempts from beyond the rainbow territory last year was nine. Overall, however, Aldridge and Dejounte Murray — whom the Spurs are hoping to pop off this year — made all but six of their 29 attempts beyond the arc, and surely their ability or inability to make their shots from the three point line could prove vital to how far the Spurs can go this season.

Interestingly, on the other hand, the Spurs ranked inside the top fifteen in terms of pace during the preseason with Murray, Lonnie Walker IV and DeRozan leading the team along with Vassell who made quite the impression. Among the 55 rookies who played all three preseason games in the last two weeks, Vassell ranked first in steals (3.0 SPG), second in points (13.7 PPG), and had the fewest turnovers (0.3 TOPG). He also shot 52% from the field (10th) and 50% from beyond the arc (3rd). His impact to the team might even be bigger than most rookies that played for San Antonio given the current global situation which forced the NBA to expand its active roster limit. Aside from the fact that Vassell is the most NBA-ready rookie for the Spurs since Kawhi Leonard in 2011, it is also unlikely that the 20-year-old will play for Austin in the G-League.

What To Expect…

San Antonio, in its 44 years in the league, has been criminally underrated by the media and fans outside of the Spurs fanbase. To be fair for the Spurs, they managed to constantly overwhelm what others were saying and have contended for more than two decades. This year, where they are now far, far away from whatever they used to be, San Antonio could play a little less pressured and just see what will happen for the rest of the season in terms of the development of its young core, especially White and Keldon Johnson, who both played an instrumental part in the team’s success in Orlando nearly three months ago. Without high expectations to expect for San Antonio this year, as well as having no nationally televised games during the first half of the season, the Spurs is a team that can achieve what everyone thinks of them to be and if things click on the right place, they could even hand out a common Spurs surprise a lot of teams (fans included).