Trying to figure out the future of the San Antonio Spurs is currently an impossible process. It needs to be done in the manner of when you get the DVD of a movie and have multiple alternate endings.
San Antonio’s 2014-2015 season came to a heartbreaking end, losing Game Seven of its first-round series to the Los Angeles Clippers on Saturday night.
It was a somewhat unusual journey for the Spurs. They got off to a “slow start,” going 34-23 through 57 games and their “Rodeo road trip,” but from that point forward they kicked into high gear. San Antonio finished the season winning 21 of its final 25 to get to 55 wins. All four of those defeats ended up being extremely costly, forcing them to have to play the Clippers in the first round as the sixth seed instead of the Dallas Mavericks as the second seed. Many will point to the loss on the final day of the regular season versus the New Orleans Pelicans, yet falling to the Mavericks, plus the New York Knicks and Cleveland Cavaliers in overtime, were just as harmful.
If the Spurs win any of those four, we probably aren’t having this discussion today.
On Monday, San Antonio head coach Gregg Popovich met with the media one final time to wrap up the season and had this to say (quote from the Spurs Nation blog at mysanantonio.com):
“We haven’t talked yet about that. We’ve got a pretty good number of free agents so with R.C. and the coaches and the group we’ve talked about what we want to do going forward with the makeup of the team but the team will probably look considerably different than it looks this year because we have so many free agents and we want to re-tool a little bit.
“We want to try to start — not exactly over again — but these last four seasons have been a grind and we put the team together with that in mind, that this year we’d have all the free agents so we can decide what we want to do moving forward, as far as the makeup of the team. So we’ll spend a lot of time on that but as far as if guys are retiring or not we haven’t touched that.”
The Spurs have only five players under contract for next season — Tony Parker, Tiago Splitter, Boris Diaw, Patty Mills and Kyle Anderson. Their total salaries equal $34,159,326 (all salary information from basketballinsiders.com).
Two starters, Tim Duncan and Danny Green, plus Manu Ginobili are unrestricted free agents. At the age of 39, Duncan is — incredibly — putting up pretty much the same numbers he was in his mid-20s. The only question is how much of a discount he would take to return and if he actually wants to still play.
It’s a little more complicated with Green and Ginobili. Green is going to be 28-years-old when next season tips off, and he is in-line for a potentially massive payday. To this point in his career, the shooting guard has made only $12,693,631, a number he could near in the first year of his next contract.
Ginobili, unlike Duncan, started showing some serious decline during his age-37 season. He posted the lowest PER (16.1) since his rookie year (14.7), and advance metrics indicate it was his least impactful season. If Ginobili wants to come back, would they take him back? Would they take him back at a certain price, but not another? These are some of the many questions we don’t have an answer to.
One thing we do know is whatever restricted free agent Kawhi Leonard wants, he is going to get. In his fourth season the forward continued to evolve, showing off a more advanced offensive game. He’s not at the point where he could be considered a centerpiece of an offense, but signs of him potentially progressing to that level are very much in evidence. His assist rate has improved each of his four seasons, while the turnover rate has stayed in the same range. His USG% jumped to over 20 for the first time in his career, and his efficiency dipped only slightly — that’s an extremely encouraging sign. Whatever Leonard asks for as a restricted free agent, he will get; it’s just a question about timing and years.
Would Leonard play for the qualifying offer, allowing him to dig into the new TV money coming into the league, or does he want the security of a five-year deal? Leonard’s cap hold is slightly over $7 million, which is significantly less than he will get paid. He has the choice to do the Spurs a favor by being patient, allowing them to sign other free agents, or he can pull a Chandler Parsons and pressure them into giving him the money as soon as possible.
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It’s funny, even with that bit of certainty surrounding Leonard, that still more questions exist for the Spurs. San Antonio also needs to make decisions on Aron Baynes and Cory Joseph, who are both restricted free agents. None of these choices touch on outside moves to bring in new faces, either.
Whatever Popovich and general manager R.C. Buford decide to do, they need to be given the benefit of the doubt. This is the type of respect you get when you’re organization hasn’t posted a winning percentage lower than .610 since the 1996-1997 season. If they decide to tear up the roster and go in a different direction by choice or by force (Duncan retiring), there will still be an expectation of excellence not far behind. We see it year after year on the nights the Spurs decide to rest their best players and are still competitive. New names, different faces, but it always ends up being the same old Spurs. If any duo is going to be able to pull off the difficult and unlikely task of transitioning a contender into immediate new period of success, Pop and Buford are the two I would bet on…
… or Duncan, Parker, Leonard, Green, and Ginobili are all back, and we continue to wonder when it all will come to an end.
