It’s beginning to look a lot like the 2019-2020 NBA regular season is effectively over. Rather than sit around and wait for basketball to come back into our lives, let’s reflect on what the season has dished up to this point.
We’ll take a look at each and every NBA team over the coming weeks, assessing what went right, what didn’t go to plan, and where their journey took them as well as where the team hoped it would take them.
Today, we head West to take a look at three teams that all had playoff/non-playoff streaks that hung around their necks like a millstone: the Phoenix Suns, Sacramento Kings and San Antonio Spurs.
San Antonio Spurs
Record: 27-36 (12th in the Western Conference)
82 game pace: 35-47
Expectations
Surely the Spurs expected to extend their playoff streak, right? Why else would you not flip expensive and relatively limited veterans like LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan, not to mention ageing 2nd unit stalwarts in Patty Mills and Rudy Gay.
With Dejounte Murray returning and expected to step into a leadership role, Derrick White coming in from national team duty, and the veteran core around them, San Antonio opened their season looking to secure a 23rd straight playoff qualification.
What went right
There was a lot of good for the Spurs this season, but it came in spurts. Aldridge was borderline All NBA when he started shooting from deep – alas, it only lasted about six weeks couple of months. DeRozan had a brilliant January, averaging 26.9 points on an outstanding 66% true shooting. Mills and Gay had their moments off the bench. Bryn Forbes remained an excellent deep threat. Jakob Poeltl played stellar defense. Lonnie Walker IV had some exciting cameo performances.
What went wrong
For all of their collective good to great moments this season, nobody in silver and black was able to perform to their best with any consistency. As one player would peak, another would find their form on the wane. It’s no coincidence that the Spurs best stretch of the season came with DeRozan, Aldridge and Mills at their best.
The young back court of Murray and White also fired in fits and starts. Both had excuses: Murray was coming off an ACL injury and White didn’t have an off season due to international commitments. Nonetheless, the future leaders of the club didn’t really lead as hoped.
The outcome
The streak is over; long live the streak!
No matter which way you cut it, the Spurs needed a miracle to make the playoffs this season. As of the league suspension date, they sat a full four games behind Memphis with Portland, New Orleans and Sacramento all in their way. All of those teams were in far better form than San Antonio.
There are, believe it or not, fifty nine currently rostered NBA players that were born after April 22nd 1998 – until now those players had not spent a day on this earth where the Spurs were not a playoff team.
Given San Antonio have spent thirty of the past thirty one seasons in the playoffs (and that one missed season was heavily injury influenced; it won them Tim Duncan, so I think they’re fine with it) you wouldn’t bet against San Antonio finding a way back to contention, but many of their previous competitive advantages – superior international scouting, specialist development coaches, cultural focus) have been replicated throughout the league, thanks to the famed Popovich coaching tree.
Without a little lottery luck, the path back to the top might be more fraught than the Spurs have ever experienced.
