The Spurs Might Be Broke
In today’s Daily Dime, John Hollinger picks up on a few themes that are popular to 48MoH this season. We’ve recently written that this year’s Spurs team is Tim Duncan and too little of everyone else. Hollinger agrees:
…Tim Duncan is playing unbelievably well. On Tuesday, he had 34 points, his most since scoring 40 in a double-overtime thriller against this same Suns team in Game 1 of the 2008 playoffs. It was an efficient 34, too, as he shot a stellar 14-of-22 from the floor. Yet it still wasn’t nearly enough — the Spurs lost by double figures as his teammates shot only 40.6 percent from the floor.
And then Hollinger picks on Richard Jefferson:
…Jefferson was awful. He dunked on a sweet baseline drive on the Spurs’ second trip and then disappeared the rest of the night, to the point that the Spurs kept him on the bench for the final 6:05 and used Roger Mason in his place.
Oh, and much like Spurs fans everywhere, the good professor wonders about San Antonio’s defense:
I can’t remember seeing a Duncan-era defense lit up the way it was in the second quarter Tuesday. Phoenix scored 39 points, en route to getting 67 for the half, and built the lead up to 20 points early in the third quarter before the Spurs mounted a too-little, too-late comeback. This was doubly notable because it came against the Suns — a club the Spurs normally defend as well as any team in the league.
These three themes have found steady play at 48MoH since the first week of the season. The question before the team is not simply “How to clean up this mess?” No, that’s a follow up question. The primary question before the team is “What kind of mess is this?” The answer isn’t obvious.
This current Spurs team has played together for all of 22 games. “Give them time,” that’s what the Spurs faithful likes to say. But I’m not convinced that’s the kind of sober-minded reflection needed to right this ship. Gregg Popovich issued a “no more excuses” mandate earlier this week, saying “we’ve taken enough time.”Still, the fan-boy knee-jerk amongst the Spurs crowd is a plea for patience.
The “give it time line” is starting to sound a little too much like the life-long smoker who is to happy to tell you about his Uncle Tom-the uncle who lived to 95 and smoked a pack a day. Such anecdotes are rehearsed with dismissive glee right up to the moment your friend, the smoker, is diagnosed with lung cancer. After last night’s game, Manu Ginobili said, “I’m not sure if it’s just chemistry. We’re not playing well.” Manu Ginobili doesn’t want to tell you about his lucky uncle; Manu Ginobili wants to quit smoking.
The Spurs’ front office is in a tough spot: they have until February to figure out if this roster possesses the right mix of players to legitimately compete for a championship. Given San Antonio’s difficulty beating quality opponents, it’s a fair question to ask. Is this simply a will-fix-itself-in-time chemistry issue, or are there bigger problems at play?
Here’s the issue, put differently: if the Spurs shake up the roster between now and February, they’ll prolong the new-faces learning curve and introduce even more discontinuity to a team already facing at least some chemistry issues.  A major shake-up would seem to compound any of those problems. But, of course, this current Spurs team is on a short clock. Patience must be held in balance against the reality of imminent decline.
If Ginobili’s suspicion is correct-that there is something more than a chemistry issue at play-the Spurs will have no choice but to examine more radical measures, especially in light of their short championship window, a rapidly aging core, and a pregnant-with-tax payroll.
Having said that, the Spurs are not far from legitimate contention. The Spurs are playing poorly relative to expectation, but John Hollinger’s magic calculator still ranks them as the 6th best team in the league. They’re ranked ahead of every Western Conference team, save the Lakers. Yes, the Spurs are underachieving. Their kind of underachievement is enough to give them even odds to make it to the Western Conference Finals.
But everybody knows the Spurs don’t fix their eyes on finishing second in the conference, and life in San Antonio is fairly meaningless if it’s not lived in the winner’s circle. You don’t go neck deep into tax to finish a notch below. So either the Spurs need to dramatically improve their play, or the team’s button pushers will have to make a sharp, decisive move to correct the problem. It’s probably never been true before, but it is now. The Spurs’ future is on the line, at least the Spurs as we’ve known them for the last decade.
