San Antonio Spurs May Only Get Scarier in Seasons to Come

Imagine a world in which the San Antonio Spurs' shelf life never nears expiration and instead only grows stronger with time.

Now stop fantasizing about said world.

Because we may be living in it.

The Spurs have become the marquee billboard for sustained NBA success. Their 17 consecutive playoff berths is the longest active postseason-clinching streak. They've won five championships since Tim Duncan was drafted and four since Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili completed the Big Three.

One of those titles isn't even a year old. After a six-year—ahem—drought, with each member of their terrific triumvirate long past 30 years old, the Spurs unseated the reigning champion Miami Heat in 2014, killing every age- and time-related stereotype in the process.

Even now, amid injuries and a savage Western Conference, the Spurs have shown few signs of slowing. Though they're on track for a bottom-two playoff seed, they're just three games back of a top-three slot. With the space between them and the West's topmost powerhouses so sparse, the Spurs' regression isn't really a decline at all, guaranteeing them a leg up in the race to remain relevant.

Still Here 

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Duncan, 38, still has Father Time bound and gagged in his pleated pants room, watching every episode of Here Comes Honey Boo Boo on a loop. He's on pace to become the oldest player in league history with averages of at least 14.5 points, 10 rebounds, three assists and 1.5 blocks per game.

Parker, 32, is posting the second-lowest player efficiency rating of his career (14.6)—while still averaging 14.3 points and 4.7 assists on 47.6 percent shooting, including a personal-best 51.8 percent clip from downtown. The Spurs will take it.

Ginobili, 37, remains potent in limited playing time. No other player has ever reached benchmarks of 12 points, three rebounds and 4.5 assists while logging under 25 minutes a night. Just him.

Kawhi Leonard is now the instant-drying cement holding the team's title hopes together. His usage rate has skyrocketed, and the Spurs are winning nearly 70 percent of their games (23-10) with him in the lineup as opposed to playing .500 basketball (9-9) when he's riding pine.

Spurs...	MP	Off. Rtg.	Rank (Equivalent)	Def. Rtg.	Rank	Net Rtg.	Rank
With Leonard	1061	104.8	11	96.2	1	8.6	2
Without Leonard	1432	102.9	16	102.2	14	0.7	16

Point being, the Spurs, when healthy, remain championship contenders as currently constructed. And because of Leonard, the future looks bright.

All great things must cease to exist at some point, though. Duncan's and Ginobili's contracts expire at the end of this season, and both could call it quits. As good as the Spurs may stay, they'll regress. They just have to.

But what if they didn't?

There's a strong possibility the Spurs aren't left stranded after this season, a chance that they enter 2015-16 and beyond scarier than they are now.

For one thing, an organic demolition doesn't appear to be in the cards. This revelation comes straight from head coach Gregg Popovich himself.

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"No matter how (the season) ends, I think Timmy is going to look at (retirement) again," he told USA Today's Sam Amick. "And if you ask me, my guess is that he'll go for another one because he has been so consistent this season."

If Duncan returns, is Ginobili really going to retire? Per Amick, he's thought about it in the past, but with Popovich, Parker and Duncan all still together, his departure would feel like a long shot.

That, though, is only one element to this notion. It's scary to think the Spurs aren't yet on the verge of disbanding; it's even more harrowing to know they'll have the means to land another superstar via free agency.

Free-Agency Clout

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The Spurs avoided signing Leonard to an extension for this reason, according to Yahoo Sports' Adrian Wojnarowski. Allowing him to enter restricted free agency diminishes his cap hit, giving the Spurs more flexibility to chase other free agents before actually re-signing him.

"If the Spurs give Leonard a max extension now, based on the NBA’s projected salary cap, he’d count $15,502,415 against the cap next offseason," Dan Feldman wrote for NBC Sports in October. "If Leonard becomes a free agent, he’d count just $7,235,148 against the cap until signed. That extra $8,267,267 of cap space could be quite useful, and San Antonio could exceed the cap to re-sign Leonard after using it."

Five other Spurs players are under guaranteed contract for next season: Boris Diaw, Tiago Splitter, Patty Mills, Kyle Anderson and Parker. Including Leonard's hold, the Spurs would have a little more than $41 million committed to next year's books, putting them well below the predicted cap ($66.5 million).

After factoring in the cost of their eventual first-round pick and the requisite number of cap holds thereafter (four at $507,336 apiece), the Spurs should have slightly under $44.5 million committed to their roster, giving them roughly $20 million to spend on free agents.

Put another way: The Spurs could afford any free agent they please.

That is good because the Spurs have been linked to Marc Gasol as a potential Duncan replacement, according to the New York Daily News' Frank Isola.

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Possible hangups to this plan abound, of course. Looking beyond the fact that Gasol hasn't prematurely pulled the dip on his god-ing Memphis Grizzlies, the returns of Duncan and Ginobili make signing any pricey free agent exponentially harder.

Danny Green and Marco Belinelli will hit free agency themselves. Creating this cap space also demands the Spurs renounce the rights to restricted free agents Cory Joseph and Aron Baynes. Re-signing any combination of them will cost money, and that's in addition to whatever Ginobili and Duncan would receive. The Spurs could easily find themselves exceeding the cap just to keep their current core together.

Still, that doesn't mean there aren't ways around this. There are. They just involve the Spurs shelling out some extra cash and taking a (brief) swim in the luxury-tax pool. As CBS Sports' Matt Moore wrote:

"

(Basically, they can sign Gasol to a max contract, then re-sign everyone one by one using a team's ability to keep their players while going over the cap in the new CBA. But that total amount would wind up putting the small-market Spurs into massive luxury tax territory.) ...

If the team tells Holt they can set the core for the next five years with Tony Parker-Gasol-Leonard, and he'll only have to shell out for a single season in the luxury tax, Holt could very well go for it. Trade Splitter, sign Gasol fill out the roster with cheap contracts or developing players which you can replace with better options after Duncan and Ginobili retire, and the Spurs would field a starting five next season of Tony Parker, Danny Green, Kawhi Leonard, Tim Duncan, and Marc Gasol and cover the earth in darkness.

"

Having the ability to supersede the cap in order to re-sign incumbent players is huge. But it does not give the Spurs free rein.

Keeping Duncan and Ginobili means the Spurs cannot renounce their rights, so each player's cap hit will equal 150 percent of this season's salary until a new deal is signed, per Larry Coon's CBA FAQ. Their holds would top $26 million combined in this case.

Remaining in play for a guy like Gasol, then, dictates the Spurs re-sign Ginobili and Duncan at incredibly discounted deals first then go from there.

Steep discounts are a borderline way of life in San Antonio, as many already know. Duncan went from being the third-highest-paid player in the league for 2011-12 to being the fourth-highest paid Spur in 2012-13. If he and Ginobili cut their salaries in about half—not impossible—they would earn something like $8.5 million between the two of them.

Tack those hits on to the commitments from before—in replace of two of the four minimum cap holds—and the Spurs are left with around $12.5 million in wiggle room. That's not enough for Gasol, but it puts them in play for impact players like Wesley Matthews, Thaddeus Young and Gerald Green among others.

But that doesn't have to be their ceiling.

Depending on how big the Spurs are thinking, they have the option of trying to dump Splitter's deal. While they're not known for unloading contracts without receiving tangible value in return, this is an exceptional scenario.

Splitter will earn $8.5 million next season and under $8.3 million in 2016-17. Some team will happily absorb that given the rim protection he provides. He's dropped off a bit in that department this season, but he's also missed 24 games and ranked sixth in iron policing among players who contested at least five point-blank looks a night in 2013-14.

Replace his salary with another minimum cap hold, and the Spurs creep back above $20 million in financial plasticity—assuming, again, Duncan and Ginobili accept the necessary pay cuts. And that puts them back in the running for Gasol or LaMarcus Aldridge or Paul Millsap or whomever else they wish to chase once more.

Unendingly Scary

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All this is admittedly complicated and prided on a number of indeterminable things happening. From Duncan and Ginobili working for pennies, to the Spurs renouncing the rights to or stealing their other free agents (Green, Belinelli, etc.), to dumping Splitter, this is all terribly tentative.

If and when the Spurs pull this off, there's also the matter of, you know, actually poaching star free agents from their respective teams. Anyone they sign will have to accept less money than if he were to stay put. That cannot be overstated.

And yet, if you're Gasol, you listen when the Spurs come calling. San Antonio's market is not undesirable, there's an all-time great stalking the sidelines and the Spurs are proven winners. Best of all, you're joining a team that becomes instantly flexible once again when Duncan and Ginobili actually do retire.

That, in part, is the beauty of all this. Leonard's hit will essentially double upon signing his new contract, but the salary cap is expected to explode in 2016. The Spurs could feasibly have max-contract spending power in consecutive summers. This is all in addition to their penchant for striking draft-day gold and running a generally trumpeted system that increases the values of participating players.

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Yes, at some point, the Spurs' reign must end. They will have to endure tough times just like any other team. But that point isn't yet here or even close to here.

These Spurs are both contending now and packed with future possibility—a scary combination for a scary team with the means to get only scarier as time wears on.

*Salary information via HoopsHype unless otherwise cited. Stats courtesy of NBA.com and Basketball-Reference.com.

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