Ranking the Western Conference Threats to the San Antonio Spurs
The San Antonio Spurs may have become the safe, conventional pick to emerge atop an unsurprisingly stacked Western Conference, but there are hardly any guarantees the model franchise will win its first back-to-back championship.
In some respects, the Spurs may be their own worst enemies. Even after a historically one-sided margin of victory in the 2014 Finals, nagging questions about things like age and complacency may persist. Keeping a good thing going will be half the battle for head coach Gregg Popovich and Co.
The names and faces will be virtually the same this season, but their fate remains uncertain.
Assuming the Spurs again find their rhythm at just the right time, they'll still have to contend with a handful of conference rivals intent on upsetting the West's balance of power. Accounting for overall talent, postseason pedigree and matchup considerations, we ranked five teams poised to pose the most significant threats to San Antonio's repeat hopes.
Before contemplating the Spurs' chances against the Cleveland Cavaliers or Chicago Bulls, these are the teams that could get in the way of what may well be Tim Duncan's last shot at a sixth title.
5. Houston Rockets
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Some very good teams did not make this list, including the Phoenix Suns—who recently gave the Spurs their first loss of the young season.
The Memphis Grizzlies and Portland Trail Blazers should be in the conversation as well. Any team good enough to make the playoffs in a highly competitive Western Conference is probably good enough to beat the Spurs on any given evening.
But few teams have had as much luck as the Houston Rockets. This much is almost incontrovertible by now, especially if you believe franchise legend Hakeem Olajuwon.
"It's deceiving if you just base it upon the playoffs, the loss in the first round," Olajuwon told reporters in May. "It is deceiving, because I believe Portland did a huge favor to San Antonio. If the Rockets got past Portland, they had an opportunity to go all the way.
"My point is that team that lost in the first round was truly a championship team because you see they match up so well with San Antonio. I think they had a better chance than Portland. You cannot judge the Rockets team based upon just being out in the first round. I think they are a better team. I think they just played the wrong team. Portland played incredibly well."
Spurs fans will balk at the unprovable notion, but perhaps Olajuwon had a point. The Rockets swept San Antonio in four regular-season games last season, winning by an average margin of eight points.
It's always hard to know how much to make of those small samples, particularly when the Spurs are involved. San Antonio can virtually sleepwalk through the regular season before turning on the afterburners in March and April.
Three of the meetings between these teams happen before the All-Star break in February, including Thursday's national bout on TNT, so make of them what you will.
But there's no question Dwight Howard poses problems for the Spurs' front line. James Harden—who only played in three of those games against San Antonio—averaged 25 points and 49-percent shooting against the Spurs last season.
That said, San Antonio has a way of turning the tables when the games start mattering.
You have to think the combination of Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green would take its toll on Harden over the course of a best-of-seven series. You have to believe Tony Parker would get the better of Patrick Beverley at the point.
And most importantly, San Antonio's far-superior depth might prove pivotal in such a series.
The Rockets remain a serious threat to the Spurs' supremacy, but they're hardly the only one.
4. Los Angeles Clippers
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The Los Angeles Clippers owned the NBA's most dangerous offense a season ago, and that's likely to remain the case as head coach Doc Rivers' club regains the form that carried it to a six-game semifinal series with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
It became the second time in three years that LA lost in the second round, having previously been swept by the Spurs in 2012. The Memphis Grizzlies knocked the Clippers out of the opening round after six games in 2013.
So there's still something missing from Los Angeles' championship formula—even if it's only improved chemistry. That much was proved as the Clippers were trounced by the Warriors Wednesday night 121-104.
But the dual presence of Blake Griffin and Chris Paul has kept the Clippers in the title conversation, all the more with last season's Donald Sterling drama giving way to the far more promising Steve Ballmer era. On paper, this is an incredibly talented roster—replete with an imposing center (DeAndre Jordan) and dynamic sixth man (Jamal Crawford).
And while the Clippers offense gets most of the attention, the 102.1 points they gave up per 100 possessions a season ago ranked them seventh in defensive efficiency, according to Hollinger Stats. That mark actually tied the Grizzlies' vaunted defense, proving this team has become far more than an excuse for lob passes and gravity-defying highlights.
Going into last season's playoffs, there was a real sense that this club had turned a corner—that it was better prepared to do battle on the biggest of stages.
"We're definitely tougher mentally," Crawford told reporters before LA's first-round series against the Golden State Warriors. "It's night and day. Last year, I guess we were like the champion boxer that is really good until he gets knocked down. Then you have to see what he's really made of. Sometimes he gets up, sometimes he doesn't.
"This year, we're definitely more battle-tested. Look at the injuries we've had. I missed a bunch of games. Chris missed six weeks, J.J. (Redick) missed two months. Imagine without all that. We could be looking at 60-plus wins. But we never made excuses. That's Doc and his staff, keeping us prepared. We're a no-excuse team.
"I honestly think Doc has been the MVP of our team."
That assessment was soon vindicated when Rivers kept the Clippers focused as the Sterling scandal threatened to derail that Warriors series.
Put another way, there may be no better coach to prepare this team for battle against the Spurs. These Clippers are more veteran than the ones San Antonio dismissed in 2012. They're more polished and connected.
And yes, they're hungrier.
Perhaps hungry enough to overwhelm the Spurs with interior athleticism and perimeter marksmanship en route to bigger and better things.
3. Oklahoma City Thunder
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The Oklahoma City Thunder will have to survive November (and perhaps a bit longer) without superstars Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, who are both sidelined by untimely injuries.
Suddenly, this team's typically elite seeding in a crowded Western Conference is no longer a guarantee.
"There's always an anything-can-happen component to the NBA playoffs," USA Today's Sam Amick wrote last week. "But the idea of the Thunder finally winning it all in a season where it seems unlikely that they'll secure home-court advantage seems about as far-fetched as the notion of them, well, ever catching a break on the health front."
Well-founded concerns, to be sure.
On the other hand, there's every reason to believe the Thunder will be healthy when the playoffs roll around—perhaps healthier than they were when facing the Spurs in last season's conference finals. Power forward Serge Ibaka missed Games 1 and 2 of that series with a calf injury.
So long as head coach Scott Brooks can rely on a core of Durant, Westbrook and Ibaka, the rest of the West best not sleep on OKC.
Young as this team is, it's developed as much postseason pedigree in recent years as just about any team in the NBA, except for the Spurs and Miami Heat. With or without home-court advantage, the Thunder will remain as formidable an opponent as San Antonio will find in the West or anywhere else.
Even if the next month paints a slightly different picture.
All that matters is where things stand during the stretch run after the All-Star break. By that point, OKC may be as good as ever—or at least in the same conversation as the iteration that ousted San Antonio in 2012 en route to an unsuccessful appearance in the NBA Finals.
2. Golden State Warriors
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After coming up short against the Spurs in a 2012-13 six-game classic, the Golden State Warriors have a score to settle—particularly after ostensibly taking a step back with last season's opening-round loss to the Los Angeles Clippers.
Whether new head coach Steve Kerr can usher this club to new heights, there's little doubt it's made strides after bursting back onto the scene with that 47-win season in 2012-13.
Coming off a season in which he averaged a career-high 18.4 points per contest, it was tempting to declare 2013-14 as Klay Thompson's breakout season. Given the pace he's setting three games into the new season, however, we may have to revise our guesses about just how high his ceiling remains.
The 24-year-old is averaging 27 points through his first four outings, suddenly looking more superstar than sidekick.
Should Thompson and All-Star point guard Stephen Curry takes their games to another level, it's hard to see any team defending this backcourt. That goes for the Spurs, too.
The Warriors still have a lot to prove. Andre Iguodala was supposed to take this team to another level, and while he's improved the defense, there remains room for this core to grow together as a unit. Draymond Green is getting better, and Harrison Barnes has established himself a solid complementary player at the very least.
With Shaun Livingston signed this summer to deepen the backcourt, Golden State may now rival the Spurs with one of the league's very best rotations.
Moreover, this is a two-way team. Like San Antonio, the Warriors can win regardless of tempo or style—in high-scoring affairs and grind-it-out battles alike.
The Spurs may still have an edge thanks to corporate knowledge alone, but the gap between these teams has narrowed significantly since 2013. And it may narrow even more by April.
1. Dallas Mavericks
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The San Antonio Spurs got the better of this season's first meeting with the Dallas Mavericks, but the season-opening faceoff was hardly a decisive one.
San Antonio held on to a narrow 101-100 victory, while new Mavs acquisition Chandler Parsons debuted with just five points after making two of his first 10 field-goal attempts in a Dallas uniform. The 26-year-old went on to rack up a combined 70 points in his next three games, suggesting the Spurs may have their hands a bit fuller next time around.
"It was a great basketball game; you can't kick off the season with a better game than this for the fans—there's no way," Mavs head coach Rick Carlisle told reporters after the game. "Unfortunately, the slim margins of winning and losing are all that anybody remembers. If we get one more stop one more basket, then we're all him here singing a different tune. That's the world we live in the Western Conference."
Carlisle's club took the Spurs to a seventh game in the opening round of last season's playoffs, presenting the eventual champions their stiffest test along the way.
That team didn't include Parsons or feature center Tyson Chandler, who was acquired from the New York Knicks this summer in exchange for point guard Jose Calderon (and some change). But it defended San Antonio's three-point game relatively well and forced a tightly contested series with only two real blowouts.
With an improved roster that also added veterans Jameer Nelson and Richard Jefferson during the offseason, the Mavericks could be even more suited to thwarting San Antonio's back-to-back title ambitions.
Now in his 17th NBA season (all spent in Dallas), franchise cornerstone Dirk Nowitzki knows a thing or two about the Duncan-Popovich formula—and he's fared reasonably well against it. He's faced the franchise six times in the playoffs alone, twice ousting San Antonio from the postseason in 2006 and 2009.
Despite running away with a 119-96 victory in last season's decisive Game 7, Popovich admitted that the Mavericks created some serious problems for his defensive schemes.
"On the court what confounded us was that they've got shooters all the way around," he told reporters after clinching the series. "Dirk Nowitzki gets a crowd; if you double him, you leave a lot of other open shooters.
"So we played him pretty much one-on-one, so we could stay at home a little bit better. That and the ability to shoot it, spread the floor, run the sets that Rick does and the speed of [Devin] Harris and [Monta] Ellis was tough for us to handle."
It won't be any easier in 2015.
This is virtually the same team that tested San Antonio so admirably in April and May—only better. It remains to be seen where the Mavericks will find themselves in the final standings. Just don't be surprised if the Spurs' road to the promised land first requires yet another stop in Dallas.
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