How Worried Should We Be by San Antonio Spurs' Slow Start?
The San Antonio Spurs have been NBA superheroes for so long that the thought of them as mere mortals is never easy to process.
This franchise has an uncanny ability to figure things out. No matter what type of adversity they have faced in the past 15 seasons, the Spurs have amassed one 50-win campaign after another.
So with that track record in mind, it's impossible to say the Spurs (2-3) look vulnerable just five games into the year. Had a few more breaks gone their way, the defending champs—who have suffered two of their losses by a combined six points—could easily have found themselves in a far more favorable position.
"I understand a year after winning the championship you're going to get everyone's best shot," coach Gregg Popovich told reporters after San Antonio's 100-99 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on Saturday. "I believe we're out there playing hard and I believe things just haven't gone our way."
History says the Spurs have nothing to worry about. But history cannot help them emerge from this early season stumble unscathed. Not in the fully loaded Western Conference, where 50 wins may be required from every playoff guest.
Besides, as the business world likes to say, past performance does not guarantee future results. While it certainly yields hope for a recovery, the Spurs need a lot more than crossed fingers to keep this stumble from spiraling out of control.
How Bad Is It?
Despite returning every key member from last season's championship squad, the Spurs have been hard to recognize.
As it stands, San Antonio holds bottom-third rankings in scoring (92.8 points per game, 27th), field-goal percentage (43.2, 23rd), three-point percentage (31.5, 23rd) and turnovers (18.2, 27th). Even digging deeper into the box scores doesn't do much help. The Spurs are tied for 24th in offensive efficiency (96.9) and tied for 12th in assist percentage (59.9).
And it could take some time for those numbers to improve. The Spurs kick off a challenging four-game West Coast road trip Monday night which will include visits to the Los Angeles Clippers, Golden State Warriors and Sacramento Kings.
"A 1-3 week isn't out of the question for the Spurs," wrote Dan McCarney of the San Antonio Express-News, "which would put them off to their worst start, at 3-6, since going 4-6 in 2009-10."
The Spurs obviously rebounded to clear the 50-win mark that season, but it was the only time during this run that their win total stopped at 50, save for the truncated 66-game 2011-12 campaign.
Despite seemingly saving their best for last, they are not typically slow starters. It took them 15 games to pick up their second loss last season. The year before, they won 17 of their first 21 contests.
That's not to suggest that it's even close to being time to reach for the panic button, but every loss suffered now adds to the difficulty of the challenge ahead.
The West is a frightening conference as a whole, but the Southwest Division is particularly terrifying.
Its top two teams, the Houston Rockets and Memphis Grizzlies, are among the NBA's three franchises holding a winning percentage above .850. Its No. 3 three team, the Pelicans, employs a legitimate MVP candidate in Anthony Davis. And the fourth squad, the Dallas Mavericks, boasts intriguing championship credentials.
For San Antonio, this won't be as easy as flipping a switch. There is too much talent around it to subscribe to that theory.
That means the timeline of the Spurs turning things around is nearly as important as the effectiveness of that process. To put that another way, the clock is already ticking on getting this right.
And that entails finding solutions for the multiple issues that have already surfaced.
What Is The Problem?
Before this season even started, Popovich was working on extinguishing a fire he could see forming on the horizon.
For all of the success he has enjoyed with the Spurs (highlighted by five NBA titles), Popovich has yet to engineer a triumphant championship defense. In fact, his team has never even made it back to the NBA Finals the year after winning it all.
Complacency can be a champion's greatest threat, and the coach wondered aloud how it might affect his players.
"I'm worried for one reason," Popovich said in September, per Buck Harvey of the San Antonio News-Express. "They are human beings. They are going to feel satisfied."
Without getting inside these players' heads, it's impossible to know whether last year's victory took any wind out of their sails.
But a simple run through the eye test reveals something isn't right with this team. And it hasn't been for a while.
The Spurs stumbled through a 2-5 showing in preseason. While eyebrows aren't often raised during the exhibition portion of the schedule, San Antonio's struggles didn't sit well with its coach.
"We look very poor," Popovich told reporters after the final preseason tilt had finished. "We look like we're not very interested."
Fast-forward to today, and focus—plus the chemistry that can come along with it—continues to be an issue for this team.
"I think it's more mental than anything," Danny Green said after Saturday's loss. "But I can't speak for everybody. ... We're not in the greatest shape. We're just not in our normal team rhythm, our chemistry."
The Spurs have yet to face a team that finished last season with a top-10 defense. Their offense has produced only one triple-digit scoring performance. They have failed to hit 95 points—a number they reached in 84 percent of their games last season—three different times already.
With the talent on this team, scoring should not be an issue. But this high-powered engine seems to be running low on fuel.
"I think that we need to start playing with the same intensity that people bring at us who want to kick our butt," Popovich told reporters recently.
Unfortunately, intensity isn't the only thing eluding this team. A clean bill of health has been just as hard to find.
The Spurs had planned on being without reserve guard Patty Mills. The spark-plug scorer underwent offseason shoulder surgery which is expected to keep him sidelined through at least the end of the calender year.
But San Antonio has had a hard time getting a grasp on starting center Tiago Splitter's calf injury. The 29-year-old, who has played 10 minutes so far this season, will visit a back specialist Monday to see if the calf problem is related to recently discovered inflammation in a disc, per San Antonio Express-News' Mike Monroe.
The Spurs have also been without sharpshooter Marco Belinelli, who missed the past two outings with a groin strain. Both he and Splitter have been ruled out of San Antonio's clash with the Clippers on Monday, per McCarney.
However, the Spurs' biggest injury blow is one that hasn't cost the player in question to miss much action. Reigning Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard missed only the season opener after battling an eye infection through most of the preseason, but the problem has persisted and has plagued his on-court production.
"My right eye, the vision's not all the way back yet," Leonard told reporters Saturday. "Hopefully I can heal up soon. ... It just has to run its course. The doctor (team eye specialist Dr. Ed Rashid) said there were some military guys who had it for weeks and some for months."
Throughout the ordeal, Leonard has remained an impact player for the Spurs, stuffing the stat sheet from nearly every angle. But the problem has led to some obvious setbacks in the shooting department.
| 2013-14 | 69.4 | 50.5 | 46.8 | 50.5 | 37.9 |
| 2014-15 | 50.0 | 16.7 | 42.9 | 33.3 | 11.1 |
With Father Time continuing to bear down on 38-year-old Tim Duncan and 37-year-old Manu Ginobili, the Spurs cannot afford to have the 23-year-old Leonard struggle.
"Leonard is probably the team's most important player if not its outright best," wrote NBC Sports' Brett Pollakoff, "so he'll need to get right sooner rather than later for San Antonio to begin to string together some victories."
And the Spurs could really use a prolonged winning streak to keep these early season scuffles from having long-term effects.
How Serious Could This Get?
Given this conference's depth, minor falls can feel catastrophic. It took 49 wins to snag a playoff spot last season, and this year's race figures to be just as competitive.
But the Spurs are miles away from weighing postseason odds. They might look uncharacteristically human for now, but they are far from appearing vulnerable.
Focus, chemistry and confidence should not be major concerns over the long haul. The Spurs have too much talent, too much experience and too much Popovich to trip over those hurdles.
Still, it could be a little while before everything gets back on track. Leonard's eye issue and Splitter's calf problem both sound like they could linger. The Spurs have one of the league's deepest rosters, but those are two pretty important pieces to not have at full strength.
While the future still looks bright, these players must give a better effort to ensure it stays that way. The odds can be in their favor, but that does not mean a complete recovery is guaranteed. If the Spurs continue giving up ground, it's possible they could dig too deep a hole to climb out of.
San Antonio has drawn its greatness from a combination of effort and execution. When both are delivered at a high level, this team has a two-way ceiling as high as any in the NBA.
But it takes a lot of capable bodies to sustain that type of play over a long period. And the process can be exhausting. Without a break from the injury bug and a more determined level of effort, the Spurs could sink their hopes of repeating.
But that is a worst-case scenario and nothing more at this time. The reigning champs have earned the benefit of the doubt and remain the team to beat until proven otherwise.
If San Antonio's health problems persist and its focus does not improve, this could develop into a serious concern. But this five-game sample could be just as easily forgotten if the Spurs steer themselves back near the top of a conference they have dominated for the last decade-plus.
Unless otherwise noted, statistics used courtesy of Basketball-Reference.com and NBA.com.
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