San Antonio Spurs' Fight Through Adversity Could Ignite Old Fire
After what the San Antonio Spurs have been through the past two weeks, Saturday night's 99-93 loss to the Dallas Mavericks almost feels like the least of this team's problems.
Coming into Saturday's contest, head coach Gregg Popovich's reigning champions had lost two triple-overtime games in the span of three days to the Memphis Grizzlies and Portland Trail Blazers—the first time a team played three extra frames in consecutive contests since 1951, per San Antonio Express-News' Dan McCarney.
San Antonio has also dropped four consecutive games for the first time since 2011 while losing seven of its first 12 contests this month.
The taxing adrenaline and sweat-soaked triple-overtimes didn't help the Spurs' case Saturday. Popovich sat Tiago Splitter, Tim Duncan, Tony Parker, Danny Green and Manu Ginobili, some with injuries and others getting rest after a grueling week. The fact that San Antonio led Dallas after three quarters is something of a moral victory in its own right.
It's hard to get worked up about a team that plays its best basketball in April and May, but comparatively speaking, this December qualifies as something of a crisis in these parts.
Yet that might not be such a bad thing.
More than any improved Western Conference rival, the biggest threat to this team's repeat chances is its own complacency. Without the bitter sting of 2013's Finals defeat, can this club summon the kind of urgency that drove it a season ago?
Head coach Gregg Popovich isn't one to partake in the Dr. Phil school of armchair psychology, but that didn't stop him from sharing similar concerns with San Antonio Express-News scribe Buck Harvey during the preseason.
"I'm worried for one reason," he confessed in September. "They are human beings. They are going to feel satisfied."
Reasons for worry have been hard to come by for this franchise, and that may be precisely the problem. Absent the early adversity—such as it is—this team has had every reason to be overconfident.
That may be changing, and things could get worse before they get better. With games against the Clippers, Thunder, Rockets, Pelicans (twice) and Grizzlies remaining this month, things only get tougher. At the moment, the Spurs are 17-11 and 2.5 games behind the No. 6-seeded Clippers.
But the Spurs aren't panicking. They're fighting.
"I'm proud of the whole team and what they have done," Popovich told reporters after Friday's 129-119 loss to Portland. "It's a different group every night. It would almost be better if you had two guys injured and you knew it for three months.
"It is different every night, and it keeps them out of rhythm. We are wearing some guys down, though. Timmy is a big worry in that respect, and so is Manu. I'm really proud of them, and they did a great job under tough circumstances."
They don't have many recent wins to show for it, but this ever-shifting rotation has been fighting.
"Our effort, that’s one category that we’re satisfied with," shooting guard Danny Green told media after the Trail Blazers game. "We're learning and growing. That's the best positive we can take out of it. But moral victories are not what we do. Learn from it and move forward. Best thing about this league is there's another one tomorrow."
To their credit, the Spurs also showed serious grit in their epic loss to the Grizzlies on Wednesday. Down by as many as 23 points in the second quarter, they stormed back against a team with the NBA's second-best record (21-5).
"We fought back and pushed it to that level," Duncan told reporters after the contest. "We felt like we had the game in so many respects at so many different times, only to give it away and get it tied back up. It is what it is, though. We chalk it up as a loss and hopefully learn from it. We need to do better."
Effort and execution may be the difference for this team. On paper, little else has changed since June.
Though backup point guard Patty Mills is still recovering from offseason shoulder surgery, the organization didn't lose any of its key championship contributors to free agency or retirement. If this roster was good enough to exact vengeance against the seemingly invincible Miami Heat of old, conventional wisdom suggests it can handle whatever challenges await this time.
Perhaps it will, too—eventually.
San Antonio hasn't had a bad season so far—even when accounting for the recent rough patch. Through the Spurs' first 28 games, they are tied for third league-wide in defensive efficiency, allowing opponents just 99.3 points per 100 possessions, according to Hollinger Team Stats.
There's much to be said for quality wins against contenders like the Warriors, Grizzlies, Mavericks and Clippers. The Spurs are almost certainly better than their record suggests, and that record is respectable given the brutal competition out West.
San Antonio also figures to move up the standings once it has the chance to get healthy and regroup, something that might not happen until the All-Star break. Six-time All-Star Tony Parker has already missed nine games this season with a hamstring injury, and reigning Finals MVP Kawhi Leonard has missed six games—five since Dec. 10 on account of a torn ligament in his hand.
Center Tiago Splitter has also missed significant time.
For a team whose movement and shooting rely so heavily on chemistry, injuries have taken a particularly tough toll. And they've done so at a time when the competition is as unrelenting as ever. Even champions succumb to those kind of odds.
In turn, the team now faces its first real soul-searching since those 2013 Finals. If history's any indication, it just might find something special.
Quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
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