Despite likely secure spot in Bottom 3, the tank may not yet be complete
The Spurs might have to take advantage if the opportunity arises to further secure their NBA Draft perimeter.
My friend Mike Finger of the San Antonio Express-News wrote recently the Spurs don’t need to tank anymore, that the hard part is over and this season no longer needs to be so miserable. But the weekend’s two-game set against the Houston Rockets featured a silver-and-black-and-blue team that had no interest in winning, mostly because there was still some remaining misery through which to trudge.
San Antonio had just come off two relatively impressive performances in wins over the Utah Jazz and Indiana Pacers. The defense looked as coherent as it had all season, and the offense operated competently during critical stretches when baskets were needed most. For a brief moment, there were glimpses of growth and tangible evidence of a team that was locked in and wanted to win.
But in front of them on the schedule (and in the loss column) stood a Rockets team the Spurs had already soundly beaten twice with a reasonably healthy squad. The possibility of a four-game winning streak loomed, and along with it a potentially tenuous grasp on a bottom-three spot in the standings. The rug had to be pulled, and given San Antonio was facing back-to-back games against a direct Wembypalooza competitor, dealing with a couple of minor injuries, and reintegrating three players returning from extended absences, it was the perfect time to yank it out from under them.
For the record, I am not playing the results here in pumping the brakes on Finger’s assessment. In fact, he’s right — it doesn’t have to be like this anymore. But San Antonio had already come this far down a difficult path, and it was not about to eat too greedily into the cushion of space a recent Charlotte Hornets hot streak had provided between the third- and fourth-worst records in the league. At this point, every additional lottery-ball combination matters, and the Spurs have no interest in giving up their 14-percent chance of landing the top pick by falling to the fourth spot.
But there’s an even deeper dive into the muck for those with the proper spelunking equipment and pain threshold. By winning their last two games, the Rockets have pulled themselves back to the pack, so to speak. And while residing among the bottom three guarantees each combatant an equal shot at the top pick, it is the stinkiest of the bunch that is provided the most security.
The team that finishes with the worst record in the league when all is said and done can fall no further than the fifth pick in the NBA Draft, but the second- and third-worst can slide to the sixth and seventh spots, respectively. It’s difficult to imagine San Antonio catching Charlotte even if it tried to at this point, but given there’s still some sad, lonely ground to be gained on the two teams at the bottom, I simply cannot tell you for certain the tank is over quite yet — not when the actual odds of slipping are this uncomfortably high.
Should the Rockets and/or Pistons win any number of games moving forward and the Spurs go on another skid, the opportunity to secure a top-five pick could be enticing enough to justify additional maneuvering. And in case you’re wondering, that scenario is entirely possible.
As it stands now, San Antonio has the most difficult remaining schedule in the NBA, in this case measured by the average winning percentage of all upcoming opponents. On the other hand, Detroit has one of the easiest final stretches in the league, while Houston faces a middle-of-the-pack challenge moving forward. And to make things even more entertaining, the Rockets and Pistons still have one matchup against each other at the end of March — a game that could potentially decide the outright leader in the Tankathon clubhouse with 10 days left in the season.
(If you thought Spurs-Rockets was bad over the weekend… woof!)
San Antonio is currently one game ahead of both teams in the win column, and considering what’s in store on the schedule for all involved over the final month of the season, chances are high this race won’t be decided until the very end.
As players and coaches have talked at length about how they’re still seriously prioritizing player development during what could end up being the worst season in franchise history — the pre-Duncan Spurs won 20 games during the 1996-97 campaign — I know I’ve believed them. If there is an actual way to tank admirably, they may have found it.
There’s been structure to what they’ve done on the court, there’s been consistent effort, young players have steadily improved, there have been long, rigorous practices when they’ve had windows in between games (this is not the norm in the NBA), and Gregg Popovich has been as patient as he’s ever been with a group of rookies playing major roles. The locker room has genuinely cared, and they’ve all done about as well as anyone could’ve realistically expected with the minutes they’ve been given, especially considering the deck had been stacked against them from the start.
San Antonio has sort of masterfully manipulated roster combinations along the way, which has inevitably prevented any semblance of continuity from forming. Per NBA.com data, only two five-man lineups have played more than 100 minutes together for the Spurs this season, and both of them feature current Toronto Raptor Jakob Poeltl. In fact, of all the five-man lineups consisting of players still on the team, only two have been used for more than 40 minutes all year. By comparison, the high-flying Sacramento Kings’ starting lineup — the five-man group with the most court time in the league — has logged 732 minutes together. Hell, even The Rockets had a starting group that played 426 minutes before Eric Gordon was traded at the deadline.
Make no mistake, this is where the majority of the tank work has occurred. Young teams like San Antonio need as much continuity as they can get in order to effectively jell. And while there have been legitimate injuries in the process (as there are every season), it’s been the rest and recovery days for a player or two here and a player or two there that have compounded the overall effects. If the Spurs were going to win a game on any given night, it wasn’t only going to be the usual talent discrepancy they would have to battle.
What we watched over the weekend was the extreme of it, at least from an optics standpoint. Eight of the Spurs’ top nine minute-getters this season sat out at least one of the two games against Houston, with at least four of them sitting each night. And while a number of players in that group had just come off injury and were playing on a minute-restriction, the absences on Saturday and Sunday were largely due to the aforementioned rest and recovery. San Antonio had played that card for much of the season, just not to that degree.
But that is not going to be the case in the month ahead. While I bring up the idea of the job not yet being complete, I’m not suggesting the Spurs are going to throw their remaining schedule by deploying lineups that are missing large groups of important players on a nightly basis. There will still be injuries, and there may still be those players receiving a night off or two, but what we saw over the weekend is not going to be a theme the rest of the way. The 17 remaining games — many of which will feature high-level competition — will provide further opportunity for real development, and this team is going to take advantage of that.
San Antonio wants to see Devin Vassell get his legs back and have a chance to further construct a rapport with fellow swingman Keldon Johnson. It wants to see Zach Collins and Charles Bassey continue to develop in their new roles. It wants to iron out its guard situation and collect more data points on Tre Jones and Romeo Langford before decisions must be made this summer to address a crowded backcourt. And it obviously wants rookies Jeremy Sochan, Malaki Branham and Blake Wesley to get their fill of on-court reps.
But let this be a PSA: If within the ‘natural’ flow of things the Spurs find themselves still in position to move down the ladder at the end of the season and further secure their perimeters in the draft, do not be surprised if the team-wide body soreness that’s afflicted them all season makes another run through the locker room for a couple of games. Because remember, one of San Antonio’s primary goals this season was to give itself the best possible odds to acquire the best possible talent available in the draft. And while it’s likely locked up the 14-percent chance of selecting Victor Wembanyama, that 33.1-percent chance that the third-worst team in the league falls to the sixth or seventh spot still looms ominously.
The Spurs would be more than happy to see real growth and development lead to a couple of wins over good teams, even if it meant they stayed put in their current lottery spot. But their eyes will remain fixed on the standings in the mean time, watching for any last bit of real estate that can potentially be acquired.
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Let’s just lose enough games and get ping pong lucky. Wemby, Wemby, Wembanyama... San Antonio #1!