The Spurs are playing the perfect brand of rebuild basketball

San Antonio has lost five consecutive games, but you wouldn't know it by the energy bubble surrounding the team.

Courtesy of Bally Sports Southwest

SAN ANTONIO — The doldrums of an NBA rebuild can be a dreadful.

When you’re around it day in and day out, constant losing can sap energy like few other factors in sports can. It can be draining and joyless and painful to experience, even depressing at times for everyone involved. The slog can be cumbersome, because you just stay stuck in it, and the basketball season can seemingly drag on for ages.

There have been some difficult nights over the last few seasons in San Antonio. Trying to win but struggling repeatedly to clear hurdles against superior competition can take its toll, and anyone could tell there were times the Spurs were dragged down by the realization they had a ceiling — that they were missing the pieces needed to help them accomplish the goals they’d set for themselves.

But this year, as San Antonio has fully committed to the youth movement, those goals have changed. They’re more nebulous, more existential, more Taoist than procedural in nature. In the team’s eyes, so long as improvement and betterment are the focuses, the rest will eventually take care of itself with time. And despite dropping their fifth-consecutive game on Wednesday, the Spurs are nowhere near circling the drain. Quite the opposite, in fact. The losses have seemed to motivate them.

Expectation can be the thief of joy. So right now, San Antonio is simply playing with perspective.

“Look man, I don’t think we came into this season thinking we were going to be undefeated. So, win some lose some, but at the end of the day, as long as we’re competing we’re getting better. As y’all see, we’re getting better out there. We’re 12 games in, so who really cares?” an animated Devin Vassell asked, energized by yet another strong team performance. “By the time we’re 20, 30, 40 games in and we’ve flipped the switch — we’re all coming into bigger minutes, we’re all coming into bigger roles, so the fact we’re competing like this is huge right now. We’re gonna take the next step, you just gotta be patient.”

So far, every Spur is playing like that next step is right at their fingertips. Vassell and Keldon Johnson have fully embraced being ‘The Guys’. They’re leaning into their new responsibilities on both sides of the ball, elevating their games to a level congruent with their roles, and not at all shying away from the big moments.

Jeremy Sochan seems to add a new wrinkle every night. On Wednesday, he busted out an isolation dribble-drive into the paint to his right, spun left and floated it off the glass with his off hand. The defensive stuff isn’t a surprise — diving on the floor for steals and swooping out of the air to intercept passes in critical moments — but it might be worth keeping an updated checklist of Sochan’s offensive accomplishments throughout the season if you’re wondering what type of player he could become.

Tre Jones isn’t playing like he’s just a placeholder. He’s kickstarting an offense that leads the league in assists and growing more and more comfortable looking for his own shots. And Jakob Poeltl just continues to do Jak things: Blocking shots, attacking the offensive glass, racking up career highs in assists, and scoring as efficiently as he ever has.

And then there’s Charles Bassey, who fell out of the sky and directly into the Spurs’ laps after being cut recently by the Philadelphia 76ers. Despite having hardly a clue of what San Antonio’s strategy is on either side of the ball, he’s fit in quickly. Bassey is a big, physical athlete who rebounds, blocks shots, moves the ball and shows touch from the rim to the 3-point line. Now, with Zach Collins on the shelf indefinitely after he suffered a fracture of his left fibula head, Bassey is in line to be the Spurs’ primary backup center behind Poeltl for the foreseeable future. Next young guy up.

From the coaching staff, there’s a real sense of pride in what a bunch of teenagers and 20-somethings are doing on the floor. They’re teaching and pushing and letting loose on the reins for a group that’s learning on the fly. Gregg Popovich, Brett Brown and Co. have installed a free-flowing scheme and are allowing their players to go explore the space, to create their own chemistry and make their own mistakes.

“I thought our guys were fantastic against a heck of a basketball team. They’re hard to guard. They've proven that they're a hell of a squad, experienced,” Gregg Popovich said after Wednesday’s 124-122 overtime loss to Memphis. “To play them the way we did tonight feels really good. You're always disappointed when you lose but so many good things. These guys are growing and playing the way they need to play to win. So, it was a good night.”

The old guys just want to see the kids develop. Win or lose, it doesn’t matter, and therein lies the beauty of the brand of basketball San Antonio is playing.

Prior to the start of the season I wrote about the importance of the Spurs striking the right balance between playing for now and preparing for the future. If they weren’t going to ship out some of their key, floor-raising veterans over the summer and dive headfirst into “tank” mode, they’d have to pull the right strings in order to properly follow their plans of landing near the top of next summer’s NBA Draft order. And right now, at 5-7, they’re nailing it.

Popovich’s system, along with the wrinkles Brown has helped install, is putting players in great positions to succeed and allowing San Antonio to compete in nearly every game when healthy. But the talent gap on most nights is such that it’s going to be difficult for the Spurs to close the deal when games get tight, especially as the season moves along and the real playoff teams and contenders begin to dig in.

Or one would think, at least.

San Antonio has been only 2.3 points per 100 possessions worse than its opponents in 19 “clutch” minutes this season. That net rating is good for 18th in the league in those situations, and it’s significantly better than what teams like Chicago, Dallas, Miami, Philly, Golden State and Minnesota have tallied in the early going. The Spurs are executing, getting good shots, and playing above their perceived heads in these moments — a great sign for those who just want to see this team win.

But for the other faction, the one that dreams of Victor Wembanyama or Scoot Henderson putting San Antonio back on the map, there’s plenty of reason to rest easy.

The Spurs have a serious turnover problem, and with Jones being practically the only true ball-handling guard on the roster at the moment — at least until Blake Wesley returns from his MCL injury — that issue probably isn’t disappearing anytime soon.

They’re currently giving the ball away on 31.7 percent of their “clutch” possessions and 16.4 percent of their possessions in general, good for last and 27th in the league, respectively. This is a built-in cap for the time being, and with one cursory glance at the roster it’s difficult to see it being lifted completely unless they acquire another player to assist in this capacity. And for the sake of transparency, it does not seem they’re in a rush to do that.

But San Antonio isn’t interested in that conversation anyway. To a man, this team feels it’s on the verge of winning these types of games with more regularity.

Both Vassell and Johnson were almost heroes on Wednesday. Johnson missed a driving right-handed floater in the lane at the end of regulation — one of his go-to shots — and Vassell had a chance to pick the Spurs up at the end of overtime.

Down by two points with five seconds remaining, Vassell ran around a Johnson pin-down screen, caught the ball on the wing, pump-faked Desmond Bane into the air, took one dribble to his left and got off a nice look from the 3-point line at the buzzer. The shot fell short, and so did the Spurs, but to them it was just another lesson learned.

“If that play is drawn up again I’m shooting the exact same shot. That’s what you work so hard for. That’s what you’re in the gym for in the mornings and at night,” Vassell said. “For me and K.J., that’s big for us because we’re taking these shots now, early in the season. So 20 (or) 30 games from now, when we have the same shots, it’s gonna be different.”

And it sure does feel like there’s going to be another opportunity sooner rather than later. If San Antonio keeps playing this way, Vassell and Johnson are going to experience their fair shares of plays designed specifically for them to hit important shots. And if you ask them, that’s what they’re here to do.

“As a little kid that’s what you dream of in the driveway. You’re sitting there, ‘5-4-3-2-1,’ and trying to hit the game-winner,” Vassell said. “That’s the type of moment that it was.”

For the Spurs, the most important element right now is the ongoing process and the path along the learning curve ahead of them. They believe, in due time, the results in the big moments will eventually speak for themselves.