Aldridge not adding enough
It isn’t that they get sick of one another. But during the course of the Spurs’ longest road trip of the season, between the plane and the bus and the hotels and the locker rooms, it sometimes can feel, as Patty Mills put it, like “you’re pretty much living in each other’s pockets.”
As for whose pockets make for the toughest dwelling space? Mills smiled at the question.
“Probably LaMarcus (Aldridge’s),” Mills said. “His pockets are closed.”
This, to be clear, was nothing more than a goodnatured joke about Aldridge’s thriftiness. But if one wanted to stretch the metaphor, it might apply elsewhere, too.
Aldridge, it’s fair to say, probably can afford to pitch in to San Antonio’s rebuilding efforts more than he already has. And one way or another, his next contribution had better come soon.
He’s not the reason things have fallen apart. But almost five years into his San Antonio tenure, it’s also become clear that he likely won’t be the reason things will get better. Even with a miniresurgence propelled by his newfound 3-point prowess, his All-Star days might be over for good.
And even if it’s unfair to blast Aldridge as a freeagency bust, it also would be dishonest to claim that either he or the Spurs got what they expected from both Aldridge’s initial contract in 2015 or his extension two years later.
Aldridge returned to his native Texas thinking he would win a championship. The Spurs made their highest-profile freeagent addition in franchise history thinking he would carry on the tradition of the stars they’d molded before him.
Neither plan quite worked out, even if Aldridge’s numbers have been about what everyone should have anticipated. Throughout the first five seasons of his 30s, Aldridge has provided a steady dose of 20-point, eight-rebound, solid-defense nights, even as the team around him has slid from NBA title contention to the precipice of its first draft lottery since 1997.
On one hand, he’s a victim of circumstance. He came to San Antonio to complement Tim Duncan, and he signed his extension thinking he’d remain a sidekick to Kawhi Leonard, and neither are wearing a Spurs uniform anymore.
On the other, NBA teams generally don’t pay
players $22 million per year to be sidekicks. As flawed as this season’s roster might have been, if the Spurs don’t make the playoffs, the bottom line will be that Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan were paid to be elite and just weren’t good enough.
To their credit, both have made a concerted effort to keep the Spurs relevant, and for a while, it worked. When Aldridge finally listened to what people have been saying for years about stepping beyond the 3-point arc, it added a much-needed dimension to the Spurs’ offense, and it gave DeRozan the space to play some of the best basketball of his career.
But still for Aldridge, there are inexplicable lapses, and they’ve popped up again during the rodeo road trip. Against the Lakers, when the Spurs needed him to show some fortitude against a rugged defense, he didn’t score his first basket until midway through the third quarter
and finished with seven points.
And two nights later in Portland, after the crowd there cheered him for the first time since he left the Trail Blazers in 2015? It wasn’t just that he had another rough shooting night.
How, some around the team wondered, did he play an entire game against a poor free-throw shooter like Hassan Whiteside and not manage to pick up a single foul? Whiteside shot 8-of-10 from the field that night, mostly at the rim. He missed two of his only three free throws.
If Aldridge had decided to punish Whiteside a little more, it might not have guaranteed that the Spurs would have won the game — Damian Lillard was still around, after all — but it might have increased their odds. And throughout a season, little details like that tend to make a difference at some point.
On a better team — one in which Aldridge still
could be a third option — those deficiencies might not be so glaring. And as a role player, he might be more attractive than ever to a contender now that his shooting range has entered the 21st century.
So that brings us to where and when Aldridge might be able to open his metaphorical pockets and chip in. Whether or not the Spurs make the playoffs in April, this summer figures to be one full of changes for the organization. Gregg Popovich might walk away, and DeRozan might, too.
Aldridge has one more guaranteed year on his contract, but in a down offseason for free agents, with most teams lacking cap space, lots of general managers will be working the trade market.
And if the Spurs decide that their smartest next step is to get younger?
Aldridge might be able to contribute to that. Even without opening his pockets.