‘GOT TO DIG DEEP’
Season resumes with only 10 players available at most
The 10 healthy bodies that comprise what remains of the Spurs' coronavirus-ravaged roster boarded a charter plane at San Antonio International Airport on Tuesday afternoon.
Ready or not, their season is set to resume tonight at Oklahoma City.
Before embarking on the emptiest team flight in recent memory, guard Patty Mills couldn't help ponder last-resort emergency options the Spurs might use against the Thunder if worse comes to unthinkable.
“I think coach Pop, he could probably take a charge,” Mills said. “He would put his body on the line and take a good charge as long as he could move quick enough to get in position.”
If there is any good news to come out of one of the most trying weeks in team history, it is this: The Spurs' situation is not yet so dire they need to test the charge-taking skills of 72-year-old coach Gregg Popovich.
It is true the Spurs will travel to OKC with six players already ruled out and not on the trip.
Five of them — Derrick White, Keldon Johnson, Rudy Gay, Devin Vassell and Quinndary Weatherspoon — are in the NBA'S health and safety protocols related to COVID-19.
Demar Derozan, the Spurs' leading scorer and assist producer, is on family leave in Los Angeles to bury his father, who died last week.
The 10 players the Spurs could have available are two above the minimum of eight the NBA requires to play a game.
And so their rodeo trip continues tonight, 10 days after it was shelved following a 122-110 victory in Charlotte because of the team's coronavirus outbreak.
“I think there's an opportunity to come together and know that we've really got to dig deep,” Mills said. “We've got no other
choice here. We’re in the trenches with the guys we’ve got.”
In his 10th season with the Spurs, Mills has appeared in his share of games with the team outmanned and understaffed.
There were times in the heyday of Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili that Popovich would orchestrate those kinds of nights on purpose.
“This one’s completely different,” Mills said.
Putting together a piecemeal starting lineup — with Derozan, White, and Johnson among the absent — will be Popovich’s first order of business tonight.
The good news: The Spurs’ rotation of big men might end up being fuller than when the team last played in Charlotte on Feb. 14.
After missing six games with a hip injury, Lamarcus Aldridge could be in line to return against OKC. If so, he would join Jakob Poeltl, Trey Lyles and Drew Eubanks to give the Spurs a passable collection of NBA bigs.
The Spurs also pressed pause on second-year forward Luka Samanic’s starring turn in the G League bubble to provide more frontcourt depth in the near term.
The Spurs’ guard rotation, however, arrives in OKC in tatters.
No matter what Popovich decides with his starting five, he is likely to only have one guard — period — on the bench. That could end up being rookie Tre Jones, another call-up from the G League.
“It’s a challenge, but at the end of the day we are all professionals,” guard Lonnie Walker IV said. “We have some great players, so we’ll see how it goes.”
With a limited arsenal at his disposal, Popovich is preparing to play combinations that appear drawn out of a hat.
The Spurs spent the bulk of two practice days Monday and Tuesday scrimmaging, in a bit of what Popovich described as “onthe-job training.”
“We did a lot of scrimmaging so we could get back to basketball,” Popovich said. “Obviously, the lineups are lineups they are not used to.”
As challenging as the short term is likely to be for the Spurs, at least they are not still marooned in Charlotte.
From Sunday night after beating the Hornets through Friday morning, players and staff members were largely confined to their individual rooms in a hotel not far from the Spectrum Center.
Walker’s daily routine included an early-morning stretch, a round of COVID testing, studying Spanish on a dual language app on his phone, and maybe a Facetime with teammates in other parts of the hotel.
And of course, there were video games.
“I was playing Call of Duty pretty much like it was a day job,” Walker said.
Popovich tried to keep spirits up by slipping notes under players’ doors. Some were inspirational. Some were full of random trivia, such as the fact one out of every two people in the world live in Asia.
“It was just like out-of-the-box kind of things, which I appreciate,” Walker said. “When you are stuck in a hotel room, you kind of find ways to keep the days from going any longer.”
One day in the future, Spurs players will tell their children stories about the seemingly month-long stay in Charlotte.
“It feels like we were away a lot longer than seven or eight days,” Mills said.
For now, the Spurs head to Oklahoma City for a game that counts tonight, the outcome of which will not include an asterisk in the final NBA standings.
It will not be a fair fight. The Spurs aim to at least make it a fight.
“It’s going to be interesting, it’s going to be challenging, it’s going to be fun,” Mills said. “Depending on how you look at it.”
No matter what happens tonight in Oklahoma City and beyond, the Spurs can rest assured in this much: If all goes well, Popovich should not have to suit up.