As Spurs’ season ends, future looks murky
The transition year is over, and it was a long time coming. Finally, the Spurs of the past two decades are free to reinvent themselves as something else altogether, and perhaps that can be a good thing.
Years from now, if we remember this season at all, it will be as an oddity, a weird limbo between one easily definable era and whatever comes next. For the past six months, up until Tuesday’s season-ending 99-91 loss to Golden State, that is exactly how it’s felt.
This team was not going to win a championship, probably not with a healthy Kawhi Leonard and definitely not without him, and it wasn’t going to stink, either. These Spurs were doomed to linger somewhere in between, to inspire just enough occasional hope to frustrate everyone, and that is what they did.
And in a way, the symbol of this doomed-to-be-forgotten season has been the member of the Spurs’ Big Three who consistently was the toughest to categorize. Tim Duncan represented the franchise’s excellence and Manu Ginobili exemplified the team’s guts, but Tony Parker was tougher to pin down.
He also became the only member of the three to understand on a personal level what the Spurs realize as a team.
Duncan didn’t make a major transition as a player. Ginobili didn’t, either. They embraced an identity early in their careers and kept it, Duncan until his retirement and Ginobili through every stage of male pattern baldness.
But this season, Parker had to do something they didn’t. Ginobili referred to the metamorphosis Tuesday as figuring out how to go from “The Guy” to “Just Another Guy,” and he meant this as a compliment to Parker’s professionalism.
For someone who has played at Parker’s level, the adjustment can be jarring.
“It takes time,” Ginobili said. What Parker has had to do since rupturing his quadriceps last year is, in a nutshell, what the Spurs as a team were doing at the same time.
At first, they clung to the notion that they could be what they once were, that this disruption did not fundamentally change what they were capable of doing. This, in a sense, was denial.
When Parker came back from his injury, his rehabilitation went more quickly than planned, but he still had to make an admission along the way. He was going to have to set his expectations just a little bit lower than they had been when he was one of the quickest players in the league.
So for the first time in his career, Parker entered a postseason as an afterthought, and the Spurs began the playoffs as clear underdogs.
And just as Parker embraced his role, the Spurs found a way to make the most of theirs.
Ettore Messina, the Spurs’ assistant who replaced grieving Gregg Popovich as head coach for the last three games of the Golden State series, was around for San Antonio’s last championship, so he remembers what it was like to be the hunted.
But he said he was enjoying the fact that everyone was waiting on the Spurs to lose, because it simplified a few things.
“When you’re expected to win, it’s always complicated,” Messina said.
Complications will come soon enough. Over the next couple of months, the Spurs and Leonard will have to decide once and for all whether they have a future together. Whether that becomes a contract extension or a blockbuster trade, it is safe to assume next season’s roster will look significantly different.
Parker, for the record, wants to be part of it. Unlike Ginobili, he has declared he definitely plans to keep his career going.
“I’m happy I don’t have those retirement parties,” Parker said, laughing about all of the tributes to Ginobili. “I want to keep playing, and we’ll see if it’s in San Antonio. Everybody knows I would love to stay here, but then free agency is always crazy, so we’ll see.”
The Spurs obviously would be glad to have him back, if for no other reason than he can teach them a thing or two about reinventing themselves.
Parker, after all, discovered this season that it’s possible to be successful even as Just Another Guy.
For two decades, the Spurs avoided becoming Just Another Team. Now they get to find out if they can make the most of it.