Spurs’ stability envy of the NBA
San Antonio keeps on rolling in West without former franchise cornerstone Duncan
Gregg Popovich and the San Antonio Spurs did everything they could to prepare for life without Tim Duncan.
They studied the pitfalls that plagued other franchises that lost foundational stars, drafted and developed talented players to be ready to pick up where he left off and designed a basketball ecosystem that could sustain the loss of even the most important player.
Even after all that careful planning and shrewd evaluation, the reality of the first season in two decades without Duncan on the court was a jarring one at first for the most stable franchise in American professional sports and its veteran coach.
“I think throughout the first year there’s been a little search for the centre. I don’t mean the position. I mean the centre of gravity, what we revolve around now,” Popovich told The Associated Press. “It’s taken this entire year for everybody to realize that we all have to perform our roles better because Timmy covered up so many errors, whether he could score a lot or not.”
While so many teams have bottomed out after saying goodbye to a centrepiece player, the Spurs have somehow flourished. They have won at least 60 games in backto-back seasons for the first time in franchise history. They will enter the Western Conference playoffs as the No. 2 seed, one of the few real challengers to prevent Golden State from a third straight trip to the NBA Finals.
“They exploit everything that you’re not doing well,” LeBron James said after Cleveland’s 29-point loss March 27 in San Antonio. “They are a well-oiled machine.”
Duncan wasn’t a larger-thanlife presence like Kobe Bryant or Michael Jordan, but there is no overstating the importance of his quiet leadership and calming influence to the Spurs’ success.
“When he was there, there were things that didn’t need to be said,” Manu Ginobili said of Duncan. “You see his look and you know how to react when you are doing things right and when you are not. We are not going to have that because there is not a player with that type of weight, with that type of charisma and legend status. So with the ones we have, we try to do the best, try to be the best for each other and help each other as much as we can.”
In a league built on stars, losing one can be devastating to a franchise.
When Larry Bird retired from the Celtics, Boston made the playoffs just twice in the next nine years, including six straight trips to the lottery.
When Jordan walked away after leading the 62-win Bulls to the franchise’s sixth championship in 1998, Chicago won just 13 games the next lockout-shortened year and missed the playoffs in six straight seasons. Karl Malone left the Jazz to chase a championship with the Lakers in 2003-04, which ended Utah’s run of 20 straight playoff seasons. The Lakers crumbled when Bryant’s body gave out. The Cavaliers imploded when James left for Miami.
Popovich and general manager RC Buford decided defence would be the key to surviving without Duncan.
“If times came where we didn’t have enough offensive punch, if we established a good defensive program, it would sustain us and allow us to be in ball games more than other organizations were in the past when they lost their star,” Popovich said.
The Spurs have led the league in defensive efficiency eight times and finished in the top three seven more times in Popovich’s 20 seasons on the bench, a philosophical backbone that gives them a margin for error when the shots aren’t falling.
On offence, the ball movement and unselfishness generally keep individual statistics from jumping off the page, but also make the team less reliant on a single transcendent scorer.
And they have also been a little bit lucky with the emergence of Kawhi Leonard, the 15th overall pick in 2011 who was acquired in a draft night trade and is now a legitimate league MVP candidate.
“We didn’t trade for him and say, ‘He’s going to be first-team AllNBA,’” Popovich said with a chuckle. “If RC told you that, he lied to you.”