The San Antonio Spurs? Gone till November.
Is this the first summer that will allow us to slough off the San Antonio Spurs? Possibly. Perhaps. You don’t have to shovel dirt on a team to wonder about its future.
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Mind you, San Antonio has aligned itself with a rather enviable outlook even if the team’s franchise leader walks away this summer. Tim Duncan, having just turned 39 and having just about accomplished everything a man can in an NBA career, could retire this summer. He’s not under contract for next season, and he would be excused for not wanting to suit up for the October-to-June grind that he’s quite familiar with. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich may have been joking a bit when he mentioned the pretty good paycheck that Duncan would be set to gain by returning for another year or two, but at some point in a career there’s only so many souped-up Nissans and sweet sword sets you can buy.
It really does tumble from the top. It is outrageous that the Spurs had to play the Los Angeles Clippers in a first round series that seemed better suited for late May, but the Spurs also mined their own fortune by understandably resting players throughout the season, losing in the final game of the regular season while falling to the sixth seed, and repeatedly going to an intentional fouling strategy against DeAndre Jordan despite little returns.
San Antonio, despite its dynastic success, is no stranger to bad luck – Tim Duncan’s 2000 knee injury, the Derek Fisher shot, the rampaging Grizzlies and Ray Allen’s corner turn come to mind – but over the course of a long and successful career they’ve managed both the good and bad. We’ll miss watching them, badly, but they’re not asking for your pity.
What they are asking for is your time, and possibly a break.
Not since the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls or even 1988-89 Los Angeles Lakers has an aging team been put through the paces like this, with two extended trips to the Finals followed up by another turn as championship contender. Duncan turned 39 during a brilliant first round series and outside of the patches of gray hair on his goatee he didn’t look a second of it. Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, however, did look far worse than their respective ages (38 and 33, later in the summer) – the result of nearly a decade and a half of long postseason play and endless international competition.
Ginobili is a free agent, and though he brushed off talk of retirement following the Game 7 loss it wouldn’t be surprising to see him hang it up. With that in place, these usually-wearied statements usually are put on record immediately after a tiring season or bad loss, and Manu did no such thing. Parker is a much larger concern. There’s no shame in being badly outplayed by Chris Paul in a playoff series, but to be badly outplayed by your reserve and still be owed nearly $44 million between now and 2018? That’s the price of loyalty, apparently.
The Spurs are looking in that direction as they attempt to move forward. The team decided not to formally give a contract extension to Kawhi Leonard during the last offseason, understanding that his cap hold was far preferable to his cap figure as the team looked to either replace a retiring Duncan with Marc Gasol or LaMarcus Aldridge via free agency, or augmenting the team upon learning of Duncan’s return.
It’s to Tim’s credit that even at around 30 minutes a game at age 39 next season he’ll likely earn a facsimile of the $10.3 million he was paid this season. Duncan already took a hometown discount of sorts in agreeing to a three-year $30 million deal in 2012, putting the Spurs in an uneasy bargaining position that they always seem to handle with remarkable ease. Duncan and Ginobili’s cap holds will count for about $26 million this summer as the team attempts to add helpers, with the Leonard extension and the expected re-signing of Danny Green likely getting in the way of the Spurs signing Their Next Great Superstar.
That might not be a problem. Potential helpers like Gasol or Aldridge might choose to take more money to work with potentially declining teams in Memphis and Portland, and more than understandable. Perhaps our assumption that everyone will return to San Antonio, under reasonable deals, is us projecting.
If the projection becomes reality, however, what would be the problem in that? The Spurs were rightfully hailed as a championship contender all year, the team is 11 months removed from its last championship and facing an extra six weeks off that they didn’t anticipate and are already taking advantage of. Leonard’s expected ascension should allow the team to mind its minutes again in the regular season, and if Tim Duncan is still pulling off this stuff at age 39, what’s to stop him from doing it at age 40?
So, back for one more time, I suppose. They’ve done it before.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
