Big issue 1: This figures to be a much quieter summer than the tumult brought on last year by the Kawhi Leonard situation.
LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan account for about half of the team’s total salary under the cap, and they’re signed for two more years. The only free agent of significance this summer will be Rudy Gay, who has found a comfortable niche in San Antonio and would likely stay on a team-friendly contract.
We’re not likely to see any major changes from the Spurs. But that might not be a good thing after a 48-win season, a No. 7 seed and a first-round playoff loss. Sure, that is a fine season for a lot of franchises, but the Spurs have not failed to earn at least a spot in the conference semifinals for back-to-back seasons since 1991-92. Is Gregg Popovich, who will be sticking around as coach, willing to go gentle into this good night?
That’s not to say that the Spurs can’t improve from within. They got off to a rough start this season, hampered by a preseason injury to point guard Dejounte Murray and the time it took for Jakob Poeltl to work his way into the starting five. The Spurs were 11-14 on Dec. 5. They also bombed on the annual rodeo road trip, losing seven of eight games and dropping from fifth in the West to eighth.
For a team without much wiggle room in terms of personnel, those are two areas to clean up and reason to think major changes aren’t needed. A better start and a bit closer to .500 on the rodeo trip, and this might have been a 50-plus win season with a chance at the second round.
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Big issue 2: The Spurs will have the ability to improve from within, but that will depend on how Popovich manages his backcourt minutes and how the handful of talented young guards the team has collected will come along.
Murray is coming off ACL surgery and should be ready for the start of the season, though he might need time to round into form. But he is only 22 and was looking like a potential breakout player after how he performed when he was made a starter last season (10.1 points, 7.0 rebounds and 3.5 assists in 26.1 minutes).
Murray is not a great playmaker and might be better suited to a combo guard’s role, but his explosiveness and ability to get to the rim make him a potentially important offensive contributor on this roster.
But while Murray sat this year, two players put their stamp on the Spurs backcourt — Derrick White and Bryn Forbes. White is more of a point guard than Forbes, but both can handle either backcourt position in stretches and both are fairly young — White is 24 and Forbes is 25.
Forbes shot 42.6 percent from the 3-point line on a team that took the fewest 3s in the league (but led the NBA in 3-point percentage). White had some injury struggles but showed himself to be a capable starting point guard and was a star in the first six games of the playoffs (17.0 points, 60.3 percent shooting) before flopping with an 0-for-7 showing in Game 7.
And the Spurs still have standby Patty Mills (9.9 points and 3.0 assists in 23.3 minutes, playing 82 games) on hand, with rookie combo guard Lonnie Walker, the 18th pick in last year’s draft, in need of some development time, too.
DeRozan and Marco Belinelli get time at shooting guard, too. It’s a nice problem to have, being so loaded in the backcourt, but still, there are only 96 minutes to divvy up between the two positions and a trove of worthy candidates.
Free-agent outlook: There is not much to be done in free agency beyond renouncing all of the team’s free agents, including Gay, and creating about $8 million in cap space. But the team could just sign Gay for about that amount of money, and that’s the most likely approach here.
There’s a chance that a trade could resolve the logjam at the guard position, with Forbes and Belinelli the most likely candidates — Murray and White have too much upside, and Popovich values Mills too much as a leader.
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The young folks: Murray and Walker are the main young assets on this team, and they could be key to how the Spurs develop next season. Walker played only 17 NBA games and only one in the G-League, so he’s still a bit of a mystery. He did have one 16-point effort in an April game, but mostly, we don’t know yet what to expect from him.
Murray, on the other hand, has already given extended flashes of his potential. If he can come back healthy, he’ll be a much-needed attacking weapon.
Wait till next year: The Spurs bucked conventional wisdom this year by building around two very good midrange shooters, DeRozan and Aldridge, and eschewing the 3-pointer. They did pretty well with it, too, finishing sixth in the NBA in offensive efficiency, at 112.2 points per 100 possessions. That dropped, though, in the playoffs, to 110.7 points per 100 possessions.
The Spurs were quite good at creating spot-up looks (21.9 percent of their possessions, fifth in the NBA) and converting them (57.1 percent effective field-goal percentage on spot-ups, first). But San Antonio took the fewest number of shots per game in the restricted area (21.5) by far, and if there is a place for the Spurs to improve next year, that might be it.
They don’t create the same spacing, of course, but bringing back an attacker like Murray and getting a little more comfortable with guys who were just learning how to play with each other this year might help create more opportunities at the rim.
The Spurs are not used to being home this early in consecutive years. But there could be chances to change that.