With the NBA season fast approaching, TSN.ca takes a look at the big storylines around the league heading into a campaign filled with intrigue in both the Eastern and Western Conferences. Today, we look at why this season's San Antonio Spurs could be the most daunting project of Gregg Popovich's storied career.


The San Antonio Spurs have had one of their iconic Big 3 – the platonic ideal of the power forward, Tim Duncan, the super sub, Manu Ginobili and Tony Parker, the flashy point guard – in their lineup since 1997.

Each man might have not played every single game, but they were fixtures on Gregg Popovich’s club and talismanic reminders of the consistent excellence of a Spurs program, synonymous with greatness, that made the playoffs for 21 consecutive years, won 13 division titles, six Western Conference titles and five NBA championships. 

But in 2016, Duncan ended his storied career after 19 seasons, 15 All-Star appearances and two Most Valuable Player Awards. The next stop for him will be Springfield in 2020.

The Big 3 was officially down a man, but really it was already dead. Once cornerstones, Parker and Ginobili had become buttresses for the two-way wizard Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge, Duncan’s heir apparent who came over as a free agent in 2015. 

Ginobili, slowed by age and injury and featured less and less, finishing last season average 20 minutes a night, down from 30-plus minutes a decade ago. Parker was the same. While some of the flash remained, on many nights Parker looked to be the shell of his former self, fighting against time and injury. 

Ginobili decided against returning for a 17th season and ended his decorated career in September. Parker, somewhat stunningly, signed as a free agent with the Charlotte Hornets, ending his 17-year association with the club that brought him to the NBA at the age of 19. 

Truly, this was the end of an era for the Spurs, but somehow this wasn’t the dominant storyline surrounding the team during the off-season. In a normal summer, how the Spurs would adjust to life with the Big 3 finally behind them would result in gallons of ink spilled. This wasn’t that summer and the departures of Ginobili and Parker paled in comparison to exit of Leonard. 

One of the reasons why the Spurs became the model franchise – perhaps in any pro sport – that they’re considered to be today is because of a seemingly universal ethos that Popovich got everybody to buy into to a man. People talk about Bill Belichick’s ability to plug unheralded players into his New England Patriots team for them to succeed in the absence of a departed star, yet Spurs players never seemed to want to leave. Occasionally, a role player would head elsewhere seeking more minutes on a lesser team, but the core stayed intact. 

This is what made Leonard’s departure all the more stunning. He wanted to go. 

At this point, we all know the Kawhi story: Leonard was limited to just nine games a season ago with a quadriceps injury. The team cleared him to play and his teammates asked him to return, but he stuck with the advice of his outside medical team and did not appear in a game after January 13. The damage between player and team was evidently irreparable and he was traded on July 18 to the Toronto Raptors alongside Danny Green in exchange for DeMar DeRozan, young big Jakob Poeltl and a protected 2019 first-round draft pick. 

The Spurs have undergone more than a simple facelift. This is reconstructive surgery and how this will play out still remains anybody’s guess. 

Let’s first look at DeRozan’s arrival. 

DeRozan is not Kawhi, but in the 29-year-old perennial All-Star, the Spurs have a player entering a season with the biggest chip he’s ever had on his shoulder over his nine seasons and the most to prove. The trade to the Spurs blindsided the greatest player in Raptors franchise history, who had previously been given assurances by general manager Masai Ujiri that he was not about to be moved. Perhaps that was true at the time, but DeRozan saw the trade as betrayal by the team he gave his heart and soul to, but moreover, it sent a message that no player ever wants to hear – you’re just not good enough

Ujiri believed his Raptors – the eternal Eastern Conference bridesmaids – had reached their ceiling in their current incarnation and needed to do something drastic and that meant dealing DeRozan. The trade, then, became a referendum on his career for DeRozan and the realization that your very best still made you expendable was a stark reminder of the mercurial nature of sports. It will forever be just a business no matter what other kind of ideals you might try to ascribe to it. 

DeRozan now gets the chance to play under a man widely considered to be the best coach in the NBA and help reinvent an offence that was average on more nights than it was clicking a season ago (with an offensive rating of 107.9, 17th in the NBA, and 102.7 points a night, fourth-worst in the league). 

DeRozan’s ability to get to the line and draw fouls (his  6.8 free-throw attempts per game was 11th best in the NBA a season ago) should transfer over to the Western Conference. And on top of making his own shots and being a volume scorer, DeRozan’s passing game has improved in leaps and bounds and now can be relied upon for playmaking. The ball still should go through Aldridge, who likely remains their top scoring option even in DeRozan’s presence, and Rudy Gay, who is dealing with a lingering heel issue, and Pau Gasol can offer some veteran scoring punch.

Unfortunately for the Spurs, Gay’s heel isn’t the worst of their injury problems heading into the season. Projected starting point guard Dejounte Murray’s season is over before it even gets underway, felled last week by a torn ACL. His replacement, Derrick White, a 2017 first-rounder out of Colorado, is out, too, also with a heel injury. This leaves veteran Patty Mills as the only recognized point guard to open the season with combo guard, Bryn Forbes, likely to get the start at the 1 in the team’s opener on Wednesday against the Minnesota Timberwolves. DeRozan’s ability to facilitate, then, will become extra important during this early injury crisis. 

While the Spurs simply don’t have the firepower to go toe-to-toe with the conference’s elite in the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets, they have enough talent to compete for a 22nd straight playoff appearance, which would tie the Syracuse Nationals/Philadelphia 76ers (1950-1971) for the longest in NBA history. Weathering this early injury crisis, as well as attempting to make sure others don’t unfold on the horizon with the oldest average roster in the league this season (28.8), will be crucial to make that push. 

Even with Pop’s pedigree, this current project might be the most daunting of his storied career. Right now, the Las Vegas sportsbooks have the Spurs projected at 42.5 wins this season.  That is eighth in the West by the skin of their teeth, just ahead of the Portland Trail Blazers and T-Wolves. If Popovich can get the best out of this group of Spurs and again reach the postseason, it might go down as his most remarkable accomplishment, even ahead of his five Larry O’Brien Trophies. And if history has taught us anything, it’s unwise to bet against Gregg Popovich.