New Western Conference Landscape: San Antonio

Dec 7, 2012; San Antonio, TX, USA; San Antonio Spurs players (from left) Tim Duncan and Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili watch from the bench during the second half against the Houston Rockets at the AT

Part 4 in the New Western Conference Landscape series, which observes how free agency changes will effect the teams the Grizzlies see in conference play next season. 

These days, you don’t expect the Spurs to do much in the offseason. If basketball franchises are buildings, the Spurs are built from solid Italian marble, and the foundation – Parker, Ginobili, and Duncan – is aging, but it’s as solid as ever. So the team only has to worry about furnishing its royal palace: a three-point shooter here, an all-around defender there. They like finding exotic pieces hidden in far away lands, places no other scout would think to look. And this beautiful building came within 5.2 seconds of winning yet another title last year. So what needs tweaking?

First, to solidify the foundation, the Spurs resigned Manu Ginobili again for 2 more years, and are probably already in contract talks with his twin 3-year-old boys. Ginobili has been playing in San Antonio for 14 years, building a legacy so strong it was even immune to his poor play down the stretch of the NBA finals.

The Spurs also returned big man Tiago Splitter. Splitter has his share of detractors, and more than a few fans in Miami, but the fact is that together with Duncan he heads a defense ranked 3rd in the league. The Spurs love players who can defend multiple positions, as it makes them impervious to pick-and-rolls and allows them to ignore subpar shooting guards while building brick walls around guys like Z-Bo.

They added Chicago shooting specialist Marco Belinelli to round out their shooting guard set, and were thus able to release the streaky Gary Neal to free agency. They also brought in a young, promising but unproven power forward in Jeff Pendergraph for reasons only the Spurs player evaluators are clear on.

So the Spurs will look roughly the same when the Grizzlies see them next year, and that could be a problem. It’s not that the Grizz didn’t scratch and claw and keep things close in the Western Conference Finals – after Game 1, anyway – but the Spurs were certainly the team in control. It felt a bit like being smothered by a pillow. You can flail and fight all you want, but it will all be over soon, and quietly.

The difference this year will be the Grizzlies. A new, more flexible head coach; a solid backup center; and a recently returned sharpshooting combo guard off the bench with a history of Spurs-icide.

Memphis’ prodigal son torched the Spurs in the NBA finals. He shot 61% from 3-point-range, going 10-11 from deep in the first three games. So will it be enough to spread the Spurs D? Let’s hope so. It will require some reshuffling of our offense – Allen and Prince on the floor at the same time is simply not going to work against SAS – but if Bayless, Pondexter, and Miller can give productive minutes, it will open the door for the rest of the Grizzlies offense to start working. We saw a glimpse of what the Grizzlies’ offensive system was capable of in the first half of Game 3 of the WCF; it will take that kind of effort all year to beat the Spurs in 2013-14.