Predicting the final records of each NBA team

San Antonio Spurs

While the casual fan “hates” the Spurs for their reputation as a boring team, the basketball community absolutely loves this team, and it was impossible not to enjoy their run to yet another title last season. San Antonio plays “perfect” offensive basketball, blending ball movement with unique individual abilities and flawless deep shooting, and in the middle of it all stands the duo of Tim Duncan and Gregg Popovich as one of the great coach-player tandems in the history of sports.

Now, all they have to do is repeat.

Obviously, the statement above is crazy, as repeating is insanely difficult, but that is the only thing that San Antonio has failed to do throughout their run, and as Popovich would tell you, the regular season is virtually meaningless to this organization. The Spurs have won 50 games or more in every season of Tim Duncan’s career, and while that is certifiably insane, we can basically pencil them in for a top-four seed in the West barring an injury barrage of epic proportions.

It will be interesting to see how the minutes are managed for San Antonio’s “big three”, as the Spurs famously did not have a single player that exceeded 30 minutes per game last season. Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili are all back for another run, but Ginobili was remarkably healthy and productive last season, and both players took the summer off from international competition to remain ready to go for their NBA slate.

On the whole, there was basically no turnover with this roster. The Spurs added rookie forward Kyle Anderson through the draft, but aside from an injury that will cost Patty Mills the first half of the season, we can expect similar rotations and the addition of Cory Joseph to the rotation.

If we were to pick an “X-Factor” for the Spurs, it is probably the continued development of Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green, but even if the duo performs exactly in the way that they did in 2013-2014, all will be well in San Antonio. This projection falls short of anointing them as the number one seed in the West (something they actually accomplished last season), but placing them third is much more of an indication of how little they care about what transpires between now and the middle of April.

Projected Record: 57-25, 3rd in West