30 teams in 30 days: San Antonio Spurs offseason preview
By Jeff Siegel
If we learned anything last season, it’s that the Spurs are forever. The signings of Pau Gasol and David Lee, along with the continued athletic decline of Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili, should have sunk them on the defensive end, but they instead flourished, posting yet another year at the top of the league. At this point, Gregg Popovich could be given a team of middle schoolers and turn them into a top-five defense. The Spurs will have questions to answer this summer, but there’s no reason to think they won’t ace this test as well, as they’ve been doing for more than 20 years.
Assuming Gasol opts in to his $16.2 million player option for next season, the Spurs start their summer with $88 million on their books and another $50.5 million in cap holds.
Two other Spurs have player options for 2017-18, but neither Dewayne Dedmon nor David Lee will entertain any thought of opting in to their current contracts. Dedmon signed for the room exception last summer and stands to sign for a much larger salary, in both years and dollars, than the $3.0 million his option would pay him. Lee signed for the minimum and revitalized his career in San Antonio, proving to be a useful player off the bench and even played quality defense in the playoffs.
Read More: Houston Rockets offseason preview
Other key free agents for the Spurs include Patty Mills and Jonathon Simmons, assuming Manu Ginobili hangs up the sneakers and retires to Argentina. Mills has been a wonderful backup point guard for San Antonio, giving them energy and scoring off the bench, but it may be time for the Aussie to move on to a bigger role and a larger paycheck than the Spurs are willing to give him.
Simmons is a restricted free agent under the Gilbert Arenas provision, which means another team can’t pay him more than $8.4 million for next season and any additional amount is backloaded into the third and fourth years of the deal, much like Tyler Johnson’s contract will explode from $5.8 million to $19.2 million over the next two years. Under the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, the Spurs will have the choice to either spread Simmons’ salary evenly over the three- or four-year contract or take the major cap hit in 2019 and 2020 in exchange for a lighter cap number in the first two years. Traditionally, being subject to the Arenas provision would negatively impact a player’s leverage when negotiating with his team or any other, but after last summer, teams with a large amount of cap space this year are seeing the value of offering an inflated contract to Arenas provision guys — either they get a solid player at a slight overpay or they force a rival to take on a lot of long-term money.
There’s been a lot of chatter about the Spurs’ potential ability to bring in a max free agent this summer. This would probably require them to trade Gasol and Parker to carve out the necessary cap space, but doing so would open up enough space to sign Chris Paul, Gordon Hayward or any other free agent the Spurs desire. While trading Parker might go against the ethos for which San Antonio stands, the opportunity to pair Kawhi Leonard with Paul or Hayward might be too much for the Spurs to pass up. R.C. Buford and his staff won’t pull the trigger on a trade without a firm commitment from a star, but there will be a lot of smoke out of San Antonio in the first few days of free agency.
Next: The Warriors constructed two profoundly different GOAT teams
If the Spurs strike out with Paul and Hayward or simply choose to run it back with most of the same team from last year, they’ll be set up to compete at the top of the market during the summer of 2018. Gasol and Parker will come off the books after next season, as will LaMarcus Aldridge and Danny Green. Moving on from Gasol and Parker will net the Spurs more than $20 million in space, with the ability to gain north of $32 million more by letting Aldridge walk as well. With a number of big names coming into free agency next summer, the Spurs may opt to retain their current team and roll over their cap space to next year rather than breaking the bank for a lesser free agent this summer, whether it’s one of their own or bringing in one from another team.