The good folks at Elias Sports Burea are in the business of providing perspective. According to Elias, the Spurs are 3-9 against teams with a .600 or better record. The only Western Conference teams that are worse than the Spurs against said opponents are the Warriors, Timberwolves, Clippers and Kings. League-wide, teams beat .600 teams .329 of the time. To say the Spurs struggle against good teams is putting it gently.
And that’s really what this comes down to. The Spurs’ best opportunity to improve their roster is through the trade market, and the market is interesting. If not now, then this offseason. If not this summer, then next February. But the longer the Spurs wait, the less time the new faces have to gel with their new running mates. And by next summer, the discussion is really about building for a championship in the post-Duncan era. But we’re not there yet, I trust.
If the Spurs don’t make a trade, the best this offseason will bring is a resigned Manu Ginobili, Tiago Splitter and a decent draft pick. And none of that is guaranteed. If it pans out, then it’s a good summer, but not likely good enough. Not with Ginobili and Duncan one season closer to retirement. Those are the realities.
This seems to becoming a pretty common perception of this team, a lot of other bloggers and writers have been floating this idea around as well. And the idea is basically that if the rodeo road trip is a bust this team needs to make serious changes.
Personally I think changes need to be made this team has some holes that need to be addressed if we want to contend and i'm for making some deals. But i'm not all for dealing our players (Hill, Blair, rights to Splitter) and picks to help fill those holes. If we want to be a competitive in the post Duncan era we're going to need to hang on to and develop our youngsters rather than dealing them for aging role players. We've had a lot of success drafting late in the draft and I honestly think that the draft should be a priority for us.
What do you guys think we need to do?
