San Antonio Spurs: When Will It Be Time To Worry?
By Cody Daniel
After the San Antonio Spurs dropped yet another game, this time on the road against the Sacramento Kings, their 5-4 record could begin to be perceived as a cause for concern for the defending champs.
Despite it still being pretty early in the season, being only a game above .500 in the rigorous Western Conference, especially after suffering three of their losses at the hands of teams that have failed to sneak their way into the playoffs in recent memory, there could be some justifiable, yet premature reason to start worrying a bit.
During the Spurs’ 2013-14 championship campaign, San Antonio would ultimately end up with 19 wins before having a fifth loss added to their record, which was 24 games into the schedule. As for this season’s sluggish start, that fifth defeat is quite likely to appear after San Antonio takes a trip to LeBron James’ turf in Cleveland on Wednesday.
Of course, it’s probably a bit rash to be discussing the Spurs’ level of concern in the middle of November before they’ve even registered their 10th game, but the standards are always going to be significantly higher when you’re the defending NBA champs and are currently sitting in ninth place in your own conference, which is on the outside looking in of the playoff picture.
Don’t get this mistaken; there’s absolutely no doubt in any knowledgeable basketball mind that San Antonio will have a seeding in the postseason with their name on it, but after having some early offensive struggles while teams like Sacramento and New Orleans are very quickly becoming forces to be reckoned with, fighting for a spot between the No. 3 through No. 8 seeds will be a very realistic possibility.
For now, the worries about the Spurs can be kept to a minimum. They’ve got the winless Philadelphia 76ers on Monday and a weaker stretch of their schedule they should be able to cruise through coming ahead, where they will be facing the Sixers and Brooklyn Nets twice, Boston Celtics, Minnesota Timberwolves and Indiana Pacers in seven of their next nine appearances.
For San Antonio to drop even a single one of these games would come as a huge surprise. Let’s wait another 10-12 games into San Antonio’s schedule and if they’re still hovering around the .500 mark, then we can start to have some speculation as to whether or not they can fill the shoes of last year’s Spurs, but we’ll just chalk this slow start up to the injury bug and a difficult early road for the defending champs.
Plus, when you consider the teams San Antonio has fallen to with Phoenix, Houston, New Orleans and Sacramento, each of their losses have come to teams that will be right in the thick of the playoff race at season’s end, and they’ve still managed to beat the Dallas Mavericks, Los Angeles Clippers and Golden State Warriors.
Maybe the real question isn’t when we should begin to worry about San Antonio this season, but when one of the favorites to hoist the Larry O’Brien trophy again in 2015 will start to find some consistency.