San Antonio Spurs: Complete 2017 offseason grades

Overall

To be clear, it wasn’t a bad summer for the San Antonio Spurs. Every single one of their moves — save renouncing Jonathon Simmons only to watch him get scooped up on a more than manageable deal by the Magic — was defensible.

More than likely, Kawhi Leonard will take another leap in 2017-18, perhaps even earning his first MVP Award as the best player carrying a 55- or 60-win team in a brutal Western landscape with even less help than last year.

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However, as often as we’ve been proven wrong about the Spurs being too old to be effective, Tim Duncan is gone. Manu is on his last legs, and TP still has to get those same last legs healthy before he can return to the court.

While passing on the chance to sign a Chris Paul or a Kyle Lowry makes sense given the bench demolition such a move would’ve required, it also leaves the team with a serviceable backup, a second-year player and a rookie to hold things down at the point guard spot.

That’s not going to cut it in the West, where names like Stephen Curry, Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook run rampant. The Spurs lost two of their best defenders in Simmons and Dedmon, while Gasol, Aldridge, Parker and Manu all got a year older. Gasol getting a three-year deal is a bit much, even with the last year not being fully guaranteed.

Unless we’re missing something and Rudy Gay becomes some out-of-nowhere X-factor that launches San Antonio into the upper echelon, the Spurs spent their summer playing it safe, retaining a core that’s still miles behind from the best team in the league.

To that end, as much as each individual move made sense, it was still a pretty underwhelming offseason for a Spurs team that simply got older while almost every other Western powerhouse got stronger.

Next: 2017 NBA free agency tracker - Grades for every deal so far

Final Grade: B-