San Antonio Spurs: 5 goals for the 2018 offseason
5. Get the team healthy
This would probably be relevant to any team in the NBA. The season is long and hard on the body. With 82 games of basketball, plus the preseason and hopefully the postseason, every year is grueling. Add to this the training and the travel, and the average NBA team is usually carrying a minimum of one or two injured players.
However, this season the Spurs started off on the wrong foot and never got the whole team on the court. Tony Parker was injured in the 2017 NBA Playoffs and missed the first 19 games of the 2017-18 season. He only managed 55 games, the lowest total of his 17 seasons in the league.
Team leader and perennial MVP candidate Kawhi Leonard did not manage to start his 2017-18 season until the middle of December, missing the first 27 games. In the next 17 games, the star would only play nine, finishing his season up in the middle of January. The Spurs were still able to make the playoffs without Leonard but they were not the same team.
Throughout the season the Spurs had injures to many players, causing large amounts of missed games. Rudy Gay missed 25 games, Manu Ginobili missed 17, though some were for rest. Danny Green missed 12 games and Kyle Anderson missed eight games, and these are just the starters.
Joffrey Lauvergne and Brandon Paul missed time due to injury, which meant the Spurs bench had less depth. Getting healthy over the summer is one of the most important goals for an aging team.