San Antonio Spurs: 5 big goals for 2018-19 NBA season

4. Tweak offensive and defensive schemes

This isn’t just an issue of playing small-ball because of the plethora of guards present on the roster, though that obviously is also a concern. There has been a surprising amount of personnel turnover this offseason, and with new players comes a necessary scheme update.

For the better part of two decades, Pop mostly ran a low-post-focused offense that featured picturesque passing and egalitarian scoring. Kawhi Leonard was such a transcendent talent that Pop tweaked the offense to allow him to isolate on the wing more often, but with him gone, it’s likely that it’s time to revert to the old way.

Perhaps it seems like the San Antonio Spurs should move forward instead of backward, but they don’t have a ton of choices given their personnel. DeRozan will have to learn to be a better passer in Pop’s scheme, and both he and LaMarcus Aldridge are better from the mid-range than they are from deep.

Defense is a different story. Until stated otherwise, Aldridge and Pau Gasol will still start together, but Jakob Poeltl should factor in heavily too and may eventually become the starting center.

At least in the past few years, the Spurs tended to compensate for defensively challenged bigs like Gasol by playing good perimeter defenders like Danny Green and Kawhi Leonard. With both of those players gone in the DeRozan trade, the onus will fall back onto the bigs to play more defense.

That’s where Poeltl could come in handy. He doesn’t have the good outside stroke that Gasol does, but he’s a quick defender who’s capable at the rim as well as on the perimeter. He might be Pop’s first true modern defensive big, and it should be interesting to see how the scheme changes as a result.