1. Make the second round of the playoffs
At the end of the day, a lot of these goals may be good, but the main goal for the San Antonio Spurs is what it always is: make a deep playoff run. Of course, that’s a lot easier said than done.
As previously mentioned, the Warriors, Rockets, Jazz and Thunder all look incredibly tough. The New Orleans Pelicans were a revelation in the playoffs, the Blazers are always good, the Los Angeles Lakers have LeBron James, and even teams like the Minnesota Timberwolves, Denver Nuggets and Los Angeles Clippers are lurking.
The Spurs could manage to be a middle seed, maybe even as high as No. 2 or 3. They could win their first round series, especially if they have home-court advantage. If they could somehow win a second round series against a team like the Rockets or Jazz, that’d be incredible.
There’s pretty much no chance that they would ever actually beat the Warriors though. It hurts to admit, but five stars greatly outweighs two, even with the Pop advantage. Expecting a Finals berth would be foolish.
Honestly, the Spurs probably won’t even make the Western Conference Finals. Odds Shark lists the Spurs as the sixth-best team in the West (in terms of chances to win the Finals), behind the Warriors, Rockets, Lakers, Thunder and Jazz, in that order. The odds that they end up being one of the last two teams standing among these six is slim.
However, if they can overcome the odds to be one of the last four standing in the West, they should feel good about that. Let Murray come into his own more, let Walker, White and Poeltl develop, and maybe make a run next year if/when the Warriors break up. This might not be the loftiest of goals, but it’s one that the San Antonio Spurs can be confident is very attainable.