San Antonio Spurs: 3 potential breakout candidates for 2019-20

The San Antonio Spurs will be looking to return to championship contention. With their hopes in the hands of the youth, who is most likely to step up?

The San Antonio Spurs will be entering the 2019-20 season in uncharted territory. For the better part of the last two decades, experts have consistently labeled the Spurs as a championship contender.

This season, they walk a bit of a tightrope: Some still see this version as a top-half team in the Association, while others suggest they’ll be on the outside looking into the playoffs for the first time since 1996. In any case, this is as far as Spurs fans have had to scroll on power rankings to find their team in quite some time.

With each of their star players in LaMarcus Aldridge and DeMar DeRozan set to be on the wrong side of 30 when the new season tips off, the Spurs are likely preparing for a youth movement.

To illustrate: Per Spotrac, this year’s Spurs enter the season with an average age of 25.9. This will be the youngest version of San Antonio Spurs of the entire decade and their first time outside of the top seven since 2011-12.

While this makes breakout candidates more possible in quantity, it creates an interesting dynamic in the quality of these potential breakout seasons. With the first and second scoring options likely occupied, the likelihood of seeing a breakout to the degree of say, 2014 Kawhi Leonard versus 2015, is going to be complicated.

Therefore, potential Spurs breakouts will probably be more simplistic. Improvements in field-goal percentage, court vision or even health could serve as positives in comparison to last season.

With that in mind, here are three Spurs players with the best cases to break out, as well as looking into what those breakouts would entail.