Can Spurs push playoff streak to record heights? Predictions here
4. Road woes continue in 2019-20, but they make up for it at home
One of the more underrated subplots of the last two San Antonio Spurs seasons has come within the theories as to why this team has struggled so mightily when playing on the road.
The more “boring” explanations say the simple fix is just better defensive communication and hotter starts. The fascinating theories have gone as far as blaming Nike’s marketing and the league’s easygoing rules regarding what jersey colors teams can wear when playing.
The article — assuming you don’t take it completely serious — had some interesting information. For instance, when the Spurs went on the road and wore their traditional black, they actually produced a winning record over the 19-game sample size. Once any variable changed, such as the Spurs wearing white on the road, they fell to just 6-16.
Whether or not the jersey colors produce some sort of mental struggle for the players, it’s not difficult to imagine the Spurs having another roller coaster-type season at opposing teams’ arenas.
In my 82-game projection, I pegged the Spurs as a 50-win team, which for some reason feels awkwardly unpopular in today’s day and age. But, on the road, I had them at just 17-24.
The Spurs aren’t fully to blame for that, but their schedule becomes so challenging at certain junctures. For example: how about the 20-day stretch over February where the Spurs will play eight road games against the likes of Los Angeles (gulp, both of them), Denver, Portland and Sacramento?
How about the one-week span at the end of March, where they’ll be facing the Jazz, Timberwolves, Nuggets, Warriors and Kings?
With two perennial All-Star centerpieces, the Spurs will have a chance to win all 82 games, that much is certain. But it’s quite the challenge time putting even half of eggs in one basket for a team that owns a 30-52 record on the road over the last two seasons.
It doesn’t take a paragraph to explain how deadly the Western Conference is, either, especially in comparison to the East. In 19 of the last 20 seasons, the West has won the head-to-head regular season matchups (the exception was 2009). And unfortunately, as custom each year, the Spurs will have 52 games against the West, and only 30 against the lowly East.
One aspect fans seem to overlook is that even if the Spurs were even vastly superior to the past doormats of the Western Conference — think the Suns, Kings, or Timberwolves — it’s still incredibly unlikely that the Spurs would sweep those teams.
For context, let’s use the Suns: as awful as they’ve been since the Nash-and-Stoudemire days, they’ve still managed to play spoiler whenever the Spurs come to the desert; they beat the Spurs handily last season, and then again in 2017, 2015, and 2014. It just goes to show what the Spurs have proven: they can win on any given night, but they can also lose on any given night.
But … quick math tells us that if the Spurs do manage to do well on my 52-win prediction, that means they’ll be playing lights out basketball back in San Antonio.
They’ve been able to offset some sub-par road play with clockwork dominance at home, going 33-8 in 2017-18 and 32-9 in 2018-19.
As the old saying goes, there’s no place like home. When the Spurs win 35 regular-season games at the AT&T Center this upcoming year, perhaps it’ll certainly feel that way.