The San Antonio Spurs are two weeks away from beginning a new decade. In celebration, a comprehensive look back to the best players to don the silver-and-black during the 2010s.
Don’t look now, but the end of the calendar year — and the decade at that — is just a mere two weeks away. And while most of the world will be wrapping presents, the San Antonio Spurs will be tying a bow on one of enthralling decades in all of basketball history.
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You’d have a difficult time searching for a team who experienced as many highs, and then as many lows as the Spurs have this decade.
To briefly recap, we’ve seen:
- A No. 1-seeded Spurs team become just the fourth team in league history to bow out in the first round
- A blown 3-2 lead in the NBA Finals (if you leave the article at the moment, it’s totally understood)
- One of the most electric 12-month redemption stories a season later
- Numerous times where it seemed the Western Conference torch had been passed (see 2012 vs. Thunder and 2015 vs. Clippers)
- The loss of a two-time Finals MVP and…
- Whatever you want to call this 2019-20 season.
Along the way, the numbers back up what you might already know.
The Spurs mostly strayed away from individual glitz and glamour. Golden State (18) and Oklahoma City (17) each produced more All-Star seasons than San Antonio, and three teams, Oklahoma City (15), Golden State (14), and Los Angeles (11) had more or as many All-NBA Teamers than the Spurs, who had 13 and 11 respectively.
Even so, the Spurs were the winningest team in the NBA this decade and owned the second-highest winning percentage of any team in all of North American pro sports, trailing only the New England Patriots. The moral of the story? There was nothing ephemeral about what the Spurs have done throughout the decade.
For that, we celebrate. While it goes against the culture or the silver-and-black, today we’ll celebrate the individual. San Antonio has produced tons of future Hall of Fame-type players, and here, we’ll look at which ones had the biggest impact on this decade.