For virtually the first time this season, the San Antonio Spurs were bitten by the injury bug. During this critical stretch, they gave us much to learn.
With each passing day, the reality of the San Antonio Spurs’ 22-year postseason streak coming to an end becomes more and more likely. After struggling with consistency all season long, the team will find itself on borrowed time, even with NBA commissioner Adam Silver’s decision to suspend all league activity for at least the next 30 days due to the coronavirus.
This means, our last memory of the Spurs — for the moment at least — will be a spirit-building home triumph over the Dallas Mavericks. But over the past few weeks, the Spurs have given us plenty to observe in how they’ve handled the first real stretch of injuries this season.
Being four games out of the eighth and final spot in the Western Conference postseason with 19 games left isn’t insurmountable, but when the summer comes along, it’s likely the Spurs lament the chances they had as by far the healthiest team in the NBA, atrophied by their lack of urgency.
As of Mar. 11, the Spurs had just 36 combined games missed by injured players. The next-healthiest team wasn’t close in injury scratches — the Charlotte Hornets — at 52 games.
NBA injury plot. Games missed by injured players versus team wins. Bubble size represents cumulative quality of players lost (Lost-ws metric) https://t.co/touB7SeApc pic.twitter.com/taTHhMCqx7
— Man Games Lost NBA (@ManGamesLostNBA) March 11, 2020
In a great irony, the Spurs weren’t too healthy this past week and got a taste of their own medicine and experienced life without many of their rotational players.
For some fans, particularly those yearning to see the Spurs’ young guns have a crack at real basketball, this wasn’t the end of the world. Dating back to a 2-4 stretch that began on Feb. 26, the Spurs have had to loosen the telescope and peer deeper into the rotation.
The Spurs are still without Jakob Poeltl and now Dejounte Murray and Lonnie Walker IV, but it’s allowed us a closer look at some of the younger talents in the revolving door that is the Spurs rotation these days.
If nothing else, what we’ve learned about both the NBA suspending the season from the coronavirus and how the Spurs have looked over the past two weeks, we are provided a little more freedom to imagine how the team could look after a month of rest.