It’s going to be an unusually long summer for the Spurs, which will certainly benefit the players, who played approximately an extra season’s worth of playoff games in the last four years. The question on everyone’s mind is just which players will be back from this season’s roster.
Going into the 2015 draft, the Spurs will only have five players under contract, Tony Parker, Boris Diaw, Tiago Splitter, Patty Mills and 2014 first round pick Kyle Anderson. It’s been reported that Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili are expected to return and the Spurs front office is operating under that assumption. But we are still about two weeks away from Ginobili’s self imposed month-long reflection period on what he’s going to do next year. So until then, all we can do is wait. However, there will be one player the team will add to their roster for sure, and he will be selected on June 25th at the 2015 NBA Draft. San Antonio will select 26th in the upcoming draft, and the direction they go may foreshadow what they expect to happen once free agency opens on July 1.
Multiple draft prospects that the Spurs have been linked to for their first round choice are big men. From Louisville’s Montrezl Harrell to Notre Dame’s Pat Connaughton, there are certainly some very talented prospects that could bolster the future of the San Antonio front court.
The other position expected to be addressed in the draft is point guard. With the good possibility that the Spurs cannot retain Cory Joseph in free agency, they surely are planning on addressing that rotational piece.
As the draft approaches there will be more reports about potential targets that will no doubt shed a little more light on who San Antonio is hoping to select in June. With the stellar drafting history of GM R.C. Buford and Coach Gregg Popovich, the routine late-first round draft pick is usually the most interesting offseason move for the Spurs.
But this year won’t be the normal summer for Spurs, as the team will certainly have some big changes to the roster compared to last season, when San Antonio returned their entire title winning roster. The first domino to drop will be the decisions of Duncan and Ginobili, and if they return, what they will be paid. After that, the team will be able to move on to (hopefully) targeting big name free agents like LaMarcus Aldridge, Marc Gasol, and Brook Lopez, before getting defensive player of the year Kawhi Leonard inked to his maximum salary five-year contract.
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