SAN ANTONIO, Texas — They like to drink outside in San Antonio.
Of course, it’s more enjoyable to do in May or June, when the sun is hot and the playoffs are rolling and the Spurs are fulfilling their destiny as the greatest sports franchise to ever operate under a salary cap. Through five championships and 21 consecutive playoff appearances and counting, the traditions are well established: come spring, settle in and watch the Spurs make a run.
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On South Alamo Street, just off the beaten track in downtown San Antonio, lies the Friendly Spot — a bar disguised quite effectively as your coolest neighbour’s backyard. Under the stars, you can drink craft beer, lean up against any number of trees and rub your dog’s tummy if you brought him, as the pet-friendly signs encourage. You can bring your kids too, as there’s a nicely outfitted playground. There are ‘Go Spurs Go’ signs and invitations to come see the Spurs on their massive 20 x 20 screen. You can imagine what it was like watching Timmy (Duncan), Tony (Parker), Manu (Ginobili) and Kawhi (Leonard) do their thing on hot early summer nights not so long ago.
But on a recent visit, The Friendly Spot is deserted as a Spurs game unfolds on the big screen. Not even the bartender is paying attention. There is not a single patron watching.
It could be the unseasonable cold. It could be that Spurs legends Timmy, Tony and Manu all aged out and once favourite son Kawhi decided he didn’t want to make his life’s work picking up the pieces. It could be that for most of this season – before a recent surge – the Spurs have been uncharacteristically languishing nearer the bottom of the Western Conference than the top.
It’s a shame too, because on this night – as he has so often wearing the unfamiliar San Antonio black-and-silver – DeMar DeRozan is doing everything he can to keep the Spurs tradition alive, to extend their playoff run, to keep a touchstone franchise relevant.
In some ways it’s a bigger task than what he signed up for in Toronto.
“You look up, the last championship was five years ago,” DeRozan says, gesturing to a banner hanging on the wall at the Spurs’ practice facility. “(It’s different) seeing something so recent. In Toronto, everything was a building block. I remember winning the first playoff series or winning 50-plus games, winning the division, everything was so new. Coming to a situation like this, the standards are so high, there’s only one standard to be at, that’s to be at the championship (level).”
With his first game against the Raptors approaching Thursday night – a much-hyped post-trade showdown that sees both DeRozan and Leonard make their first starts against their former teams, the Raptors icon is doing his best to help make up for Leonard’s departure from San Antonio.
DeRozan is averaging 22.9 points on 47.7 per cent shooting – his best mark since his rookie season in 2009-10. He’s also on his way to career-highs in assists with 6.3 per game and rebounds with 5.9. On a veteran team, the new guy showed up and instantly became their go-to scorer while doubling as their leading playmaker, all with the blessing of typically tough-to-please Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich:
“Why would I mess with his role? He’s continued wherever he left off in Toronto. He’s done a great job for us,” the NBA’s longest-serving bench boss said on Wednesday at the Spurs’ practice facility. “I think I’ve mentioned the thing I wasn’t aware of is he’s such a good passer, such a willing passer. He gets lots of assists, creates a lot of shots for the team, and I wasn’t expecting that. That’s probably the thing that I learned the most about his play. He’s been in the league a long time, he’s been an all-star. So everybody knows how he could score, but that was new to me.”
There was some early trepidation on DeRozan’s part to becoming ‘The Man’ on a completely new team. He’d gradually grown into his role as a franchise player, earning his opportunities almost by default on talent-starved Raptors teams and then building his game incrementally, season-by-season, until he could comfortably shoulder the load as the go-to scorer on one of the best clubs in the NBA.
That he got traded from an environment he’d almost crafted by hand was a well-documented shock and, even now, six months after the league-shaking, franchise-altering, career-defining move, it remains raw and he says he’s hardened in response.
“It just kind of opened my mind up to no matter who you are in this business, and in life as well, you have to be prepared for anything,” he says. “It gave me not just this lesson on the court, but a life lesson as well.”
When he arrived in San Antonio, it was the first time in years he felt uncertain about his place on the court. He compensated by doing what anyone with any sense does when they’re new to a pick-up game – pass the ball, make sure your teammates know you have good intentions.
“He came into a situation and what I can remember from those first days in the gym, he was such a willing passer and passing the ball all around the gym,” says Spurs veteran Patty Mills. “That’s a great way to start and get involved and gain trust with your new teammates.”
But even more affirming was his new coach – the one with all the championship rings – letting him know enough was enough; that his ability and willingness to move the ball was great, but the Spurs needed him to be more than that.
“I think one practice in training camp or something,” DeRozan said about how he got the message. “Pop cussed me out for passing too much. That’s when I realized, all right…”
He’s leaned into his new project, but it’s been an adjustment.
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While Leonard tipped over the first domino in San Antonio by forcing the Spurs to trade him after falling out over their treatment of a thigh injury that limited him to nine games last season, DeRozan never wanted to leave Toronto. Even after being ousted from the playoffs by LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers for the third-straight time last May, DeRozan still had designs on helping lift the Raptors to the Finals and beyond.
“Yeah, that was always my plan,” he said Wednesday. “I wanted to break every single record that was there and be the first to do every single thing there. I always expressed that. Sometimes you don’t get in life the opportunity to marry the woman you felt was the woman of your dreams. So, it just happens that way.”
He’s been able to rationalize it for the most part and claims to have grown from it. It’s not so much that he’s learned something new about himself, it’s that going through the fire has confirmed what he believed were his best qualities:
“Just how resilient I’ve always been,” he says has been his biggest takeaway. “For me, to be in a whole new position, continuing to show that I can get better and not let something slow me down, hold me down.
That’s something for me that’s always been my backbone, just continue to be resilient.”
But you don’t have to prod too deeply to know the wounds aren’t completely healed over, that some feelings remain raw and always will.
Has he connected with Raptors president Masai Ujiri since the deal?
“I have no reason to talk to him,” DeRozan said. “At all.”
He’ll have his chance to speak on the floor Wednesday and again when the Spurs visit Toronto after the all-star break.
To make his game heard, DeRozan will need it to speak louder than it ever has. For the most part with the Raptors, everything good he did and every positive step the team made was new and fresh. Both he and the Raptors were on a climb and Toronto was starved for heroes. DeRozan was more than willing to take on the job and on his way to five all-star nods and franchise icon status, it’s impossible to suggest he didn’t fill the role admirably.
But the Spurs are a franchise in transition, forced to shed their past in recent years as their ring-winning icons moved on and then Leonard – in theory, the new generation superstar who was going to carry them into an uninterrupted future – grew disenchanted, setting everything in motion.
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Popovich admits that strong consideration was given to using Leonard’s decision as a catalyst for a rebuild that only the Spurs have been able to avoid over all these years. And there is a lot of evidence suggesting they would have been better off doing just that.
Where they are now – with a veteran heavy, pricey roster and without the draft capital or trade assets to infuse it with the kind of elite young talent needed to win in the manner the Spurs have become accustomed – leaves them in the NBA’s murky middle, a place championship aspirations go to do die.
For all the kind words about DeRozan’s arrival and how well he’s played in San Antonio, the math is uncompromising: the Spurs traded an MVP-level superstar in Leonard and an elite role player in Danny Green for DeRozan – who even now remains viewed as a defensively compromised one-dimensional scorer – and Jakob Poeltl, who seems destined to be a role-playing big, the young asset the Raptors were willing to part with after putting Pascal Siakam and OG Anunoby off limits.
For all DeRozan has to offer, he risks forever being looked on in San Antonio as a replacement for the star who wouldn’t stay.
“The trade sucked,” says John Daly, a Spurs fan relaxing outside one of the city’s trademark HEB grocery stores told me. “It was a kick in the balls, man. Kawhi was the future of our franchise. We were going to build another trio around him and get five more rings. But not now. You’ll never find another Kawhi Leonard.
“DeMar seems like a nice guy and a good player, but trying to fill someone else’s shoes always fails. He’s pretty good, but can he bring everything to the table Kawhi did? I don’t know.”
That’s DeRozan’s job now. In no market are the shoes deeper than in San Antonio. In Toronto, he was a builder, his every triumph a new standard for a franchise whose history had always kept the bar accessibly low.
In San Antonio, he’s expected to keep an aging franchise on course, to make the final years of the Gregg Popovich era something other than an inevitable denouement.
The expectation in San Antonio is that, come May and June, you can drink outside and watch the Spurs in the playoffs. It’s been a habit more than two decades in the making. But midway through his first season in San Antonio, DeRozan is doing things on the big screen at The Friendly Spot and no one is watching. The playoff streak could be in jeopardy.
The weather will improve, it always does. The beer will be cold, it always is.
But come playoff time, can DeRozan make the setting sun shine on the Spurs long enough for everyone to enjoy it?
