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What the Spurs have done over the past few years finally has caught up with them.
Early in the careers of Parker and Ginobili, their salaries were very low. This gave the Spurs plenty of room to go out and add impact players to the roster. They signed a series of veterans to medium-level money.
Now, however, Parker and Ginobili earn market-level series for their contributions (or, slightly below in Manu's case). Their payroll flexibility is gone.
The team drafted some more Euro players to try to groom them for anticipated roster holes. Sanikidze, Mahmini, Javtokas, Scola, usw.
They've tried to acquire "diamonds in the rough" to repeat their fortunes with SJax and Devin Brown.
But none of those plans have panned out. While the Spurs were ahead of the curve five years ago in scouting foreign talent, the rest of the league has caught up. The Spurs have had to chase more of the "project" types.
Their diamonds in the rough have been more rough than diamond.
So they've had to stick with the same old veterans, even as they enter the accelerated parts of their decline.
They have jettisoned high-paid underperforming players, only to see their cheaper replacements be even worse.
The Jason Kidd saga has turned out to be a killer for the team, even though he didn't sign. The Spurs passed on Josh Howard to preserve cap room. They had Leandro Barbosa in their hands, only to send him to Phoenix.
What did the Spurs get for that trouble? Well, with the cap room, they got Rasho. With the draft pick from Phoenix, they got to dump Malik Rose's salary on New York, and rent Nazr Mohammed for a year and a half.
Eventually, there are consequences for frittering away opportunities and assets with nothing in return.
I really don't think that the front office just thought having a bunch of role players in their late 30's was the best plan for these years. But poor decision-making and execution, after what had been a brilliant string of successes, has left them in their current predicament.
Once before, the Spurs rebuilt on the fly. The 2001-02 team had a lot of the same problems this team does. On this team, the problems are worse, because a half-crippled 36-year-old David Robinson and a 6'7" Malik Rose were utterly superior in every facet to the Spurs' current centers. But, besides that, the Spurs were able to bring several fresh new faces into the fold for 2002-03, and they gelled ahead of schedule and won a le.
So the despair of this hopeless roster does not necessarily mean that the Tim Duncan era will go out with a whimper. Retooling is plausible, or would be if the team weren't going up for sale.
