A month after watching the Spurs dismantle the Heat in the NBA Finals en route to the franchise’s fifth championship, I’ve reached a whole new appreciation for what they have down in San Antonio. And it has nothing to do with Tony Parker running pick-and-rolls or the ageless wonder Tim Duncan. In fact it has nothing to do with what they do on the court.
It has everything to do with what they’ve done off of it.
We’re now a little more than a week and a half into free agency and as per usual, teams are either throwing stupid contracts or selling their proverbial souls just to have a chance at signing one of the available superstars.
Amid all the chaos, I’d like to imagine Spurs general manager R. C. Buford stands back watching it all, with the five championship banners he’s helped raise behind him, and laughs. While the rest of the league chases superstars, everyone is really just chasing the Spurs. Instead of shaping their roster around the talent of individual superstars, the Spurs have built around a core of team-oriented players.
Two years ago, Duncan, arguably the game’s greatest power forward, more than halved his salary from over $21 million to $9.65 million for the 2012-2013 season. Manu Ginobili took a similar pay cut when he signed a two-year deal that pays him an average of $7 million a year, dropping down from the $14 million he earned in 2012-2013 alone. Parker, too, turned down more money on the open market to return to the Spurs, signing a four-year, $50 million contract with the Spurs in 2010. While it’s true none of these players would command a max deal on the open market, all of them have left money on the table to chase rings on the court.
Last month’s series between the Spurs and the Heat was a matchup between two teams with not only distinctly different styles, but also entirely different philosophies. The Heat built a team around individuals, with the “Big Three” of James, Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade taking up nearly $57 million of the $58.679 million salary cap a year ago. In devoting so much to three players, the Heat, and other teams that follow this model, are hamstrung in trying to add anything around their three main pieces. The Spurs? Duncan, Parker and Ginobili made a combined $30.3 million a year ago, or just slightly less than Kobe Bryant, the league’s highest-paid player. That extra money on the table allowed Buford to put together a team, one that readily buys into Buford and coach Gregg Popovich’s team-above-all philosophy.
So the question is, why do teams keep trying to assemble their own version of the Heat? Why not build like the Spurs? The answer is simply that you can’t. The NBA, more than any other league, is run by superstars. Teams will always chase them and they will always command top dollar. Players are supposed to – and have every right to – take as much money as a team is willing to offer. No GM can build a team banking on its star players’ willingness to take pay cuts. And yet the Spurs’ stars, remarkably, have done just that. It can’t be overstated how rare a thing San Antonio has in Duncan, Ginobili and Parker, who have served as the team’s core for over a decade. Any of them could’ve left at some point during that period to earn more money elsewhere. They didn’t. They stayed and took less, and were rewarded for it in the form of four NBA championships together.
Miami was essentially being held hostage by James as it awaited his decision. The Heat was left in the dark, trying to assemble a strong supporting cast around James, but had to do so without knowing just how much money it had to spend. That James chose to return to Cleveland, with its young group of players and cap flexibility, rather than continue on with an aging and financially strapped Miami squad, speaks to how difficult it is to construct a long-term team the Heat way.
The Spurs on the other hand were able to re-sign key role players Boris Diaw and Patty Mills thanks to already having the NBA’s best bargain. Though Duncan, Ginobili and Parker may all end up having busts in the Basketball Hall of Fame for their individual play, it’s their commitment to share the wealth as much as they share the ball that has the rest of the league playing catch-up.