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The San Antonio Spurs were never going to come out ahead on the Kawhi Leonard trade.
For starters, it’s next to impossible to even construct equal value for someone who, when healthy, is at least in the NBA‘s top five players. This particular situation was further complicated by Leonard’s bizarre year before the deal, his clear desire to get out and his looming 2019 free agency.
Even still, this was Kawhi Leonard—Finals MVP, two-time Defensive Player of the Year, two-time top-three finisher in MVP voting. The Spurs could get 75 percent of his value and still potentially transform their team.
If San Antonio wanted to start over and build around Dejounte Murray and Lonnie Walker IV, it could have fetched a premium rebuilding package of young prospects and draft considerations. But 69-year-old program patriarch Gregg Popovich had other ideas.
The Spurs swapped Leonard, Danny Green and cash for DeMar DeRozan, Jakob Poeltl and a top-20-protected pick. Popovich clearly coveted competitiveness and felt there wasn’t a better needle-mover in the price range than DeRozan.
“With DeMar coming to San Antonio, I couldn’t be happier,” Popovich told reporters following the deal. “DeMar is a four-time All-Star, an All-NBA player, great in the community there, team player, somebody I have respected and watched play for a while now, and we are thrilled to have him here.”
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Under the circumstances, DeRozan might have been the most talented player the Spurs could hope to find. But that doesn’t make the exchange an automatic victory for the Alamo City.
The only way that happens is if DeRozan and LaMarcus Aldridge prove capable of carrying this club deep into the postseason. They’re struggling to inspire confidence in that department, and it’s debatable if they ever should have.
At their respective peaks, DeRozan and Aldridge are (or were) stars—not stars and definitely not superstars. That sounds like more of a slight than it’s intended. Both were top-20(ish) talents, with Aldridge averaging 23.3 points and 10.7 rebounds over a two-season stretch from 2013-15 and DeRozan pouring in 27.3 points per night during the 2016-17 campaign.
Still, there’s a big difference between top-20 and top-five players. The latter anchor title teams; the former can struggle to reach the playoffs without proper support.
Aldridge, for instance, only once reached the second round and never made it further over his nine seasons with the Portland Trail Blazers. DeRozan had a touch more success in Toronto (four series wins in nine years), but his supporting cast was better and his conference was worse. And even then, the Raptors never really looked like title contenders until they replaced him with Leonard.
Pairing Aldridge and DeRozan could keep San Antonio playoff-relevant—it’s eighth in the crowded Western Conference standings—but nothing beyond that.
“This is a blah long-term play,” ESPN’s Zach Lowe wrote after the trade. “[It’s] one of the first times having a coach installed as the top decision-maker might have hurt San Antonio. Without Leonard, a rebuild is coming. This move only delays it. DeRozan is an All-Star, but not a franchise star who alone forestalls a downslope.”
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Realistic expectations said the Spurs would be similar to last season. They won 47 games, captured the West’s No. 7 spot and were brushed out of the first round by the Golden State Warriors in gentlemanly fashion.
If the best-case scenario included anything more, it was maybe a second-round showing. But that was pushing it.
If this sounds like a somber reality, that’s because it is. But the real worry is whether this might get worse.
Both DeRozan and Aldridge are paid like stars at least this season and next. They’ll collectively take home $50 million this year, $53.7 million the next and potentially another $51.7 million in 2020-21. By that point, DeRozan would be 31 years old and Aldridge 35.
The long-term concerns are severe, but even the short-term outlook seams gloomy.
Both Aldridge (32nd) and DeRozan (33rd) rank outside the league’s top 30 in player efficiency rating. For Aldridge, his 21.2 PER is the second-lowest he’s posted in the last six seasons. ESPN’s real plus-minus metic is even less bullish on the twosome. There, DeRozan sits a mere 62nd, while Aldridge is buried all the way down at 263rd.
DeRozan is contributing his fewest win shares per 48 minutes since 2014-15 (.133). Aldridge’s mark hasn’t been this low (.135) since 2012-13. In fact, that metric paints Aldridge fifth among San Antonio’s rotation players and DeRozan two spots below.
The Spurs’ on/off splits see it the same way. They’ve fared 7.0 points better per 100 possessions without Aldridge. For DeRozan, it’s a 7.5-point positive swing when he’s on the sidelines.
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When both play together, San Antonio has posted a 0.3 net rating, which would land between the Portland Trail Blazers and Dallas Mavericks for 18th overall.
But to be fair, it’s not all doom and gloom.
Few teams enjoyed a better December than the Spurs, who ranked fourth in winning percentage (.688) and first in net rating (plus-10.2) for the month. Aldridge is scorching-hot of late (24.5 points on 59.5 percent shooting over his last 10 games), and DeRozan has never been a more effective distributor (career-high 6.3 assists per game).
But there’s still a ceiling for this superstar-less squad, and it’s not nearly as high as a club committing this kind of coin to a pair of All-Stars would like.
Rebuilding is unavoidable, and it won’t be a speedy process as long as these two are keeping San Antonio in the playoff mix and out of premium draft lottery range. And if it takes three years to shift the franchise’s focus forward, it won’t have a young nucleus by then. Murray would be 25 years old. Jakob Poeltl would be 26. Derrick White would be 27.
At that point, the Spurs would essentially have an offseason or two to guess almost everything correctly and construct a contender on the fly before the next core starts its descent.
It’s tough to tell when the payoff will ever come, or even what it’s supposed to look like.
With no obvious path to contending now or in the future, the Spurs are stuck somewhere in the middle with their hopes attached to two high-priced players who weren’t tier-one talents to begin with and are displaying troubling signs of decline.
Statistics used courtesy of Basketball Reference and NBA.com and accurate through games played Monday, Dec. 31.
Zach Buckley covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @ZachBuckleyNBA.
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