Despite returning most of their 48-win core from last season, the 2019-20 Spurs look like anything but a team bound for the postseason, at least not in mid-November. After pulling off narrow wins against lottery teams amid their 5-3 start, they find themselves on an almost-unprecedented 6-game losing streak, with poor starts and porous defense rearing their ugly heads throughout.
As easy as it is to draw a throughline across the season’s first 14 games, it’s harder to trace a clear path to them righting the ship like they did last December, after they dropped to 11-14.