SAN ANTONIO — If the end comes Wednesday night, there won’t be much time to ponder it.
Gregg Popovich will pull out his dry-erase board and draw up a play for Rudy Gay to trigger the inbound pass. Patty Mills will dart around a screen, his dreadlocks bouncing behind him, and then the ball will find its way into the hands of DeMar DeRozan.
From there it will go through the rim, or it won’t. And then, with little discussion and less fanfare, Popovich, Gay, Mills and DeRozan will move on to whatever’s next, whether it’s another game, another season, another team or a beachside villa.
The cliche regarding elimination games is “win or go home,” but that’s not quite right for everybody. In some cases, it might be “win or pick a new home.”
Have plans already been made? For at least a couple of the aforementioned men in various stages of advanced basketball age, probably so. For others a decision might not be final yet, even if they know full well how close they are to having to make one.
“Definitely I’ve thought about it once or twice,” Gay said Tuesday.
That’s only natural. As odd as the fit might have seemed when he signed four years ago, Gay has proved to be a consummate Spur, and the franchise has as many reasons to want him back as he has to want to stay here.
But like Mills and DeRozan, he will become a free agent when the season ends, and there’s a chance that end could come Wednesday in Memphis. Under the NBA’s new play-in tournament format, there will be no early-series feeling-out of the opponent, nor will there be any three-game deficits to brace everyone gradually for the conclusion of a playoff run, or of an era.
At around 8:50 p.m., the Spurs and Grizzlies both will be living entirely in the moment, immersed in trying to win a game and move on to face either the Warriors or the Lakers. And before the top of the hour, longtime teammates might be saying farewell for good.
Could Gay, Mills, DeRozan and Popovich all be back in San Antonio next season? Sure. But that’s not the likeliest outcome, especially for a franchise that figures to be focused on continued development in 2021-22. And at some point, whether it’s this weekend or six months from now, there’s a good chance we will look back and wish we could have spent a little more time in these final days appreciating somebody who was, in his own way, underrated.
That applies to Gay, who would have fit right in on any of the Spurs’ championship teams but had the bad luck of joining the most consistent winner of the 21st century just as it hit its downswing. The Spurs will be able to find a frontcourt piece with either more size or more quickness this offseason. But it’s unlikely they’ll find a guy equipped with a better attitude and skill set to be the first forward off the bench.
It applies to Mills, the last on-court link to those NBA titles, and maybe the next Spur to have his jersey retired. As Lonnie Walker noted Tuesday, for the post-“Big Three” San Antonio generation, Mills was the player who has “shown us the Spurs way,” not to mention being the team’s only real 3-point threat in an age when everybody else has a half-dozen of them.
He has endured his slumps, and his best days are behind him, just as Gay’s are. And if he never suits up for the Spurs after Wednesday night, there will be more than a few days when he’ll be missed.
The same goes for DeRozan, who in the three seasons since the Kawhi Leonard trade has been better in almost every sense than anyone in San Antonio could have expected him to be. Those who don’t realize that now will realize it later, I suspect.
And Popovich? As with Tim Duncan before him, do not expect any official goodbyes. (Unlike with Duncan before him, do not expect even a wave as he walks through a tunnel.)
It would not qualify as the most shocking development of our time to see Popovich return next season. But he is 72, and he will spend this July and August (possibly) coaching his country’s team in a competition that could lead to an Olympic gold medal. And for a guy who can spend his days anywhere, with anyone, it might be tough to go from that back to devising ways to clear the weak side for Jakob Poeltl.
He’ll do that Wednesday, though, and the rest of us would be wise to enjoy every bit of his sideline white-board scrawling, and Gay’s inbounds pass, and Mills’ dreadlocks fluttering around a screen, and DeRozan eyeing the rim.
Sure, all of it might happen again Friday.
Or never again.
mfinger@express-news.net
twitter.com/mikefinger
