Spurs' Schedule Among Hardest in NBA

Gregg Popovich might face his toughest challenge with the San Antonio Spurs despite the apparent lack of NBA championship stakes.

The San Antonio Spurs are already facing some sizable odds once the 2022-23 NBA season tips off. The powers that be at the NBA were apparently in no mood to do them any favors. 

Data compiled by statistical analyst Ed Kupfer determines that the Spurs have one of the hardest 82-game slates released by the NBA on Wednesday. 

While the Spurs will be playing the same 29 teams as the rest of their NBA brethren, the team is in a difficult spot, the makeup is the second-hardest in basketball ahead of only partners-in-rebuilding, the Oklahoma City Thunder. 

Ironically, the Spurs are further done in on the days where they're not on the court: they're tied for the second-most back-to-back sets with 14 (Chicago, Golden State, Sacramento, Utah, and the Los Angeles Clippers lead the way with 15 each) and they're among the teams with the fewest games where they're on better rest than their opponent (trapped in the bottom of such rankings with Chicago, Charlotte, and New York). 

That could prove difficult for a head coach like Gregg Popovich, who is perhaps partly responsible for popularizing the idea behind load management. 

That data creates a potentially dangerous concoction where the young Spurs, now sans the services of Dejounte Murray, could come closer to the dire forecasts laid out ahead of them. The team got younger with Murray's departure to Atlanta and his prescience as the team's go-to attraction only mustered an appearance in the Western Conference's Play-In Tournament. 

San Antonio has not posted four consecutive losing seasons since 1985-89 and is currently ensnared in the longest eight-team playoff drought in franchise history at three seasons.