Can Spurs Still Make Playoffs in Victor’s Rookie Season?
Update: After beating both the Blazers and Timberwolves in back-to-back home games, the Spurs have a record of 10–36 (.217).
To grab the last play-in slot (10th in the West), the Spurs likely need to at least be at .500.
This means the Spurs would need to win 31 of their last 36 games (or .861 ball) to have a real shot at making the playoffs.
It’s too late to make up the winnable games from earlier in the season, but there is optimism that the Spurs can post 30 victories and finish the season strong.
To get to 30 wins, the Spurs would need to win 20 of their last 36 games (.555 ball).
On the final day of 2023, I predicted the Spurs would make the playoffs.
The Spurs were 5–26 at the time and coming off a split in two games at Portland.
Here are the results from 2024 so far:
- Celtics — loss
- Grizzlies — loss
- Bucks — loss
- Cavs — loss
- Pistons — win
- Hornets — win
This puts the Spurs at 7–30 headed into tonight’s game against the Bulls.
To get into the playoffs, the Spurs would have to rely upon the last play-in spot (10th in the West) which the Jazz currently own at a record of 20–20.
As of now, the Spurs are 11.5 games back of that 10th spot with 45 games left in the season.
Essentially, the Spurs have 45 games to reach 41 wins and become a .500 team. The Spurs already have 7 wins so we can subtract that from the 41 to get 34 wins.
So the math comes down to the Spurs winning 34 times in 45 games which means they would have to win at a 75.5% clip for the rest of the season.
The Spurs have looked much better of late, winning two wins in a row against bad teams, but becoming a .750 team now is near impossible, especially when the head coach won’t play the franchise player.
Victor is out for tonight’s game against the Bulls and Pop has already ruled him out of an upcoming back-to-back.
The reason: a made-up mandatory minutes restriction and “rest” games on back-to-back.
The Spurs definitely had playoff potential headed into the season, but Gregg Popovich made sure that wasn’t going to happen by tanking Victor’s rookie season.
You can expect the Spurs to win a few more games in 2024, but nothing that would jeopardize their chances of landing a high lottery pick.
But I’m pulling for otherwise. I don’t want Pop to be rewarded for tanking the first 35 games of Victor’s career; I want the Spurs to finish strong — ideally getting to 30 wins so that they fall back in the lottery and have to organically build off the Wemby-Vassell 1–2 combination.
