San Antonio Spurs

Lonnie Walker, although this might be the year that San Antonio finally lacks an out-of-nowhere breakout player, and after a four year run of Simmons-Dedmon-Murray-White too. But assuming Coach Pop deems him worthy of minutes, the league is going to be treated to the athletic stylings of a youngster who’s happy to show that he can live up to his potential nickname SkyWalker.

It all goes wrong if the Spurs can’t successfully buck the league-wide space-and-pace trend for the second straight year. Last season they had the NBA’s 6th best offense despite attempting the fewest threes. But if the league finds a way to punish San Antonio for their lack of long-range threats, then it won’t matter how much the defense improves; they’ll miss the playoffs for the first time since dinosaurs roamed the earth.

That team sure can play some defense. Besides getting All-Defensive team Dejounte Murray back (who’ll pair quite nicely with Derrick White for a lock-down backcourt) San Antonio added DeMarre Carroll for a potential closing unit of Murray-White-DeRozan-Carroll-Aldridge which can easily hide DeMar, assuming he’s not improved to something approaching a league-average defender.

Vegas has set the Spurs over-under at 46.5, which is actually a good deal higher than a number of publications’ predictions. And while the West is certainly stacked, San Antonio is in a good position to improve on last season’s 47 wins. The suspect defense (the biggest issue from last year) has been shored up, there are a number of young guns who are set to make age-based improvements, and as long as the offense doesn’t.