Spurs’ schedule analysis for next season

Photos by Michael Gonzales/NBAE via Getty Images

Breaking down the biggest games and toughest stretches in the Spurs upcoming season.

On Thursday the NBA released the schedule for the 2024-25 season. It gave basketball junkies their fix as they go through the schedule, estimating wins and losses. San Antonio Spurs fans got a chance to see how tough the schedule will be for a team with higher expectations than last season.

San Antonio heads into the year with a more competitive roster after adding veterans Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes, and top-5 pick, Stephon Castle. Draft Kings has set the Spurs’ win total for next year at 35.5, which would likely leave them on the outside looking in of the Play-In Tournament. They’ll be tested early and often this season, as Positive Residual estimates San Antonio has the 6th toughest schedule in the league.

Let’s take a look at some of the key stretches and games in the 2024-25 schedule.

An important first 10 games

The Spurs have an interesting start to the season that could put them in a position to start the season above .500. They’ll play the Western Conference Champion Dallas Mavericks on TNT, one of their 21 nationally televised games, in the opener. They’ll go on the road to Oklahoma City, Utah, Los Angeles to play the Clippers and Houston. San Antonio will host the Rockets twice, the Timberwolves, Jazz and Trail Blazers in the first ten games.

Dallas, OKC and Minnesota are three of the best teams in the West. The rest of the schedule included winnable games for San Antonio. The Clippers are a mystery and Kawhi Leonard is a question mark to play early in the season. Three matchups with Portland and Utah give them a chance to pad the win total early. The biggest question is how they fare against the rapidly improving Rockets. This rivalry has gained some steam in the last year or so, with the addition of Victor Wembanyama to the Spurs, and Dillon Brooks and Fred VanVleet to the Rockets. Houston may be the team standing between the Spurs and an above-.500 start to the season.

Hitting the road

Much will be made about San Antonio’s four “neutral site” games this year. On January 23rd and 25th, the Spurs will face the Indiana Pacers in Paris, France. Then just a month later, they’ll play the Phoenix Suns and Detroit Pistons at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas.

Wembanyama’s return to France in a Spurs jersey will be one of the highlights of the NBA season. Other than the international travel, the Spurs should have the advantage of an entire nation rooting on the player that just brought them an Olympic silver medal. While his role is unclear right now, Sidy Cissoko will also be making a return to his home country.

The Austin games have been hotly debated by Spurs fans, but they come at a fairly opportune time in the 24-25 season. The Silver and Black will be the home team for two games to split up their rodeo road trip. It’ll be 12 games away from San Antonio, but the two games in Austin should be close enough to home that they feel like a reprieve from the grueling road stretch that lasts essentially the entire month of February.

A tough last leg

San Antonio will have its work cut out for them if they want to reach the Play-In Tournament. The last 10 games of the season are brutal, with 7 of them coming on the road. There will be reprieves against Detroit, Portland and Toronto, but the other opponents are tough. The Spurs will play Boston, Golden State twice, Cleveland twice, Denver, Phoenix and the Clippers. Los Angeles is a bit of a wild card, but the other teams will likely factor in the playoff race somehow.

In the last two years, San Antonio has been completely out of the playoff picture in the final stretch of the season. If the Spurs are indeed contenders for a playoff spot, they will likely need to steal a few games against tough opponents to help their standing in the West late in the season.

Matchups to watch

A few notable games that I’m looking forward to include:

October 30th in Oklahoma City: Wemby vs. Chet Holmgren is always a fun matchup. Will CP3 and Barnes help them compete against the best in the West?
NBA Cup game, November 15th vs. the Lakers: San Antonio hosts the defending NBA Cup champs in what could be a tone-setting game for the In Season Tournament.
December 25th in New York: Wembanyama has a chance to redeem himself at Madison Square Garden on Christmas. This is a must-watch game.
January 8th in Milwaukee: Giannis Antetokounmpo and Wembanyama is a kaiju matchup that rivals Godzilla and King Kong. I can’t wait to watch these two compete for the years to come.
February 5th in Atlanta: It’s never too early to think about those 2025 picks. Beating the Hawks means a better pick in a stacked 2025 NBA Draft.
March 10th and 12th vs. the Mavericks: If the Spurs are competing for the Playoffs, this homestand against the Mavs should have a lot of excitement. These would be meaningful games late in the season against an in-state rival.

Some analytics

Here are some interesting details to remember for the 24-25 schedule:

San Antonio will have a rest advantage in 11 games next year, 5th most in the NBA. That means they’ll have more rest than another team going into over an 8th of their games. The Spurs will have 9 rest disadvantage games, where teams have more rest than them.
The Spurs will play 15 back-to-back games this season, second most in the league.
San Antonio will travel 43,497 miles this year domestically. This doesn’t account for games in Paris.

What do you think? Based on the schedule, will the Spurs go over or under their projected 35.5 win total? Is a Playoff berth in the cards this season?