Bohls: Spurs found a home away from home, now looking for star power

The Spurs want to come back to Austin.

Judging from two sellout crowds, Austin apparently wants the Spurs to come back.

The University of Texas is fine with them coming back if maybe not during the college season.

Bexar County, which owns the lease to the AT&T Center where the Spurs normally play, well, we’ll see. That could be an obstacle.

Here’s the other catch.

The 16,148 who stopped by Moody Center to see the Spurs lose to Minnesota 151-131 in an entertaining but defense-optional game Saturday afternoon may not be seeing these same Spurs next season. Heck, only six San Antonio players are under contract moving forward.

And that could be a good thing, considering San Antonio is about to miss the NBA playoffs for the unheard-of fourth straight season. Not to disparage the Spurs team that came to Austin and split a pair of games with Portland and Minnesota because this glorified G League team, if you will, plays hard and gives effort and can fill a basket.

But a team with four rookies and four others with only one or two NBA seasons under their belt really wasn’t going places this year. Except Austin. The Timberwolves reinforced that, leading by 33 points at one time and sinking 58% of their deep shots with 24 treys.

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It’s just that when an NBA team has four 19-year-olds on a roster whose average age is 23.6, well, Gregg Popovich knows he can start planning his next tour of wineries in May.

“Yeah, I’ve created a lot of winos,” the Hall of Fame coach/wine connoisseur cracked. “I’m not sure I should be proud of that. I’m like a concierge.”

OK. He’s part-time coach, part-time wine connoisseur, part-time NBA babysitter.

With their 21-60 record — the franchise’s second-worst ever — entering Sunday’s finale against the Dallas Mavericks, the Spurs will miss the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season.

Nothing that Victor Wembanyama can’t fix, right?

He’s, of course, the 7-foot-4 draft phenom from France whom the Spurs hope to land via the lottery. He’s already been likened to a Kevin Durant with a bigger wingspan. He could immediately transform the franchise into the next version of the teams that have won five world championships and once made 22 straight postseason appearances.

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The Spurs aren’t guaranteed to get the top pick. They do have the best chance at 14% — along with the equally horrible Rockets and Pistons — and they do somewhat have a history of success in the NBA lottery.

Uh, yeah.

David Robinson and Tim Duncan were both pretty decent pickups.

“I’ve told people in our organization about our good fortune,” Popovich said. “Yeah, picking Tim Duncan was a really tough draft choice. Others would say, 'You don’t deserve any more luck. Quit your crying.'”

But if San Antonio does win the lottery drawing on May 16, Mark Cuban’s head might explode. Or maybe it already has since the Mavs owner is the latest to throw in the towel — and his hat into the lottery ring.

He’s trying to secure a top-10 protected pick instead of a possible postseason berth and trying not to forfeit a lower June pick to the Knicks as part of the Kristin Porzingis trade.

It’s not surprising the league office is now investigating the fact that six top Dallas players, including Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving, will sit out Sunday’s finale against the Spurs. Hey, guys need their rest. But leave it to Cuban to give tanking a bad name. It’s all about timing.

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R.C. Buford is so much more eloquent.

“We’ve gone back two steps to focus on youth development,” the Spurs long-time general manager and now CEO said. “We’re rebuilding our team. We’re really a young team, but we like our spirit, our heart, our competitiveness. And they’re eager to learn under Pop.”

So instead of hanging onto All-Star guard Dejounte Murray and giving him a max contract and sticking with productive 7-footer Jakob Poeltl, the Spurs traded those two away to stockpile valuable draft picks. They picked up eight of them before the February trading deadline and have more than two dozen over the next eight years, which combined with good salary cap space gives them tremendous flexibility and options to find the next Duncan or Parker.

Until then, the gold standard of NBA franchises is kind of going through a pronounced dip. They’ll try to figure out which of these youngsters like Tre Jones — who had his second triple double on Saturday — and Julian Champagnie and good passing big man Sandro Mamukelashvili and Keita Bates-Diop can be molded into stars or strong rotational players.

Can they provide a solid core behind sharp-shooting guards Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell and center Zach Collins, whom Pop said will be the team’s starting five next season?

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And what happens if the ping pong balls don’t bounce the Spurs’ way? Will Scoot Henderson put them on the way back up? Is Alabama’s athletic wing Brandon Miller Spurs material or shades of first-round casualty Josh Primo?

“You got to get it right. You need to do well every time you have the chance to acquire talent,” Buford said. “Once we know where we are in the draft, we’ll have a much better idea of the impact on our team and can start building our next generation championship.”

Until then, the Spurs will remain in a state of flux.

Just don’t tell the Spurs that. They’ve got a plan, and they’re sticking to it. And they’ve been smart enough to deserve that trust. And if San Antonio doesn’t get its next huge French import?

“You just shift your goals,” Popovich said. “The situation is the situation.”

For his part, Pop seems to be loving every minute of this post-dynasty era.

Sure he’d prefer coaching future Hall of Famers to titles in between sipping a fine cabernet, but he called it “gratifying” the work of helping these kids grow and mature and maybe someday even defend.

“They’re all trying to have an NBA career,” Popovich said.

Plus, Pop’s still making $12 mil a season and doesn’t face the pressures he used to at fulfilling the promise as the head coach of some of the greatest NBA players ever in the playoffs or at the Olympics. It’s all gravy, but he still wants to win.

“The beauty of a situation like this is we’re not going to win a championship, but your goals are totally different,” Popovich said. “You’re watching the progress of each individual, and the light goes on at different times. It’s been real joyful for everybody.”

But a little more so if a certain Frenchman shows up this summer.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: San Antonio Spurs grooming youngsters, locating next stars