It might be another season of 50+ wins and overall pleasantness for the San Antonio Spurs, but if winning an NBA championship with this group is the main goal, than doing something out of the box and making some sort of trade that brings them another meaningful contributor is a must.

However, it won’t happen. There’s a way and thought process here, more than for any other basketball franchise in the league. Gregg Popovich doesn’t do things out of desperation and even though he doesn’t always get things right, the Spurs’ record since the 1997-1998 season shows that he knows what he’s doing, along with the people helping him in assembling good teams that sometimes turn out to be great.

Maybe the feeling of something missing would have been gone if the Spurs had survived that rally from the Heat in the final 28 seconds of game 6 in the 2013 NBA finals. They had their hand on the NBA title only to have it cruelly taken away, and two days later coming up short, only with less of a dramatic finish.

The Spurs have a lot of point guards that only they want. They have a problem with an injured Tiago Splitter and Boris Diaw, exposing Tim Duncan as an aging big man. He’s still doing a lot better than 95% of the players his age, but this isn’t the same vibe we were getting from him last season.

Tony Parker has been battling injuries all season and Manu Ginobili might be a bit healthier and better than in 2012-2013, but the shadow of his mistakes from last season is still lurking behind him, and there are fewer people today who trust in him to do the right thing when the game is on the line than before.

Maybe we will all be proven wrong once again. The Spurs are a March and April team, known for strong finishes and having everyone healthy, rested and in their best shape for the most important time of the season. Since 2007, it hasn’t been enough to get by and win a fifth NBA title for Duncan and Popovich, a fourth for Parker and Ginobili.

It’s always a mistake to count out the Spurs but their problems this season against certain teams might be more than just a matchup issue like they have with the Houston Rockets at the moment. The NBA is about numbers and ability, but sometimes also a gut feeling can tell us something if we read the signs right. In this case, they’re telling us that the last call for a title was last June, and unless a drastic change is made in the next couple of days, the Spurs don’t have a good enough squad, even at its healthiest, to win the NBA title.

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