San Antonio had a wildly successful preseason after going 5-0. They did it with the third-best offensive rating and sixth-best defensive rating in the league. But days from their first game of the regular season, it'll be important to remember to stay grounded through a long campaign that will inevitably have tough stretches for a young team.
Success will be brand new for many of the players on the roster, and the way you handle it is different from navigating being a bad team. The majority of the Spurs' most important players have only experienced losing seasons. We should all expect that to change this year, so their veterans will be more important than ever.
Spurs' veterans will have to keep teaching
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Adding Luke Kornet and Kelly Olynyk will [serve multiple purposes](https://airalamo.com/spurs-added-luke-kornet-perfect-time-combat-nba-emerging-trend) for the Silver and Black. Both players add the experience this roster will need to maintain their play when things are going well and course correct when things go awry.
Harrison Barnes is a champion in this league, but his success getting to the playoffs hasn't been great since he left Golden State. Don't get me wrong, he's a consummate professional with plenty to show and teach the guys, but he's only been to the postseason once in the past nine seasons.
Unfortunately, that also means that De'Aaron Fox is in the same boat as they played for the same Sacramento Kings. Now, some of that is playing for an organization that historically isn't great at putting playoff-caliber teams together, but the facts are the facts. He has plenty to give, but we won't distort reality in favor of blind fandom.
Olynyk played in an NBA Finals just a few years ago, and Kornet just won one. They'll give the Spurs an extra edge for handling success in the current state of the league.
This team is still building chemistry on top of having to play through their youth. The roster is already very different in Wembanyama's year three than it was when he was a rookie. Devin Vassell missed time at the end of Wemby's first year. Wemby missed time in the back half of his sophomore campaign.
Swipa and The Alien have only played five games together. Mitch Johnson is taking the reins officially for the first time. Fans will need to exercise patience as the team figures out how to maneuver all of these things. It's a good team, so [there will be a bunch of wins](https://airalamo.com/mistaken-doubters-already-changing-tune-spurs-dominant-preseason), but there will still be rough patches that everyone should just brace for.