San Antonio Spurs Showing Rest of NBA Exactly How to Use D-League

After winning the 2014 NBA Championship, the San Antonio Spurs elected to go the route of consistency this offseason, bringing back the roster that made their title possible and forgoing the opportunity of enhancing the roster beyond the signing of their first-round draft pick.

For some teams, that can be a death trap. However, with the Spurs, consistency has always been the best option, and when it comes it to roster improvements, the franchise has always found ways to do so without revamping the roster.

Among their strategies has been the use of the NBA Developmental League as, in fact, a developmental league—something many other NBA franchises have yet to do.

But as they gear up for another NBA run with similar faces from the past few seasons, San Antonio owes much of its success—especially when it comes to the improvement of its role players—to the relationship it has forged with its D-League affiliate based in Austin, Texas, and the model the Spurs have set in utilizing that partnership.

When Patty Mills went down with injury, many beyond the walls of San Antonio forecasted a looming issue regarding the Spurs' point guard depth. 

Fans and followers of the esteemed franchise knew better.

Mills, of course, had been a crucial piece in the Spurs' 2014 title run, establishing himself as a bench spark and a prolific scorer in the second unit. Yet as far as many were concerned, his injury was nothing more than a minor setback—and in some cases, a positive, in the sense that it opened the door for third-string point guard Cory Joseph to showcase his talents.

With no hesitation, the fourth-year Texas product has stepped up to the plate, establishing himself as more than just an ample fill-in for Mills. Rather, he's proven himself as an everyday rotation player with starter potential to the tune of 8.5 points on over 50 percent shooting, with his total rising significantly when you remove three outlier contests in which he scored a combined three points.

Though his stats are modest—as I mentioned, they do rise in impressiveness once you account for those outliers—his play on the court has been nothing short of outstanding.

His composure on the court belies his experience, and his wide array of weapons on the offensive end supplements a defensive tenacity that is topped only by Kawhi Leonard and Danny Green.

However, when he entered the league, few would have predicted that this narrative would unravel. Declaring for the draft after just one collegiate season, many believed him to be too raw to make an impact and too premature in his decision.

A supposed second-round pick at best, Joseph was the subject of plenty of criticism and surprise when his name was called in the first round, selected by a Spurs team whose roster had no shortage of guards.

Yet, what many didn't account for, as least as evolution goes, was that Joseph's NBA development continued long after his drafting. Jumping on a trend that has only recently become popular, the Spurs prolonged Joseph's growth through D-League assignments to their one-on-one affiliate, the then-named Austin Toros.

In Austin, Joseph received the exposure unavailable to an end-of-the-bench, green draft pick. Playing a prominent role against other players with NBA bodies and great talent, he was able to learn the ropes, tighten his game and expand his skill set in a variety of ways.

And when San Antonio felt as though his presence was needed on an NBA court, he'd be recalled, likely to return to Austin days later and then back, and back again.

For many young players seeking a solid role in the rotation, this would be troublesome. Much of Joseph's first few seasons was spent on hardwood with players the system had labeled "a step below NBA quality."

Joseph, however, hardly turned his head at the constant back-and-forth. In fact, he found himself asking coach Gregg Popovich to return to the D-League, per Ken Rodriguez of Spurs.com:

A day earlier, he’d been recalled from the Spurs’ D-League affiliate in Austin but couldn’t muster much excitement.

The Spurs had a game the next day in Dallas, and Joseph knew what he had to do. When Pop answered the call, Joseph made a surprising request.

Can I go back to the D-League?

There was, Joseph recalls, two or three seconds of silence. It isn’t often a first-round NBA pick asks to be reassigned to the D-League. It may be unprecedented for a first-rounder to make the request after four previous D-League stops in the same season.

As the article would later explain, Joseph was on the same page as San Antonio in his view of the D-League. The franchise had instilled in him a belief that D-League experience was not a knock on one's capacity as a player but rather another instrument to better prepare prospects.

As valuable as practice is, true growth can be measured in on-the-court success, and like his employer, Joseph realized that a talent-filled roster in San Antonio left little room for on-court time for him.

Now, Joseph's name is one of many who have spent a good chunk of their developmental years in Austin in preparation for later success with San Antonio. Aron Baynes, who is also enjoying a standout campaign—per-36 stats of 12.7 points and 9.6 rebounds—followed a similar path in his first few seasons, and it seems likely that rookie Kyle Anderson will do so as well once Marco Belinelli returns from injury to clog up the rotation.

The Spurs have embraced the D-League, and as a result, so have their players. Though the D-League was once set up as a weak coalition of unaffiliated teams, the Spurs' use of it has led to its growing transformation into a baseball-like farm system with more and more teams seeking affiliations with whom they can control basketball operations.

The Spurs' recent rebranding of the Toros as the Austin Spurs further stresses the idea of the Spurs' D-League team as a subset of its parent franchise rather than an individual franchise with loose NBA ties.

Joseph, like many other Spurs, found himself in a quandary when playing time simply wasn't available in San Antonio. But he saw his several D-League assignments not as an insult but an opportunity.

Today, he has emerged as one of the team's breakout performers for the 2014-15 season, playing his way to a nice raise this summer.

But unlike many franchises who didn't—and still don't—recognize the value of a D-League connection, the Spurs ensured that Joseph, raw as he was, would spend his rookie and sophomore campaigns doing more than watch his teammates play from the sidelines.

Emphasizing the "development," San Antonio used its Austin affiliate to maximize the potential of its stars, and as trends suggest, that relationship—along with many others throughout the league, both already existing and still in the idea stage—will only strengthen as time goes on.