Game 1 of the San Antonio Spurs’ post-Big Three era was a success. San Antonio didn’t play an amazing game, but it did hold off a talented, albeit fractured, Minnesota Timberwolves squad on Wednesday to win 112-108.

Let’s recap the Spurs’ performance with three observations, two questions and one prediction.

3 Observations

The Spurs let DeMar DeRozan do this thing

Remember how LaMarcus Aldridge requested a trade last summer because he didn’t feel like the Spurs were properly utilizing him? Gregg Popovich later admitted he “overcoached” Aldridge and didn’t let the six-time All-Star be himself.

Pop isn’t going to make the same mistake with DeRozan.

The former Raptors All-Star was in his bag on Wednesday. Without a traditional point guard to initiate the offense, DeRozan handled the ball a whole bunch for San Antonio. He totaled 28 points, mostly self-created, to spearhead the Spurs’ scoring attack. He also had San Antonio’s final six tallies.

Watch him slalom his way to some nice buckets against Minnesota:

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The key number from DeRozan’s game, though is 21. That’s how many field-goal attempts the All-Star wing took on Wednesday. It took Aldridge 64 games in San Antonio before he took 21 shot attempts in a contest. Then he didn’t reach that number again for 68 games after that.

Pop is making sure DeRozan is comfortable. That should be great news for Spurs fans.

There were a lot of post-ups

San Antonio led the NBA in post-up frequency last season, utilizing that play type on 11.6 percent of its offensive plays. The Spurs upped that frequency to 15.3 percent against the Timberwolves.

The Spurs are going to be one of the more post-happy teams in the league this year. That’s just the reality of the team’s personnel. They have LaMarcus Aldridge, Pau Gasol, Rudy Gay and DeMar DeRozan, all of whom enjoy isolating on the block.

But 18 post-ups in one game, including 10 from Aldridge himself, is excessive. Most of them came against Karl-Anthony Towns, Taj Gibson and Gorgui Dieng too, not on mismatched smaller players. Not surprisingly, the Spurs only manufactured 12 points out of their 18 post-up possessions.

San Antonio must find a better balance on offense. Aldridge seemed a little bit discombobulated, possibly by DeRozan’s ball-dominance, and hoisted some bad shots. He ended shooting 7-of-23 from the field and 1-of-8 on post-ups.

The team needs to use post-ups in moderation, and mostly when there is an actual mismatch.

San Antonio pounded the offensive glass

The Spurs missed plenty of shots, but they made up for it by clobbering the Wolves on the offensive boards. San Antonio grabbed 19 of 51 available offensive rebounds (37.3 percent), well above last year’s league-wide average of 22.3 percent.

The big glass-eaters for the Spurs were Aldridge (eight offensive rebounds), Jakob Poeltl (four in eight minutes), Pau Gasol and Rudy Gay (three each).

This strength falls in line for preseason projections for San Antonio. Per BBall Index’s team skill data, the Spurs’ have the league’s eighth-best offensive rebounding roster in the NBA. Gasol, Aldridge and Gay are all long and bulky with good hands, and Poeltl is very energetic. Those four should form the core of a very good offensive rebounding team.

NBA teams have sought out offensive rebounds less frequently in recent years in order to prevent transition buckets. The league average offensive rebounding rate has declined in six straight seasons coming into 2018-19.

The Spurs are one of the league’s slower teams and will probably struggle in transition defense anyway. They might be smart just to double down on their offensive rebounding this season.

2 Questions

Can the perimeter players defend without fouling?

Easily the biggest weakness on San Antonio’s roster right now is perimeter defense. As I mentioned in an article earlier this week, Patty Mills, Bryn Forbes, Marco Belinelli and DeMar DeRozan all graded out as below-average defenders at their positions in 2017-18.

Those four and Rudy Gay combined to foul Timberwolves players 14 times. Usually, big men foul more because they have to challenge players near the basket. That wasn’t the case for the Spurs on Wednesday. The perimeter defenders frequently grabbed and clawed at their marks both on and off the ball to keep them in check.

There is some need for balance here. If the Spurs’ guards and wings are completely nonaggressive, opponents will go right at them. But the San Antonio perimeter defenders do need to show a bit more trust in their back line of defense instead of racking up the fouls when they get beat.

Will the big man rotation stay like this?

There were a couple of surprises in the big man rotation.

One surprise was Aldridge hardly ever leaving the floor. 42 minutes is a lot for a season opener, especially since Aldridge is 33 years old and Gregg Popovich is his coach. The minute loads for Gasol (23), Davis Bertans (18) and Dante Cunningham (seven) fell in step with reasonable expectations.

But Poeltl (eight minutes) was glued to the bench aside from a couple quick stints to start the game and the second half. He did have three fouls, but he was a huge factor on the glass in limited minutes and could’ve spelled Aldridge or Gasol a bit more.

Poeltl is still just 23 years old and in his first year as a Spur. We’ll see if his minutes were a one-game anomaly or if Pop is actually planning to bring him along slowly.

1 Prediction

DeMar DeRozan will average six assists per game this season

DeRozan had only four assists against the Wolves. Let’s get that obvious fact out of the way. But he did have 11 potential assists. His teammates missed a lot of shots off his passes.

DeMar is essentially the Spurs’ point guard on offense. He brought the ball up the floor for almost every possession he was on the floor. In total, he controlled the ball for 5.5 minutes in the game, up from his average of 4.9 minutes last season.

The conventional wisdom on DeRozan is that he’s a score-first wing. But he was in the 97th percentile as a playmaker last season, per BBall Index’s player grades, and is a surprisingly instinctive passer.

Popovich’s system is notorious for keeping individual assist totals down. But Tony Parker still had six seasons above six assists per game during his Spurs tenure, and those campaigns came in a slower-paced NBA. Once DeRozan settles into his role, he’ll have lots of big assist games as he finds shooters, cutters and rollers for good looks.

Note: Statistics are courtesy of NBA.com and Basketball-Reference. Video clips used are from the NBA’s official YouTube account.