The Spurs weren’t featured very much at this year’s All-Star festivities in Charlotte.

Of the 69 potential player appearances in the five main events (Rising Stars Challenge, Skills Challenge, Three-Point Contest, Slam Dunk Contest and the All-Star Game), San Antonio had just one representative. LaMarcus Aldridge played just 11 minutes in Sunday’s All-Star Game, tallying two points and four rebounds.

Somehow, I’m doubting that Gregg Popovich or anyone else in the Spurs organization is sweating their lack of shine.

In fact, this time away could prove very valuable for a San Antonio team that has lost its momentum from a couple of months ago. The 33-26 Spurs were knocking on the door of a top-three seed, but now they’re just two games ahead of the ninth-seeded Kings.

Between December 7 and January 7, San Antonio went 13-3 in a home-heavy schedule and blitzed the league with a plus-15.4 net rating. The team was first offensively and third defensively in the league during that stretch.

Since then, the squad has played very uninspiring basketball, going 9-9 but compiling a poor net rating of minus-4.4. The Spurs have plummeted to 11th offensively and 29th defensively.

Getting 10 days between games is a godsend for the Spurs as they prepare for the regular season’s final stretch. Let’s talk about why that’s the case.

Get well soon, Derrick White!

Somewhere between mid-December and the beginning of February, White became the second-most important player on the Spurs. He averaged 15.3 points, 4.2 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 1.1 steals and 0.8 blocks in 30.9 minutes per game in January on a 59.7/47.1/75 shooting slash. Those numbers don’t capture his defensive play, either, which was excellent.

Since he permanently entered the starting lineup on December 19, both his on-court net rating (plus-8.3) and Player Impact Plus-Minus (plus-3.15) are team-best marks.

Of course, he’s missed the opening five games of the Rodeo Road Trip with plantar fasciitis. Four of those games were losses by a combined 83 points. The win was a one-point victory against the tanking Grizzlies without Mike Conley.

After the Grizzlies’ game, Gregg Popovich said, per Tom Orsborn of the San Antonio Express-News: “We just want to get Derrick back.”

White is planning to return on Friday against the Raptors. He’s going to help a lot, especially defensively.

But it’s unfair to expect a second-year guard with the sixth-highest usage percentage in the team’s rotation to singlehandedly reverse the team’s course. A lot of other things need to happen if the Spurs are to revert to their form from the beginning of 2019.

DeMar DeRozan needed physical and mental rest

There’s no reason to sugarcoat it. DeRozan has been playing poorly on offense for more than a month now, and it’s hurting the Spurs. He missed his first All-Star Game since 2015, and it definitely wasn’t an egregious snub.

DeRozan has a true-shooting percentage of 46.5 in his 17 games since New Year’s Eve. NBA players nowadays who shoot that inefficiently rarely see the court, much less play 35.3 minutes per contest and get featured as a top-two offensive option.

The sweet spot for DeRozan is when he’s around league average in true-shooting percentage, which would be 55.9 this season. Even mediocre shooting efficiency makes him a major positive on offense because of his facilitating and the scoring burden he manages. Per BBall Index’s talent grades, he’s in the 97th percentile as a playmaker for the second straight season.

However, even DeRozan’s facilitating has been sagging a bit lately. His assist-to-turnover ratio has dipped from 2.57-to-1 before December 30 to 1.92-to-1 since then.

Defensively, he has been decent, despite his reputation. His Defensive Real Plus-Minus (plus-0.10) is his top mark since the statistic’s inception in 2013-14. His Defensive Player Impact Plus-Minus (minus-0.13) is a career best. However, he’s never had the attitude or effort to make up for offensive struggles with defensive excellence.

DeRozan just needs this time away. The combination of his 35.3 minutes per game in a new system, more being asked from him on defense and his massive offensive load to start the season is a lot to ask of him.

For DeRozan and the Spurs as a whole, this is also a time for mental renewal. DeRozan needs time to clear his mind from his bad offensive play, and the team has completely lost the tight-knit feel it had on defense in December and early January.

Gregg Popovich had time to get back to the drawing board

Popovich has stated multiple times that he prefers watching film on his team rather than his opponent. According to Fred Katz of The Athletic, he said this before a game against the Wizards in January:

Why would I watch [Bradley Beal] when I gotta watch my own guys who are trying to grow and trying to form a team?

Pop certainly has his work cut out for him as he evaluates his squad heading into the season’s home stretch.

First of all, he’ll need to work out the defensive cracks. San Antonio has been close to the worst defensive team in the league if you take out its 13-3 stretch between December 7 and January 7. As we mentioned before, the Spurs were third defensively during those 31 days.

This is the worst defensive personnel Popovich has coached in more than 20 years. BBall Index’s team talent data shows has the Spurs’ roster ranked 26th in perimeter defense and 29th in interior defense. The Spurs have looked predictably slow on the perimeter and unimposing near the rim as of late. The chemistry is gone.

Despite that, we’ve seen Pop maximize defensive personnel for decades, and he did do it excellently with the Spurs for that 16-game stretch this season. Whether it’s changes in the rotations, matchups or schemes, San Antonio’s head man on the sidelines will need to make the adjustments.

Offensively, Popovich has a balancing act to manage with his top options. Both DeRozan and Aldridge have fared significantly better when the offense has revolved around them. Conversely, they both struggled when the other guy is dominating the touches.

Can Pop get both of them going at the same time? Both of them average at least 21 points per game. However, they’ve only reached that mark only 12 times in the same game.

Of course, Pop can’t let DeRozan and Aldridge dominate everything. Derrick White is a quickly improving Swiss Army Knife. Rudy Gay consistently adds an efficient 15 points if he gets the touches to do so. Role-playing shooters Bryn Forbes, Davis Bertans, Patty Mills and Marco Belinelli also need to stay in rhythm.

Rest-of-Season Outlook

There had to be something to that stretch of domination by the Spurs in December and early January. The home-heavy schedule helped, but that can’t completely explain it.

With Pop at the helm, San Antonio should be able to play like a lower middle-class team on defense. The offense, meanwhile, can be borderline elite with the depth of quality offensive players on the roster.

But there’s no doubt that the work done this All-Star break (or, in some cases, the work NOT done) the chance to improve the Spurs for the last few months of the season.

Note: All statistics are from NBA.com or Basketball-Reference.com, unless otherwise indicated.