The Spurs have won four of the last nine NBA championships, including three of the last five but a quick glance at the standings shows that the Spurs are in third place in the five-team Southwest Division as we approach the halfway point in the season. San Antonio has finished either first or second in its division for ten consecutive seasons but if the playoffs started today San Antonio wouldn’t even open at home, barely clinging on to the #5 seed. The Spurs are actually closer to missing the playoffs and falling out of the top eight, than they are to moving up to a higher spot in the conference seeding.

That said, the Spurs are still 28-14, having won two thirds of their games and still owning a dominant 20-5 record at home. San Antonio has not produced a great against the spread record at 19-22, but it is nothing too alarming. San Antonio has had to deal with some injuries this season and the Spurs are certainly still considered by most to be an elite team. The Spurs are still often valued as one of the elite teams in the league when the lines come out each night, but are the Spurs still deserving of that status?

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According to the NBA statistics guru at ESPN, John Hollinger, the Spurs currently sit at #11 in his most recent rankings. Jeff Sagarin’s ratings have San Antonio at #7 in the league but the margins separating the Spurs from the next seven teams are quite miniscule. According to Sagarin, the Spurs have also played the 27th toughest schedule in the league out of the 30 NBA squads. A closer look at the schedule reveals that Spurs have been fortunate in the scheduling and that maybe this is a team due for a fall in the next months.

The Spurs have played 42 games this season but just 17 of those games, heading into tonight, has been played on the road. A quick glance at the schedule does confirm that the Spurs have not had to play any of the top teams in the Eastern Conference on the road, nor have the Spurs faced a long road trip yet. San Antonio has only played consecutive road games four times this season and has not played more than two consecutive road games on any given road trip. That is all about to change however, and San Antonio could be in a fight to make the playoffs toward the end of the year unless there is a dramatic improvement in the current 8-9 road record.

The Spurs start a three-game West coast road trip this week and then have six-consecutive road games out East leading into the All-Star break. San Antonio does get a bit of a travel break with four off-days in between the jaunts but it will still mean nine-consecutive games on the road. In fact 20 of the next 29 games for the Spurs are on the road which means that just eleven games will remain with a home-heavy finish to the season, a stretch the Spurs may need to get back into solid playoff position.

The Spurs also will be facing many of the top teams in the league in the coming months. San Antonio has played just 12 games against the top 10 teams in the league according to the Sagarin rankings, tied for the fewest in the league. The Spurs still have 10 games remaining against the current top 5 in the league including four tough division games with two each against Dallas and New Orleans, and three games with the Suns left on the schedule. San Antonio has also not played the best Eastern Conference team, with two games with Boston upcoming.

The Spurs are no longer the feared team in the league, as exemplified by New Orleans recently routing San Antonio by 24 points on San Antonio’s home court. Those backing the Spurs also might want to consider that the 20-5 S/U record at home was built on a 13-0 S/U start to the season at the AT&T Center and that the Spurs are 7-5 S/U and 4-9 ATS since. Given the recent struggles and the brutal upcoming schedule things may get worse for San Antonio before they get better. It would be a bit bold to call for this veteran team with great coaching and championship experience to miss the playoffs but that is a much great possibility than most probably realize.