Popovich was speaking in a corridor outside the visitors’ locker room shortly before the Spurs rallied late Monday to beat the Clippers, 89-85. It was their best performance of the season and evened their record at 3-3 before they headed north to play at Golden State on Tuesday night.

Image Kawhi Leonard, who scored 26 points in a win Monday, is getting a bigger role this season. Credit... Mark J. Terrill/Associated Press

The start of the season has been rocky for the Spurs. Kawhi Leonard, the most valuable player of the finals, missed three weeks of training camp with conjunctivitis, and three key role players are injured: Tiago Splitter (calf), Patty Mills (shoulder) and Marco Belinelli (groin). Mills will not return until January after having surgery over the summer, and the Spurs have missed his pace, energy and 3-point shooting off the bench.

“You get everybody’s best shot every night,” said Duncan, whose team is seven points away from being winless. “There are no lulls in what you do. The games you show up for, you’re going to get the crowd into it, you’re going to get the team into it. That is definitely a grind.”

When Oklahoma City tied the Western Conference finals in May, Popovich took time during a film session to show highlights of the Spurs’ victory parade down the San Antonio River in 2007 as a means of reminding his players what could lie ahead.

But now, the reference and rallying points for a long season are closer at hand.

“Now, we know what we’re capable of and we need to get back to that level,” Bonner said. “In order to do that, we can’t skip steps or fill-in-your-cliché-blank. We have to embrace the process, do it one day at time and focus on the same things as last year so we can get back to that point.”

Although the Spurs are essentially intact, it does not mean they are unchanged. Popovich hired Ettore Messina, a respected Italian coach, and Becky Hammon, the first woman to have a full-time position on an N.B.A. coaching staff, to provide fresh eyes and voices. And he is handing more responsibility to Leonard, the franchise cornerstone-in-waiting, a move that began in earnest Monday night.