“He’s all right,” Jackson said. “You know, I mean, I’m into winning championships. I’m not into guys playing all right, averaging 30 and 20 on sorry teams. I’m into winning championships. He got some upside, I’ll say that. But it’s all about winning to me. It’s not about what you do on your personal stats.”

Their most recent title came in 2007. As dominant as they have been in the regular season, the Spurs have flamed out in the playoffs each year since, including last year, when they won 50 times in 66 games and won 20 straight through the end of the regular season and the first two and a half rounds of the postseason. Leading Oklahoma City by two games to none in the Western Conference finals and looking invincible, the Spurs lost four in a row to the younger Thunder.

Most teams would panic over the summer and make big moves to compensate. That is not how the Spurs do business. Duncan, Ginobili and Parker all returned, with only minor tweaking of the roster around them. Richard Jefferson was out. Nando de Colo was in. Cory Joseph was brought in from the Development League to help when Parker went down, and Leonard and Danny Green have continued to develop into promising perimeter threats.

“They’re maturing right in front of our eyes,” Duncan said. “Kawhi and Danny are really picking up a lot of the slack.”

It is the Spurs’ way. An unparalleled scouting department led by General Manager R. C. Buford does the drafting, searching far and wide for the right players to put around their three stars.

“Our management staff, R. C. does a great job with his scouts showing us who is out there, who is available,” Popovich said. “And we all sit down and decide who we want to bring in. Once we bring them in, we do take a lot of time trying to develop them. “

The coaching staff, in particular the assistant Chad Forcier, works with the new guys, smoothing out any rough edges and getting them up to speed on the system. And Duncan, Parker and Ginobili set the tone in practice every day.