LOS ANGELES — As the Spurs embarked on their first road trip of the season, Patty Mills had coffee on his mind.

Coffee, as in who would replace Davis Bertans in the team’s “Coffee Gang” lineup.

“I have some eyes on some guys,” Mills said. “But it’s an organic thing. We’ll see how it unfolds.”

With the goal of building team chemistry while also getting his caffeine fix, Mills last organized the club, which enjoys spending time at local coffee houses on the road.

“It’s something we can do as a team and enjoy each other’s company and not take all day,” he said. “Guys learn about each other and have coffee, hot chocolates, tea, whatever it may be. And doing that in different places in a city, that’s the cool experience.”

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But the club has a vacancy after the Spurs traded Bertans to Washington in July. Last year’s “Coffee Gang” roster also included Derrick White, Drew Eubanks, Bryn Forbes, Chimezie Metu, Rudy Gay and Jakob Poeltl, who calls himself an “honorary member” because he’s not into coffee.

“I went for hot chocolate every once in a while,” said Poeltl, who hails from Austria.

Bonding on road trips is important to the Spurs. For years, Manu Ginobili organized sightseeing trips with Mills and a handful of other teammates, including Boris Diaw.

“That is a big part of the culture here, to come together on road trips,” Poeltl said. “It’s not only the team dinner after the games, it’s grabbing a couple of friends and going for lunch or doing something on a night off. We go to so many cities that have a lot to offer, so there are so many opportunities.”

The field trips also help the players from a mental health perspective.

“It’s good to find a balance between resting, being with yourself and focusing, but also enjoying life and being with your friends,” Poeltl said.

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Gay agreed.

“It’s good to get away from the team but also still be with the team,” he said. “We talk about different things, talk about life instead of basketball and just let go.”

Winning on the road?

After setting an NBA record by recording 20-consecutive seasons of winning records on the road, the Spurs finished the last two seasons under .500 away from the AT&T Center.

Plagued by injuries, the 2018-19 team snapped the streak with a 14-27 mark. Last season, the Spurs were 16-25.

The Spurs face the Clippers on Thursday before closing the quick West Coast swing with an outing Friday against Golden State at its new arena, the Chase Center in San Francisco.

“It’s a new year, new team,” LaMarcus Aldridge said. “We took care of homecourt (sweeping the season-opening three-game homestand) — that was the first task at hand. Now, we got to put some rhythm together on the road.”

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Said DeMar DeRozan, “We did a great job taking care of home last year. Our struggle was the road. We have to understand that we have to come out with the same type of intensity we have at home.”

Poeltl said winning on the road is “all about mindset.”

“At the end of the day,” he said, “it’s just basketball, so you really got to shut everything else out and look at it as any other basketball game and just bring the same effort, the same concentration, all the same things you bring at home.”

Pop: Belinelli bringing ‘good energy’

Through three games, Marco Belinelli is averaging just 4.0 points per game and shooting 14.3 percent from 3-point range (1 of 7). It’s a noticeable decline from last season when he led the Spurs in bench scoring with a 10.5 average and hit 37.2 percent of his shots from beyond the arc.

Questions also abound about his defense, especially with athletic second-year guard Lonnie Walker IV waiting in the wings. But coach Gregg Popovich didn’t seem displeased with Belinelli when asked before Monday’s game with Portland about what he’s seen from the 13th-year pro, who was a member of the Spurs’ 2014 championship team.

“Same thing you see every year - a guy who understands how to play and goes out and competes and moves well without the ball,” Popovich said. “Good energy off the bench.”

Defense the focus of practice

In between a quick morning practice Wednesday and the flight to Los Angeles, Mills managed to squeeze in a lunch with Ginobili.

“We’ve got to hurry,” Mills told reporters. “After (this) I’m having lunch with Manu. He’ll fine me if I’m late.”

Mills said the focus of the one-hour workout was defense.

“Just the general concept behind what we need to hang our hat on,” he said. “We showed that in patches (in the first three games). We let one guy (the Blazers’ Damian Lillard) get away from us in the last quarter. It’s possible the Clippers have the same ability to do the same thing. So us being on the same page on the defensive end is crucial.”

It would help the Spurs defensively if Dejounte Murray wasn’t on a minutes restriction of roughly 20 per game after missing last season with a knee injury. Opponents are scoring just 15.4 percent of the time when defended by Murray in man defense, per Synergy data.

Rookies assigned to G League

The Spurs assigned first-round draft picks Luka Samanic and Keldon Johnson to the Austin Spurs on Wednesday. Both were inactive for the Spurs’ first three games.

The G League team began training camp Wednesday in San Antonio in preparation for the season opener against the Rio Grande Vipers on Nov. 8 at the H-E-B Center in Cedar Park.