San Antonio Spurs: An unusually short span against LeBron James’ Lakers

The San Antonio Spurs will push the Los Angeles Lakers out of the way quickly in the 2018-19 season.

When the 2018-19 schedule was released for the San Antonio Spurs Friday, an eye was on marquee games, including against Kawhi Leonard and the Toronto Raptors and Tony Parker and the Charlotte Hornets. Critical Western Conference matchups lie throughout the season, however.

Of course there’s the Golden State Warriors and Houston Rockets, but those games are spread from the fall to the spring. The Los Angeles Lakers, a newfound threat with LeBron James in town, will be a team the Spurs face early, often and push out of the way fast.

San Antonio will match up with the Lakers four times before the calendar reaches Christmas. Yes, each game they play will transpire before then and never against for the rest of the 2018-19 season. It’s an unusual circumstance, given how head-to-heads against one inter-conference team are usually spaced out, but that’s not the case here.

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• Monday, Oct. 22 at 10:30 p.m. ET
• Saturday, Oct. 27 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Wednesday, Dec. 5 at 10:30 p.m. ET
• Friday, Dec. 7 at 8:30 p.m. ET

The first seven weeks of the season may not show the full version of this Lakers team, potentially needing multiple months to come together as a unit. With LeBron, Michael Beasley, Rajon Rondo and Lance Stephenson joining Lonzo Ball, Kyle Kuzma and Brandon Ingram, it’s plenty of talent, but new faces need time to mesh and form a coherent unit to compete in the West.

Will this impact the Spurs’ outcome in any of these four games? It’s an opportunity to capitalize on a win or two early before Los Angeles gets into regular season form and moves up the ladder in the West, if they don’t already pull this off early on. Let’s see what happens shortly into the start of the campaign.