Hey, what's that sound? Oh, it's the annual chorus of, "This is the year the Spurs finally decline!" A familiar refrain.

After having a so-so offseason while the top teams in the West like the Rockets and Thunder brought out the heavy artillery, the Spurs are once again being kept off the list of significant title threats.

Uh-uh. Not buying it.

Because they're so consistently excellent, the Spurs are seemingly overlooked pretty much every single year. Since Gregg Popovich's first full season as head coach, the Spurs have only finished with less than 50 wins once -- and that's because it was the lockout season of 1998-99, when they finished 37-13 and won the NBA title. Even in the lockout-shortened season of 2011-12 the Spurs still managed to get to the 50-win plateau.

Last year San Antonio was supposed to suffer a massive dropoff after the retirement of Tim Duncan. "They're too old. Kawhi's not ready to take the leap. LaMarcus Aldridge just doesn't work there."

Ha.

The Spurs went 61-21, led the league in defensive rating (100.9) and were seventh in offensive rating (108.8), giving them a net rating of 7.9. It was only a failure in comparison to the previous season, in which they won 67 games and led the NBA (yes, even better than the 73-win Warriors) with a net rating of 11.8. So the Spurs got worse, technically, but were still basically the second-best team in the NBA. And if Kawhi doesn't land on Zaza Pachulia's foot in Game 1 of the Western Conference finals, who knows what story we're telling now?

Yet here we are, a year later, and once again San Antonio is being undersold as a title contender. When will we learn?

That being said, there are plenty of issues and questions that need to be addressed. But history says the Spurs will slowly and methodically find the answers.

What's going on with Kawhi?

There's reason to be concerned in San Antonio -- Kawhi Leonard is not healthy. He missed all of the preseason and has already been ruled out for the Spurs' season opener against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday due to tendinopathy in his right quad. Even worse, Popovich has indicated that the injury first revealed itself sometime last season, and said that there's no timetable for his return -- in the most Pop way possible.

"I don't gauge it," Popovich said, via the San Antonio Express News. "He's still rehabbing and when he's ready, he'll be ready."

Thanks, Pop.

One of the Spurs' calling cards over the past two decades is that they're almost arrogantly unconcerned with regular season performance. With that in mind, the organization will likely wait until Leonard is truly 100 percent healthy before unleashing him on opponents. It could be a serious problem for the Spurs if he's out for an extended period of time.

Leonard was an MVP finalist last season, and many have made the case that he deserved the award over Russell Westbrook given his team's success and his ability to play both ends of the court. San Antonio was +8.6 per 100 possessions with Leonard on the court last season, better than both Westbrook and MVP runner-up James Harden. Leonard's usage rate (31.2) was also among the highest in the league.

So the statistics back up exactly what common sense tells you: The Spurs need Kawhi on the floor to be a great team. They'll probably be able to win more than they lose without him, but if his injury lingers San Antonio could seriously struggle.

Key losses

The only significant players San Antonio lost are Dewayne Dedmon (who fell out of the rotation toward the end of last season anyway) and Jonathon Simmons, who expected to receive offers in the $50 million range as a restricted free agent. When the offers failed to come in, the Spurs renounced his rights and made him an unrestricted free agent, hoping to sign him to another contract. Instead Simmons signed a three-year, $20 million deal with the Orlando Magic, and he cited a desire for more playing time as one of the reasons.

Kyle Anderson will likely be asked to fill in some of Simmons' backup forward minutes, and while Anderson is a better ball-handler and passer, he severely lacks the athleticism to be the defensive presence that Simmons was last season. Simmons averaged 6.2 points and 2.1 rebounds per game, but was 24th in the NBA with 3.1 defensive win shares -- Anderson was 91st with 2.3.

Perhaps most importantly, Simmons took some defensive pressure off of Leonard by occasionally guarding the other team's best perimeter player, leaving Leonard free to expend his energy on the offensive end. With Simmons gone, Leonard and Danny Green are the only true lock-down defenders on the roster, making it difficult to match up with teams like the Warriors, Rockets and Thunder that have multiple elite scoring threats -- especially in the playoffs.

Though he's still on the team, another important partial loss is Tony Parker, who is expected to be out until at least December while recovering from a torn quad. In the meantime, Parker's minutes will be divided between veteran backup Patty Mills and second-year point guard Dejounte Murray. In the past Popovich has preferred to keep Mills coming off the bench as a spark plug to lead the second unit, so we could be looking at Murray as the starting point guard, at least to start the season.

A 6-foot-5 rangy guard, Murray has the tools to be effective on both ends of the floor and is a definite breakout candidate this season -- particularly if Leonard's injury drags on and Murray is asked to carry more of the scoring load. When pressed into action in last year's playoffs after Parker's injury, Murray proved more than capable by averaging 5.7 points, 2.5 assists and 1.5 steals in 15 minutes per game. He's in line for significantly more playing time this year, so those numbers will surely go up.

Key additions

The biggest addition to the roster was Rudy Gay, a perennial 20 point per game scorer coming off Achilles surgery that ended his final season with the Kings. The fact that Gay opted out of his $14 million contract to sign for $8 million with the Spurs is an indication that he wants to win -- which is always a good thing. Gay is back on the court just nine months after the injury occurred, and he put up solid numbers during the preseason -- 10.5 points, 5.0 rebounds in 21 minutes per game. He was already going to be relied upon to be the third scorer backing up LaMarcus Aldridge, but with Leonard's injury he'll likely slide into the starting lineup and have to carry even more of the scoring burden. The question is whether he can defend and share the ball at the level Popovich demands.

Aside from bringing back Mills, Pau Gasol and Manu Ginobili, the only other significant offseason move the Spurs made was signing Joffrey Lauvergne to their backup center (and the starter when Gasol is injured or resting). Lauvergne has been so-so in three NBA seasons with averages of 6.1 points, 4.0 rebounds in 15 minutes per game, but he's done well in the preseason and even achieved the nearly impossible by drawing a compliment from Popovich, who called the 6-11 Frenchman "impressive." Overall, Lauvergne seems like the type of reclamation project the Spurs perfectly execute year after year, so his odds of success in their system are pretty high.

Keys to success

For the Spurs organization, success is measured in one way and one way only: championships. The problem with making the conference finals nearly every year is that it becomes expected, and now nothing but a Finals appearance and/or a title is a truly successful season. In order for them to achieve that goal, they need several of things to happen.

Kawhi needs to be healthy. Aldridge needs to take a step forward -- or backward, to when he was putting up 20-10 games in his sleep with the Trail Blazers. Gay needs to fit in seamlessly. The Spurs role players need to step up, which they usually do. And Parker needs to be able to give them something when he comes back from injury.

If all those things happen and they draw the right matchups in the playoffs, their experience and discipline give them as good a shot as any team to beat the Warriors in four out of seven games. That's a lot of "ifs," but the Spurs have had similar question marks for the past 20 years and have continued to defy the odds.