Well, at least the court looked nice?
This was a game that basically highlighted everything good and bad about this current iteration of the San Antonio Spurs. All the promise and potential coupled with the rough edges that simply must get sanded off before anything of substance can get accomplished around here. They need to figure out how to pour cold water on an opponent when they’re heating up. They need to play a full 48 minutes. They need win games like this. Not because of the standings or the narrative or anything like that, but because they haven’t done it yet.
The Spurs have to prove it. To us, sure, but mostly to themselves. This season is going to hand them test after test, and until they show they have the answers, we’re allowed to assume they don’t. And look, that’s not really a complaint. This stuff is hard. Stephen Curry is one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, and he put together an actual historic performance. You’re not supposed to just instinctively know how to stop him when he gets going like that. It isn’t intuitive.
I know you don’t want to overreact to a single game, but this one felt like another example of the Spurs being exposed in the ways we already suspected. The record looks impressive. The defensive metrics look impressive. The talent is impressive. All the positives are loud enough to drown out the quiet but persistent hum underneath that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t quite there yet. They’re young. They get sloppy. They don’t execute when a smarter, more seasoned team changes the terms of engagement. The talent on this roster papers over a lot of flaws, and when it works it looks incredible. When it doesn’t, it looks rough. The truth, as always, lives in the middle.
Is that a satisfying conclusion? Probably not. I can tell you it doesn’t feel satisfying to write.
But I’m not sure what else there is right now. This team has been consistently inconsistent. They check every box of a young group trying to make the leap and discovering that the leap is less “graceful ascension” and more “scrambling up the side of a cliff.” This is probably going to be the story of the season. The work is messy. The results are uneven. And the conversations are going to feel repetitive until the team starts giving us something new to say.
What we learned tonight is the same thing we’ve been learning: the Spurs are ahead of schedule, but still very much under construction. And that’s fine. It just means nights like this will keep happening until they don’t anymore.
WWL Post Game Press Conference
– Are you allowed to declare that no one should fact check you?
– I’m pretty sure I can declare anything I want. It’s in the bylaws?
– You know, the bylaws. The principles. The foundations. It’s in there.
– Right but, who issued these bylaws? Where did they come from?
– The one in charge of deciding how it operates.
– The one that presides over the bylaws.
– I might have to look into this.
– Pretty sure that isn’t allowed.