It’s natural for people to want to outdo themselves when they’ve disappointed observers and evaluators at work. NBA teams are the same and usually come out guns blazing when they have been humbled.
The San Antonio Spurs got their turn to right that wrong on Wednesday.
Similar records don’t always mean rivals are in the same class. Yet, universally in sports, the way to reveal if they are for real is to have two of the top go head-to-head. In the Los Angeles Lakers’ case, they were without LeBron James and Austin Reaves, their second and third-best penetrators, severely weakening them. Yet there’s this NBA phenomenon in which the undermanned team upsets the superior unit, in part because they were slept on. These outings indicate how prepared the Spurs are to take advantage of a situation.
Winning is hard in the NBA, and they keep showing they can do it when things don’t go according to the game plan. It took working around a lack of 3-point shooting and offensive rebounding, plus they were sloppy with the ball for three quarters. Getting it done by any means is arguably the area where they’ve grown the most this year.
Additionally, now that they have a generational player in Victor Wembanyama and the Lakers have Luka Dončić, matchups between them will be appointment viewing for a long time. It was no different on Wednesday as both flashed greatness, in spite of the game being mostly one-sided.