As we’ve discussed ad nauseam around these parts, things have all of a sudden gotten very real for your San Antonio Spurs.

This is no longer a team with vague aspirations of jumping into the sixth seed and making a little noise. Instead, it’s a team that is not only making noise, but romping around the living room of the regular season, overturning furniture, and breaking plates over its own head. There’s a two seed in the vaunted Western Conference in play. People are debating whether the Spurs might already be too good to add Giannis. Podcasters are comparing them to the ’86 Rockets and expecting you to understand that reference.

I guess what I’m saying is this: a real, live, actual NBA title coming to South Texas in 2026 no longer feels like a fever dream caused by dehydration, lack of sleep, and three too many Miller Lites. It feels like something that might actually happen. The Spurs are in the mix. They’re at the table. The dance card is full. And yes, other metaphors as well!

All of which made Friday night in Indianapolis a useful little reality check. Rolling into Gainbridge Fieldhouse on a sleepy January night without their extremely tall boy in tow was a chance to turn down the noise and watch this team actually, you know, play some basketball.

Because this was not the big stage. Not even close. None of the league’s many broadcast partners swooped into Indianapolis to breathlessly beam out dispatches from the front. The Pacers are a team dutifully taking their injury-mandated gap year in stride, and the Spurs without Wemby, despite their exciting supporting cast, are still very much the small market curiosity they’ve always been. The bright lights of the Christmas season have faded, and the league seems poised to take its annual deep breath before the All Star break.

We were on our own in this one, free to mess around, blow some leads, and then get out of Dodge with our dignity intact.

This was not a measuring stick game, nor was it a referendum on anyone or anything in particular. It felt like a brush stroke in the larger picture being painted. Every guy on the team was working on something. Honing his craft. Figuring out things that worked and things that didn’t. None of us will likely remember this game a few months from now, but maybe that little back cut give and go that De’Aaron Fox ran in the first quarter resurfaces against the Nuggets at the exact right time in May and becomes the difference between winning and losing Game 2 of the Western Conference Semifinals. Who knows?

I like watching them like this, with the stakes a little lower. The three guards taking turns hurling themselves into the paint and trying to make things happen. Julian Champagnie riding his inexplicably hot hand. Keldon chasing Sixth Man of the Year. Carter Bryant trying to find himself. It’s fun. It doesn’t feel like riding a knife’s edge of tension every night, but more like hanging out with a group of guys steadily building something special.

Honestly, I was bored a lot during this game. Not in a bad way. More in the sense that things felt calm after a stretch of relative intensity. The adrenaline had died out, and it let me watch the game without gripping it too tightly. Paying attention without really paying attention.

My mind drifted in and out. I looked at my phone, then looked up and Kelly Olynyk hit a three. I started thinking about my schedule for next week and Luke Kornet threw down an alley oop. I came back from the kitchen and the crowd was losing its mind because the Spurs were at the free throw line and everyone desperately wanted some chicken.

There was a lot happening, and also not very much at all

The Spurs have had some special moments this season. Big wins. Statement nights. Games that felt like announcements. With any luck, there will be even more ahead. But this one was special too, just in a quieter way. A January road game without the star. No spotlight. No tension. Just a good team calmly being itself while nobody was demanding anything extra from them. It was one of those things where you kind of just had to be there.

It feels a little strange to keep analyzing how the Spurs play without Victor Wembanyama, because, like, that just is not going to be the case when it actually matters, right? And if it is the case, then things have taken a pretty dark turn that probably does not bear thinking about. That said, being legitimately good without him on the floor is an amazing revelation that raises the floor of what this team is capable of going forward. It matters. It counts. It just also feels like a box we’ve mostly checked at this point. We know what it looks like. We know it works. They will keep honing it, sure, but how they get things done with Wemby on the floor feels like the much more pressing question now. Every game without him sort of feels like treading water. Useful, necessary, but not really the destination.It is very cool that everyone has finally come around to the idea that having three awesome guards in the rotation is actually a good thing, and not some colossal mess waiting to happen that might derail the season if the Spurs do not get in front of it. Funny how that works. Nothing has brought me as much basketball joy this season as watching Fox, Castle, and Harper take their slightly different approaches to unlocking defenses. They prod. They probe. They poke at weak spots until something good eventually happens. There is no rush, no panic, no sense that they are stepping on each other’s toes. It is a delight. Give me one hundred more seasons of this please.Luke Kornet is not the MVP of this team, but he’s got to be something equally important at this point, yea? He is not the most valuable in the traditional sense, but he is so insanely, specifically valuable to what this team does that it is hard to overstate. Nothing he provides is flashy or loud (aside from the occasional oop or block/pose combo) but he just makes the whole thing work. He keeps the team on the tracks. He allows them to do what they want to do on both ends without things breaking down. And he does it so quietly that you barely notice it happening. I honestly think if you took Kornet off this roster and replaced him with a generic alternative, this team is something like eight games worse in the win loss column. If that is not value, I am not sure what is.He’s also very funny.

WWL Post Game Press Conference

– Any New Year’s resolutions for 2026?

– Oh, uh, me? You want me to tighten up my question?

– No, thats the resolution. Tighten it up.

– Your resolution is just to…what, tighten things up?

– I could not be more clear about this.

– What specifically though? Your writing? Your diet? Your social calendar? What are you trying to work on?

– It. We’re tightening it up. All year. Tight.

– What does that mean though? Brevity? Efficiency? Just a general sense of betterment?

– It means we have a lot of stuff hanging loose around these parts and I’m sick of it. In 2026, you know what we’re gonna do about it?