{"id":577059,"date":"2026-02-02T10:10:14","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T10:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/577059\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T10:10:14","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T10:10:14","slug":"spurs-win-in-return-home-to-san-antonio-delayed-by-snow-mechanical-issues-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/577059\/","title":{"rendered":"Spurs win in return home to San Antonio delayed by snow, mechanical issues"},"content":{"rendered":"

The long, strange trip the San Antonio Spurs faced to get home from the East Coast was tiring and, at times, scary, but it turned out to be well worth the journey.<\/p>\n

San Antonio defeated the Orlando Magic 112-103<\/a> on Sunday night in a game that started five hours late after the Spurs dealt with a series of travel woes.<\/p>\n

Returning to what he called his normal \u2014 playing basketball following a dubious 24 hours \u2014 Victor Wembanyama had 25 points, eight rebounds, five blocks and four steals as San Antonio regained second place in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have to answer to our responsibility,\u201d Wembanyama said. \u201cWe actually discussed it before, there\u2019s no excuse. We need to be ready for tonight. So … I mean, it doesn\u2019t really matter.\u201d<\/p>\n

With the Spurs (33-16) moving ahead of the Denver Nuggets (33-17), San Antonio coach Mitch Johnson will represent the West in coaching one of the teams in the NBA All-Star Game.<\/p>\n

Playing, let alone winning and securing the honor for Johnson seemed improbable for the Spurs following their 111-106 loss to the Hornets<\/a>. <\/p>\n

San Antonio planned to fly out two hours after that game, but had to stay overnight because of the storm that dropped nearly a foot of snow<\/a> in and around North Carolina\u2019s largest city.<\/p>\n

The NBA on Saturday changed the start time from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. because of a bomb cyclone in Charlotte that grounded flights. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was \u2018Planes, Trains and Automobiles\u2019 a little bit,\u201d Johnson said, referring to the 1987 road trip comedy film starring Steve Martin and the late John Candy. \u201cHad a little bit the COVID PTSD just with the uncertainty, but it was good. We got back to the hotel last night and got some sleep and stuff, so some good quality time.<\/p>\n

\u201cReminded me a little bit of the G League days. Had those long travel days, and bust out some cards or tell some jokes and stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Spurs left Charlotte at 9:20 a.m. Sunday, but the flight was diverted to Atlanta because of what forward Keldon Johnson said was a loss of cabin pressure. The flight landed at 11:01 a.m. in Atlanta, where the Spurs remained for more than two hours before switching planes for their flight home. They arrived in San Antonio at 3:25 p.m.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a little scary,\u201d Keldon Johnson said. \u201cI mean they came on the intercom, said we was losing cabin pressure. We had the emergency landing and, I mean, obviously you don\u2019t know the extent of what\u2019s going on, but it seemed pretty serious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Johnson said the mood changed once the plane landed in Atlanta and remained so throughout the two-hour flight back home to San Antonio.<\/p>\n

Some players went home before the game, but Mitch Johnson and most of the staff and players went directly to the Frost Bank Center after landing.<\/p>\n

The Magic had been in San Antonio since Saturday morning awaiting the start of a two-game road trip that concludes Tuesday in Oklahoma City. <\/p>\n

Orlando coach Jamahl Mosley prepared his team to expect San Antonio to come out energized despite the travel delays.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think sometimes those are the easier games because you\u2019re just laying it all out there and you\u2019re not worried about all the things that you have to walk into before,\u201d Mosley said before tipoff. \u201cYou just show up and play. I think there is a freedom and a looseness that guys can play with in those situations.\u201d<\/p>\n

It proved prophetic as the Spurs built a double-digit lead in the opening five minutes and extended the advantage to 18 points in the first quarter.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t matter how you feel, it don\u2019t matter how they feel,\u201d Keldon Johnson said. \u201cWe got to go out here and we got to get the job done and that\u2019s what it\u2019s about and that\u2019s what we did tonight. We could have said we were very tired. We had a long layover, we didn\u2019t get no rest or we was on the plane for this amount of time, but weren\u2019t no excuses tonight. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe went out there and we executed it and we played our brand of basketball and that\u2019s big time to be able to come together and get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n

___<\/p>\n

AP NBA: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba<\/a><\/p>\n

Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The long, strange trip the San Antonio Spurs faced to get home from the East Coast was tiring…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":577060,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,6,969,474,4075,4074,66,534,693],"class_list":{"0":"post-577059","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-san-antonio-spurs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-san-antonio","11":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","12":"tag-sanantonio","13":"tag-sanantoniospurs","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-spurs","16":"tag-victor-wembanyama"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116000497537431417","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=577059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/577059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/577060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=577059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=577059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=577059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}