\u201cCan you just let me have this?\u201d<\/p>\n
We were fifteen minutes from the California border, and the trees in Oregon were getting taller and taller. Having flown into Medford, we were now two hours into the drive to Cresent City and seven hours into a journey that had started at 5am, and the anticipation had reached its peak.<\/p>\n
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Both Taylor and I had dreamed of seeing the Redwoods since we were children, and now we were approaching them rapidly as the road receded before us. Not rapidly enough for Taylor, though, who could barely sit still, pointing out every large tree on the horizon, oohing and aahing at the unquestionably beautiful southern wilds of The Beaver State.<\/p>\n
And then she saw it, stretching well above the canopy, some 200 or so feet of a monster Douglas Fir, towering over the other pines.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s it! That\u2019s it! My first Redwood!\u201d<\/p>\n
Her eyes welled with the emotion of a fulfilled dream as she looked over at me meaningfully, the orchestral folk of Noah Kahan swelling in the background.<\/p>\n
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\u201cIsn\u2019t is amazing?\u201d<\/p>\n
Wordlessly I looked slowly from my girlfriend to the tree, and back again.<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I\u2019m pretty sure that\u2019s not a Redwood.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat? Are you messing with me?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it\u2019s just that the bark looks wrong, and so do the branches. I think it\u2019s just a really tall pine tree.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my God, can you just let me have this?\u201d<\/p>\n
As it turned out, no, I could not. And thus began one of those incredibly productive conversations that usually start with a seemingly innocuous question, and end in a mutually agreed-upon silence.<\/p>\n
In Taylor\u2019s defense, she was sleep-deprived from all the packing and planning and coordination, and we had been packed together in very close quarters for most of the day. She also does not love flying, and I may have playfully ribbed her a bit while we were experiencing turbulence. She was not completely out of pocket to have questioned whether I was messing with her or not.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s also an easy mistake to make when you\u2019ve not spent a lot of time in the proximity of forests. She has spent most of her life on the fringes of San Antonio. I, on the other hand, spent most of my childhood summers in the confines of the Piney Woods of East Texas.<\/p>\n
I had never seen a Sequoia, but I knew my pine trees. And I was not about to let my first Redwood be a pine tree.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the same way I feel about some of the expectations and enthusiasm surrounding the Spurs this season. I hate to break it to some of y\u2019all, but I\u2019m pretty sure this is not a championship team.<\/p>\n
I know this, because, like you, I\u2019ve seen them before. I know what a championship roster looks like. I know what they play like. I\u2019ve seen how they carry themselves.<\/p>\n
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And in spite of (or rather, because of) last night\u2019s win, I can tell you that they\u2019re just not quite there yet. <\/p>\n
Facing the snake-bitten and limping Warriors, they came out sluggish in the first quarter and gave up 38 points to a roughly .500 team without the scoring prowess of Jimmy Butler, Kristaps Porzingis, and the still-lethal Steph Curry.<\/p>\n
But the Warriors execute. They still retain some of the focus, organization, and aura of a champion. They have a seasoned all-time coach who knows how to press each and every advantage that comes to light. They have championship vets who know how to push their teammates and frustrate their opponents.<\/p>\n
These are things you have to earn, and you can only earn them by going through the fire together. Free agency can only aid you so much (especially in the current CBA era), and drafting accumulates talent, not experience. <\/p>\n
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And these Spurs are talented, to be sure. With the 3rd best record in the league, they tower over most of their peers, not unlike their prodigiously gifted leader. But there\u2019s still some sloppiness they must curtail. Turnovers they can ill afford in the postseason. Concentration that fluctuates with seemingly every quarter. Vulnerabilities at positions like Power Forward, and functional big man depth that must be addressed.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s little reason that the Spurs should have entered the 3rd quarter down to the Warriors after the destruction they visited on the similarly vulnerable Los Angeles Lakers the night before. Yes, it was the second night of a back-to-back, but the Spurs are so very young, and the Warriors and Lakers are so very old.<\/p>\n
And yet, there\u2019s no question that they\u2019re beautiful to watch when they\u2019re locked in.<\/p>\n
Victor Wembanyama is more efficient than ever and is becoming more and more capable of taking on thuggish play from the Draymond Greens of the world. De\u2019Aaron Fox and Dylan Harper orchestrated the offense to near-perfection in the 2nd half, relegating the errors of the 1st half to distant memories.<\/p>\n
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Stephon Castle squeezed the opposing guards like an ill-fed python let loose in a barn full of rats, and Keldon Johnson ran wild and unimpeded like a bull in Pamplona, tossing the frames of the very foolish and the very brave aside in equal measure.<\/p>\n
Thinking that this will be their year is an understandable error of enthusiasm after long years in the NBA cellar, and therefore an expression of hope, which is no great sin. It\u2019s an error each and every one of us has been guilty of at one time or another.<\/p>\n
And yet\u2026<\/p>\n
After 20 minutes or so of relative silence, the highway diverged into a wood more lushly green than yellow, and we saw it. Spanning what must have been 300+ feet, it dwarfed the previous pine of contention; the base so wide, that it blocked the view of the other tree trunks around it. There could be no question that it was a real Redwood.<\/p>\n
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For a moment, we stared at each other, neither one saying a word.<\/p>\n
\u201cWow.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLook! There\u2019s another one!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh yeah, look at that one!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey just keep coming!\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOh my God.\u201d<\/p>\n
After ten or so minutes of this, Taylor leaned over the center console onto my shoulder, and we watched the colossal trees pass by in silent awe, as the 199 carved and curved its way though the vastness of the ancient forest on the way to the 101, and eventually, the Pacific Coast Highway.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, it really wasn\u2019t a Redwood after all.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, but I really wanted it to be one. For you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah, I know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Takeaways<\/p>\n
It\u2019s going to be interesting seeing what MATFO decide to do with Harrison Barnes in the off-season. On the one hand, he\u2019s reliably no drama, still defends and shoots well enough to play with both the starters and bench as needed, and is active in the community. On the other hand, it\u2019s feels like some slippage is finally starting to occur, especially when it comes to his ability to handle to faster, younger players, and getting open off ball. Defenses are beginning to key on Julian Champagnie on the occasion that they share the court, because Barnes is just no longer the cutting threat that he once was, and daring Barnes to punish them for leaving him open. And while Barnes seems to have broken out of his slump (43% from 3 over the last 10 games), he\u2019s shooting just 35% on open threes where the defender is 4-6 feet away. I\u2019m not sure what Barnes will be worth on the open market, but financials are going to start getting tricky for the Spurs soon, and rooting for him to slump for a lower contract isn\u2019t going to help the Spurs. If, on the other hand, he gets molten-lava hot again, a hopeful contender will be likely to give him a look. I\u2019m hoping the Spurs will be able to sign him for something reasonable, as they definitely need to retain shooting, but I\u2019m guessing it will all depend on what role he\u2019s willing to accept for an equally no-drama franchise that find itself on the cusp of contention. Here\u2019s hoping Carter Bryant continues his ascent!<\/p>\n
While I don\u2019t always understand what Mitch Johnson is trying to accomplish with his rotations (an inexplicably point-guard-less lineup continues to baffle me), he again made a game-saving adjustment in recognizing that Castle was off offensively, and playing Fox and Harper together for an extended stretch. When Castle is on, he\u2019s just about as good a facilitator as you could hope for, but when he\u2019s off\u2026whew boy, it is not pretty. Recognizing that Curry\u2019s absence meant he could pick his spots with Castle was incredibly savvy of the younger coach in the match-up, and once he figured it out Steve Kerr really didn\u2019t have an answer. There\u2019s no question that Johnson\u2019s still figuring things out, but a move like that could be the difference in winning and losing a series, and I\u2019m feeling more and more confident that he\u2019s capable of pulling that sort of thing off.<\/p>\n
According to Win Shares, Keldon Johnson has been worth five wins for the Spurs this season, but by my count, it\u2019s closer to double that, as he has consistently come in clutch in tight games for San Antonio. The Spurs have 19 clutch-time wins, and the bench is 5th in the league in net rating, and Keldon has been a big, big part of that as the unquestioned leader of the bench mob. At the very least, there\u2019s an argument to be made that the Spurs wouldn\u2019t have even made it clutch time so often without the bench keeping them in the game until the starters figured it out. Still carrying career highs in almost every shooting category, Keldon is 3rd on the team in scoring efficiency and 2nd in shooting efficiency. Someone get this guy a 6th man of the year award, stat!<\/p>\n
Playing You Out \u2013 The Theme Song of the Evening:<\/p>\n
Old Pine by Ben Howard<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cCan you just let me have this?\u201d We were fifteen minutes from the California border, and the trees…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":600752,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,978,1314,80198,226,568,164,2992,313,4076,2850,871,150,6,80199,80197,969,474,4075,4074,534,932,930,693],"class_list":{"0":"post-600751","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-carter-bryant","10":"tag-deaaron-fox","11":"tag-douglas-fir","12":"tag-dylan-harper","13":"tag-getty-images","14":"tag-golden-state-warriors","15":"tag-harrison-barnes","16":"tag-jimmy-butler","17":"tag-julian-champagnie","18":"tag-keldon-johnson","19":"tag-kristaps-porzingis","20":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","21":"tag-nba","22":"tag-pine-tree","23":"tag-redwood","24":"tag-san-antonio","25":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","26":"tag-sanantonio","27":"tag-sanantoniospurs","28":"tag-spurs","29":"tag-steph-curry","30":"tag-stephon-castle","31":"tag-victor-wembanyama"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116063136874047295","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600751","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=600751"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/600751\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/600752"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=600751"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=600751"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=600751"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}