Peacock\u2019s new game broadcast overlay<\/a>. Today, I\u2019m going to share a realization I had yesterday evening that hasn\u2019t left me yet.<\/p>\nThe San Antonio Spurs have won eleven games in a row now. They\u2019re second in the NBA\u2019s Western Conference, nipping on the heels of the World-Champion Oklahoma City Thunder. They\u2019re experiencing a renaissance that could end up as profound and far-reaching as their famed Tim Duncan dynasty from the 1990\u2019s and 2000\u2019s.<\/p>\n
And I hate them now. I really do.<\/p>\n
Hold on a minute before you smirk and say, \u201cYeah, you\u2019re supposed to.\u201d We\u2019re not talking about the cool heel heat kind of hate, the grudgingly respectful enmity you have for villains like The Joker in Batman, classic Ric Flair in wrestling, or the Los Angeles Lakers. You understand you need those characters narratively to keep your story, and fandom, alive. Their superiority adds salt to the dish. Lakers vs. Blazers feels good, even if Portland comes out on the losing end more often than not.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s not what I\u2019m talking about.<\/p>\n
This kind of hate isn\u2019t visceral, exotic, or envious. It\u2019s dismissive. It\u2019s a wrinkled nose, not a nodded head.<\/p>\n
Dig into the back of your refrigerator in June. Find the half-full carton of eggnog that\u2019s been sitting there since Christmas two years ago. Pour it, chunks and all, onto a bowl of recycled broccoli. Then put the whole thing into the microwave for two minutes.<\/p>\n
Your reaction to whatever comes out after the beep is my current reaction to the San Antonio Spurs.<\/p>\n
I know they\u2019re winning! That\u2019s very cool. And I love Victor Wembanyama. I have no real objections to the Spurs getting him. I hope he stays healthy. I hope he becomes the generational player he\u2019s forecast to be. All love, all respect and joy, for Wemby and their prize.<\/p>\n
But all the other picks too? The pingy-pongy bounces that got them Stephon Castle and Dylan Harper? We knew this winning streak was going to happen. We knew that a MASSIVE lottery win followed by another lottery win followed by another MASSIVE lottery win was going to set them up forever.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut they had to draft smart!\u201d you say. Really? Did they? How many GM\u2019s would have picked Wembanyama first in 2023? On how many draft boards was Harper second in 2025?<\/p>\n
All of them. All. Of. Them.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a half-forgotten little secret. The Spurs had been in the lottery system for years before they won it all. Do you know who their pick was in 2022, the year before they got Wembanyama? Jeremy Sochan, picked 9th overall. They just waived him. For nothing. Literally dumped him by the side of the arena with a sign that says, \u201cFree. You Transport.\u201d You know who they selected the year before that with the 12th overall pick? Joshua Primo. He\u2019s out of the league now. Go back one more year and it\u2019s Devin Vassell. At least he\u2019s still with the team.<\/p>\n
Vassell is a good player, but tell me, how are those drafting decision-makers looking without the three consecutive lottery jumps? The answer: 1 for 3 with two players gone already, retaining a starting shooting guard who is averaging just over 14 points per game. This doesn\u2019t feel like genius. And it sure doesn\u2019t feel like the kind of unique drafting skill that would automatically place them as heirs apparent to the crown. When they got middling picks, the San Antonio Spurs produced middling results, maybe even a little bit worse.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m not trying to draw anyone away from the NBA. Heck, I\u2019m not even trying to draw anyone away from the Spurs. They\u2019ll probably play good basketball. Enjoy it if you can! But I can\u2019t. I can\u2019t get over the lingering whiff of eggnog in the microwave. It\u2019s permeating the house. Until that bowl is gone, I don\u2019t want to be anywhere near it.<\/p>\n
And yeah, this is going to color my viewing pleasure of one of the best players to ever take the court. Every time I see Wemby do something spectacular now, it comes with an asterisk. The way was paved for his team by weird chance that people will retroactively call genius. It really sucks to think that way, but here we are.<\/p>\n
You know what? I get a similar feeling, though less intense, about the Dallas Mavericks trading away Luka Doncic and getting Cooper Flagg. They\u2019re living in the same tax-free state that aids the Spurs and that allows the Houston Rockets to reload with Kevin Durant (for better or worse). As if these guys needed more boosts.<\/p>\n
Maybe these burgeoning dynasties will turn around my impression. Maybe they\u2019re Dwayne \u201cThe Rock\u201d Johnson or Roman Reigns, both of whom were given outsized aid by the Powers That Be at the start of their WWE careers and were despised for it until they turned out to be so good that people just had to love them. But those arcs were about storytelling with a facade of competition. The NBA is supposed to be competition with a layer of storytelling added. They are not the same.<\/p>\n
The league needs to fix this. It\u2019s one thing to roll your eyes at the bottom-feeding teams, saying that poor decisions and poor play have made them laughingstocks. OK, so a certain percentage of games each year don\u2019t matter because of opponent quality. That\u2019s survivable. When we\u2019re regarding the best teams and highest achievements as filet mignon with a side sauce of rancid goo, that\u2019s a whole \u2018nother level of problem.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve got to admit, I\u2019m there with the Spurs, with the Mavericks too. I don\u2019t want to hear about either of them until the effects of these drafts go away, probably another decade or so. I\u2019m more than halfway there with the Heat\u2014another team playing in a non-tax state just waiting to translate their financial advantage into championship gold\u2014and I could easily get there with the Rockets. If those four teams go, the Lakers aren\u2019t far behind. At that point, one-sixth of the league, and half of its upper echelon, will be unpalatable.<\/p>\n
If I were in San Antonio (or if the Blazers had experienced these kind of hijinks) I might not feel so passionate about it. Critics will claim such. This is also fair. But I\u2019d like to think I\u2019d at least be able to shake my head, admitting that this shouldn\u2019t happen and accepting fully that my upward swing had much less to do with culture, wisdom, and skill than a run of jackpot luck the likes of which the league\u2014or professional sports\u2014has never seen before.<\/p>\n
When the NBA looks at lottery odds, tanking corrections, and all of that, it also needs to look at consecutive (or close-proximity) draft lottery wins and tax inequities. People worry we\u2019re losing the integrity of the game as teams intentionally angle for ping pong balls. Granted. And it\u2019s no better to lose integrity to fiscal code or repeated dumb luck.<\/p>\n
The past can\u2019t be changed. We all get to live with it. Yay, San Antonio! Golf clap. Have fun with it. Great reaction shots as those ping pong balls bounced! We\u2019re proud of you. Accolades, attention, and instant contention are now yours. Good job, champs-in-waiting.<\/p>\n
Now that we\u2019ve said that, let\u2019s never let it happen this way again, no matter who that team is. I\u2019m just fine feeling sick to my stomach about losses. Don\u2019t make me nauseous about the highest-level wins as well, because that\u2019ll kill the sport as quickly as anything. We all survive each day having things to avoid and run from. Nobody lives long, or happily, without something to reach for too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Normally at Blazer\u2019s Edge we strive for reasoned, fairly-intellectual content, analysis of the Portland Trail Blazers and the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":629217,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,37787,6,12],"class_list":{"0":"post-629216","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-draft","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-blazers-analysis","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-nba-draft"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116145244558525333","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629216","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=629216"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/629216\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/629217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=629216"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=629216"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=629216"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}