Keldon Johnson<\/a>, the opening moments said everything.<\/p>\n“How we started today was not acceptable on any level,” he said. “We’ve got to continue to put an emphasis on starting out games and imposing our will on teams and continue to do our best and put our best effort forward. We continue to stay on the same page and continue to push each other. Today it wasn’t there to start the game, but we get another chance to get back at it in a couple of days.”<\/p>\n
It\u2019s the kind of quote that doesn\u2019t sound like it came after a win. Because inside the Spurs’ locker room, the score isn\u2019t the point.<\/p>\n
The Spurs are in a strange space \u2014 winning games, but still searching for ways to improve before the postseason begins. Building habits without the luxury of history. Learning what consistency looks like in real time. That\u2019s the tension of a young team learning on the fly. Wins can blur the truth. They can cover cracks that only show up when the stakes are higher, when the margin for error disappears.<\/p>\n
Mitch Johnson sees through that.<\/p>\n
“We’re winning games, and that feedback can be misleading. We’ve lost games where we’ve played a hell of a game,” he said.<\/p>\n
Inside that honesty is the blueprint for what he wants this team to become: a group that isn\u2019t defined by the scoreboard, but by its standard.<\/p>\n
Because standards don\u2019t change with the result. They don\u2019t rise with a win or fall with a loss. Standards stay consistent.<\/p>\n
“The standard and level of play that we know we\u2019re capable of must be acknowledged and held accountable regardless of score or the result of the game,\u201d Mitch Johnson said. \u201cThat’s of the utmost importance when you don’t have the history together to draw on a sample size of leaning into some of those things.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a reminder that this version of the Spurs is still being written. There\u2019s no long track record to fall back on. No championship muscle memory to lean into when things get tough. There’s just accountability and habits.<\/p>\n
Moments, like a timeout one minute into a game, where a coach decides that good enough isn\u2019t good enough. And maybe that’s the real story — the main headline — of Monday’s game.<\/p>\n
Not the win.<\/p>\n
Not the opponent.<\/p>\n
But the standard being set, one early whistle at a time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN ANTONIO — The game had barely begun inside the Frost Bank Center when everything went wrong. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690057,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3797],"tags":[7,6,969,474,4075,4074,534],"class_list":{"0":"post-690056","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-spurs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116324476035187154","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690056","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=690056"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690056\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690057"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}