Well, that probably had to happen at some point.
The vibes were too high. _Simply_ too high, you know? It didn’t seem possible for the Spurs to lose, or for Wembanyama to play poorly, or for everyone on the team to just… not really show up. But it happened. It was a bad one from start to finish. A full-on stinker. The basketball equivalent of watching the coolest guy you know walk straight into a mailbox. I had a bad time watching it, and I bet you did too.
So where do we go from here? What’s the takeaway? Mostly that this team is still an unfinished product, and this game underlined it in thick red ink. It’s better, closer, and warmer to being a finished product than it has been in a long time, but it’s still working things out. That’s probably okay. I mean, it’s definitely okay. It’s just going to take a minute for all of us to recalibrate after having cold water dumped on us at the Freshly Minted NBA Title Contender party.
It’d be easy to overreact to this shellacking and I obviously don’t think thats the answer, but taking stock of whether or not we had overreacted to the shellackings we were handing out in that opening stretch might be in order. Victor Wembanyama looked _so_ good. Stephon Castle looked _so_ good. Dylan Harper looked _so_ good. It was just everything we were asking for. All the signs we wanted to see from this team were glowing in neon lights. They played with speed and effort and passion in a way the allowed us to become unstuck in time a little bit and catch a glimpse of what this group might be capable of. It was electric! It was enthralling! It was….still, only a glimpse.
What a glimpse though, right? I mean, can you really blame us for getting all worked up?
For a variety of reasons, this game is not the end-all, be-all of anything, and it will be easy enough for everyone to move on from it. In a perfect world, this game will exist as a quick nod to our own mortality before we get on with our journey. An acknowledgment that this isn’t going to be handed to us, and that if this team really wants to be taken seriously right now, this season, then the level of effort and intensity required will have to match what they brought to the table in those first five games.
In the grand scheme of things, that might not be possible. I’m still pretty excited to watch them try though.
* The team we saw out there in Phoenix was missing a lot of dudes. Important dudes. Dudes who would’ve made a real difference. The Spurs were doing great things in those opening games despite not having their full complement available, which was thrilling to see. We all got to do the “Look! They’re doing this without Fox, Sochan, and Kornet! This is amazing!” routine. And it was amazing. But now? Yeah, I’d like to see all of our dudes back in the saddle, please. Sooner rather than later. Thank you.
* Ugh, especially in light of one of our favorite new dudes, Dylan Harper, going down in this one. Calf injuries have really started to feel like a bogeyman in the NBA these days. It’s like a terrible precursor to future Achilles tears, and it makes my whole body shut down for a little when I think about it. Injuries are the worst. This is not breaking news, but it’s there nonetheless. It’s what keeps me up at night. It’s the only thing I really think can derail the project the Spurs have going on, and there’s virtually no way to truly protect against it. It’s just the cost of doing business. I’m going to go scream into a pillow.
* Hey, also, if my science about calf injuries feeling like a terrible precursor to Achilles tears feels off or is just plain wrong, you’re welcome to just keep that to your self. This is a Vibes Corner of the site, not a Science Corner, so any mistakes made by me are intentional and on purpose.
* Another reason I desperately want to get our dudes back is that this game was kind of a showcase for why you can’t just let Wemby go full pedal to the metal 100 percent of the time in the way that he probably wants to. He looked a little gassed in this one, and with good reason. He shot out of the gate this season like a rocket and basically hasn’t let up a single bit since then. The two guys we brought in to spell him, Kornet and Olynyk, haven’t been able to do that, and as a result he’s just taken a lot on. Him and Bismack Biyombo leading the front line? Not what you want! (All due respect to Bis, who is an all-time good guy that I want in my foxhole. Just not, you know, all the time. I want him foxhole adjacent. I want him in foxhole garbage time minutes.) Regardless, Victor needs to get some rest. He needs to calibrate himself for this season, and he needs to do it quickly or this team is going to be here for a good time, not a long time.
* Keldon Johnson is my dude. I love him and he’s never done anything wrong in his life. Ever.
_\-Hard to get up for a game like this one. One you so lovingly referred to as “a full-on stinker.”_
\- Well, yeah. It’s true. Sometimes a bad game can really light a fire under you though. Lets you get some of the demons out so they can run free and cause mischief! That can be fun on a case-by-case basis.
_\- To let the demons out? What does that mean?_
\- I mean, you know, maybe they play so badly that you let a take off that’s not something you truly believe but feels right in the moment. Kind of a lashing-out situation?
_\- Like what a toddler does?_
\- Toddlers don’t get to own “lashing out.” That’s a fundamental human right, and we shouldn’t be ashamed to do it from time to time. And, frankly, I think we should be afforded a little grace when we do. I should be able to roll back in here the next day and be like, “Hey, when I said Mitch Johnson isn’t qualified to run the night shift at my local Arby’s, much less an NBA team, I didn’t mean that. That was the demons,” and then everyone will be like, “Ah, yes, of course, the demons, carry on,” and then we will. We will carry on with our day.
_\- So as long as you apologize for being rude, it’s okay to be rude?_
\- Check the tape! I never apologized! I just shifted blame onto the demons. It’s a very different process.
_\- It feels worse somehow?_
\- Yeah, I mean, they’re demons. What were you expecting?
See More:
* [Spurs Analysis](/spurs-analysis)
* [What we learned](/what-we-learned)