What We Learned from the Spurs win over the Hawks

12/20/2024 01:30 PM

A full strength Spurs team snags a win in extra time

I truly don't know what to make of that game. Something about it felt a little off to me, and I'm having a hard time putting my finger on it. A fun win? Sure. Like everyone else, I had a good time sitting there, watching the clock tick down with the Spurs ahead and the home fans going nuts. It was a feel-good moment in a season that, at least compared to recent history, has been relatively full of them. You look at this team and the progress they've made, and you'd be hard-pressed to find something to be mad about. Yet, here I am, feeling a little off. What's my problem?

Let's get this out of the way first and foremost: any win is good. We love wins, and we don't take them for granted. There was a ton to like about how the team played and, I mean, Victor had one of those games so outrageous it's difficult to even put into words. (He's having those games so frequently now that it's becoming remarkably unremarkable.) The team was healthy. Everyone was back. Everyone was contributing. It's everything we've been clamoring for all year. We can and should be very excited about that.

I think there's a chance that, for the umpteenth time, this Spurs team has accidentally raised my expectations higher than they probably should be. I wanted this game to be easy. I wanted them to routinely dispatch the Hawks with a level of efficiency I think they should be more than capable of by now. Watching them lose focus on defense here and there annoyed me. Every silly turnover was nails on a chalkboard. The way they let the Hawks just hang around and hang around until, all of a sudden, the game turned into a knife fight down the stretch soured just about everything else cool that was happening simultaneously. The Spurs' final possession of regulation was so bad I almost didn't watch overtime.

This is probably a dumb attitude to have. Probably. I don't know. I'm not going to tell you how to watch the Spurs, and if you were able to relax and enjoy these young guys snatching a victory back from the jaws of defeat—where last year we have plenty of evidence they couldn't pull that maneuver off—then more power to you. All I could do was sit there, shake my head, and mutter ominous things like "they aren't ready yet" while my wife side-eyed me from across the room.

"They're winning, aren't they?" she said.

"Not how they need to," I growled.

"Well, that's stupid."

It is stupid. I've spent months being excited that the Spurs finally brought in some veterans like Chris Paul and Harrison Barnes to bolster their young roster, and now I'm rolling my eyes because a 39-year-old is having to bail us out down the stretch against a .500 team in the Eastern Conference. "What's gonna happen when the greatest point guard in a generation isn't around to save the day?" I muse aloud to the heavens. Their silent response is deafening. Surely, the cosmos must agree that we need to figure out a long-term solution at point guard.

Look, I'm guilty of wanting to skip steps and, as we've talked about routinely around these parts, this is not a process where you get to do that. It's long, it's slow, and it's full of tiny moments of progress punctuated by a revolving door of setbacks that are designed to remind you exactly where you are on your journey. Where are the Spurs? Well, they're no longer at the bottom of the mountain, that's for sure. Games like this are a good reminder, though, that they're a lot closer to the start than the finish.

I left this game feeling like the win was an empty calorie, but that has more to do with my own impatience getting in the way of objectivity. The Spurs are learning how to win, and that's not easy to do. I can point out all the problems I want, but at the end of the day, a win is a win.

The Spurs not being quite as good as I want them to be yet is not the worst problem to have.

Takeaways:

• Candidly, I think one of my issues is that the Spurs were back at full strength for the first time all year. I've been telling myself, "just wait, once we get everyone back, then we're really gonna be cooking." Now we finally had everyone back, and it still sorta didn't look like I wanted it to. Was I expecting a finished product right away? No. Was I expecting it to look more finished than this? Yeah, I think I was. Is that a smart way to understand how basketball works? That question was worded confusingly, and I refuse to answer it.
• Victor scored 42 points, and it didn't even feel like he was working too hard to do it. It's insane how easy he can make it look on nights like this. Sure, there are nights when he makes the game look amusingly difficult for someone with his size, but he was obviously in the zone this time. His shot looks good. I mean, it looks crazy to have him taking 15 threes a game, and I'm going to keep saying that as a disclaimer because it's crazy and we need to acknowledge it. But look at him! He made 7 of those threes, and they looked so easy and so comfortable. That's 21 nonchalant points he didn't have to grind for in the paint. That's 21 quick points no one on our side had to think twice about. That's 21 decisive points every team in the league has to start taking seriously because Victor is no longer "theoretically" a weapon from beyond the arc—he's real, and he's spectacular.
• This is just an anecdotal observation and not backed by any advanced stats or analytics, but I have a sneaking suspicion that Chuck Bassey is only vaguely familiar with how to do a layup. Raucous dunks? He's got those on lock, and I love every single one of them. Anything else around the rim? My man's only thought seems to be heaving the ball off the backboard and hoping for the best. I want to be clear that I love Chuck and support all his endeavors, so this is less a criticism and more me pointing out something I find pretty charming about the whole "SeaBass" experience.
• Thanks to various trade and draft machinations, we are obviously all rooting for the Atlanta Hawks' demise every time they step on the court. No offense to them or the city of Atlanta writ large, but I want them to be bad and lose every game. It added a little extra spice to this game, and I really enjoyed the concept of the Spurs' win having a sort of vague "win multiplier" attached to it.
• Silly stuff this:

WWL Post Game Press Conference:

- Are you concerned at all about the tendency to turn these posts into de facto therapy sessions for you to just sort out your own demons with regard to the Spurs?

- Well, I wouldn't sat I'm concerned about it. I think I'm pretty comfortable with the notion actually.

- You think that's what the people want? To sit hear and listen to you complain about the Spurs' win not being the right kind of win?

- What are you, the Post Police? The people crave my witty dalliances with the inner workings of an unhinged Sports Fan.

- That's you, though. You are the unhinged Sports Fan. You think that's healthy?

- No, of course not. Hence the therapy sessions.

- And the people crave this?

- They pay extra for it.