Five things: A brutal loss, a roster problem, and a search for silver linings

Plus, on the positive side of things, a blossoming star in every sense, and a young team figuring out how to execute.

Screenshot courtesy of Bally Sports Southwest

For a quarter of Friday night’s game, San Antonio looked like a team on the verge of adding another small checkmark to the proverbial progression chart on the locker-room wall. It was attacking a badly depleted Memphis side, taking advantage of bench players who’d been thrust into elevated roles, 10-day contractors, and dudes who were only on the team because the league had granted the Grizzlies hardship exemptions due to the biblical flood of injuries that’s plagued their roster.

This is where you’re supposed to find silver linings over the course of a difficult season, in the games you’re supposed to win. And for at least a little while, the Spurs looked every bit the part of a 6.5-point favorite, which was the largest spread Vegas has assigned them this year for any matchup in which they weren’t the underdog.

But then the wheels began to rattle, and then they started to shake, until they finally fell off and left the car skidding off the road in a 99-97 loss to a Memphis MASH unit.

The Grizzlies all but erased what had been a 17-point deficit early in the second quarter to head into halftime down by only a point, as the Spurs unraveled against a team that, frankly, wasn’t firing on all cylinders itself. Memphis scored just 25 points in the period, but San Antonio was only able to muster 14 of its own, and everything snowballed from there.

It was the world’s slowest-moving snowball, but it was rolling nonetheless.

“They were 6-for-13 [from deep] in the second quarter. We were 1-for-10. So, the game changes. That's what the 3-point shot will do for you. But we can't have that combination of 20 points off turnovers that we gave them, and we shot 18 percent from (the 3-point line),” Gregg Popovich said. “If you hold the team to 99 [points], you should win a lot of games. But if you give up 20 points on turnovers and shoot 18 percent, it's going to make it tough on you. End of story. It’s got nothing to do with a play here, a play there. It's about the whole thing together.”

The turnover problem has been covered ad nauseam, but the Spurs’ 7-for-38 performance from distance on Friday was a brutal outlier for a team that’s been pushing 40 percent from the 3-point line since the All-Star break in mid-February — good for fifth in the league during that span. And given the way defenses are defending them, if the deep ball isn’t falling, they’re going to be in trouble.

(More on this in the Five Things below!)

Regardless, the Spurs still had chances to put the game away, but whether it was a turnover, bad foul, missed shot or botched layup, there was no pulling away from the mistakes that doomed them. And when the Grizzlies started to punch back, San Antonio couldn’t crawl out of the hole it had dug for itself to offer a response.

“I remember having a thought in the first half when we were up by a lot, I didn't put the nail in the coffin. That is how I felt. I wanted to have a reaction, because it doesn't matter who's in front of us, we have to be the same pace, same way, and be as aggressive,” Victor Wembanyama said. “So, I wanted to be as aggressive as if it was [Joel] Embiid or Giannis [Antetokounmpo] in front of us. So yeah, I did have a reaction when this happened, mistakes I won't do again.”

While this is the kind of mindset you expect from your star, the Spurs (Wemby included) have shown a tendency to start forcing the issue in an effort to make something happen whenever the offense gets stuck in mud — a problem both players and coaches have pointed out on plenty of occasions this season. But even with Victor taking center stage, and Devin Vassell making significant strides, this is not a team that functions well when it careens outside of its system. Whether or not the shots are falling, it must continue to trust the game plan in place will create the right opportunities.

And even more importantly, the Spurs have no room to relax against any opponent playing on an NBA court, or look ahead to a matchup with Kevin Durant, Devin Booker and the Phoenix Suns on the second night of a back-to-back.

There is no such thing as a trap game when you’ve only got 15 wins.

---

Four more things…