Hang in there Spurs fans, you're doing great
As the halfway point of the season rapidly approaches, the new year gives us a chance to both reflect on the struggles and look forward to more of the real growth we've seen so far in San Antonio.
Just wanted to wish all subscribers and visitors a Happy New Year, and express to all of you how much I appreciate your readership and support. Here’s to 2023 and hoping we’re all ready for everything that comes next, both with this team and in our own lives! The pace is about to pick up around here, so let’s get going…
New Year’s Day always offers the rare opportunity as a collective to drift between thought bubbles that often exist on different ends of the spectrum, yet somehow remain forever intertwined. There’s celebration, but there’s often lament, too. We find a way to reflect on the year that was, all while simultaneously planning ahead for what’s next. Setting new goals and breathing life into aspirations that may have been previously dormant fuel us when the calendar flips, though all too often it’s the proverbial or even literal hangover that leads us there.
For an evening, your past ‘you’ and future ‘you’ balance together on a frozen plane, all at once saying “goodbye” to what’s behind us and embracing what’s in store. But in the life of a rebuilding team in the NBA, that existence can feel almost perpetual — like it’s suspended on a string being played out until the next anchor can be added.
On one end of San Antonio’s string is Kawhi Leonard and the frayed but still intact tie to a previous era; on the other, hope, I guess? Faith in there being something tangible toward which this whole thing is progressing? Spurs fans have slowly but surely moved on from the Leonard saga, but that doesn’t mean the effects and the aftermath are no longer felt. For all intents and purposes, it is the reason this team is where it is today, scrapping like hell to simply remain competitive on a night-to-night basis. But that’s exactly what they’re doing, and it’s easy to find faith in that kind of effort. During a season full of losses with plenty more to come, it’s the kind of stuff that reminds you how much you care.
On Saturday, Luka Doncic was his typical otherworldly self. The pace with which he plays, the angles he exploits, the preternatural court awareness he possesses — it was all on full display during his 51-point outing, and in their first-ever meeting he gave Jeremy Sochan a crash course on what it’s like to play defense against against an actual basketball wizard.
And yet, on a weird night that didn’t make total sense in a number of different capacities, there the Spurs were with multiple chances to steal a game recent history would indicate they probably shouldn’t have even been in without the services of Devin Vassell. The Mavs were almost completely erasing the perimeter by switching everything around the 3-point line, holding San Antonio — a team that averages more than 32 shots per game from the arc — to just 19 attempts from deep, and forcing a roster with a dearth of true shot-creators to repeatedly chip away inside.
That type of basketball tests a team’s resiliency. When you aren’t afforded the opportunities to land the big blows from outside, the battle feels like it’s being fought entirely uphill. But the Spurs are accustomed to the uphill battles at this point. More often than not that’s simply been their baseline. But in the quest to find what’s holding on to the other end of that string, this is where you lick your finger, stick it in the air and wait for the elements to inform you you’re headed in the right direction.
“They are playing well, but they are not consistent. We’ve had those youthful fourth-quarter problems at both ends of the court from time to time. But they don’t lack the aggressiveness and the will to play hard and to basically never die,” Gregg Popovich said of his players before the game. “They hang in there in those situations where they are not making shots, or we have guys injured or things like that. They are a fun group to be around because they have that effort level all the time.”
Just a month ago this team felt dead in the water. It had gone 1-14 in November, enduring an 11-game losing streak in the process and very much looking the part of one of this season’s Victor Wembanyama Sweepstakes participants. It was the epitome of sports misery and helplessness, with the only partially calming factor being an increased probability of landing their next franchise cornerstone with each loss. But since then we’ve been reminded of the importance of health, the slow pace of real-time player development, and the growth that comes simply from the gift of opportunity.
Since the end of that 11-game losing streak on Dec. 8, the Spurs have boasted higher winning percentage than 13 other teams, including playoff and championship hopefuls like the Phoenix Suns, Minnesota Timberwolves, Toronto Raptors, Atlanta Hawks, Utah Jazz, Milwaukee Bucks and Portland Trail Blazers. They’ve only been outscored by 2.3 points per 100 possessions — their net rating had been -10.7 prior to this 12-game stretch — and even more impressively, they’ve scored 117.3 points per 100 possessions, the fifth-highest offensive rating in the league during that span.
While most of this recent relative success has simply been a direct result of getting healthy bodies back in the rotation, it’s also been the byproduct of young players being given their chances in the sun. We’d be remiss not to mention the ugliness of the Joshua Primo situation as it pertains to the ebbs and flows of this developmental season, a messy chapter that was swept away — satisfactorily for some but certainly not for all — by settlements, likely non-disclosure agreements, and a pledge by the Spurs to improve their workplace environment and processes, particularly for women in the organization. But in the wake of Primo’s outright release, three Spurs rookies have taken advantage of their openings.
Over the last several weeks we’ve seen Sochan and Malaki Branham placed in lead ball-handling roles we didn’t expect to see from them so early in their careers, especially considering neither really profiled as that type of player coming out of college. There may have been flashes at their respective schools, but effectively becoming de facto backup point guards at times not even halfway through their rookie seasons was not something we saw coming from the outside. And they’ve done so efficiently, as both Sochan and Branham have each tallied career games during this recent stretch.
We’ve also seen Keldon Johnson react to his terrible November shooting slump by successfully returning to his strengths and scoring efficiently from his spots around the basket; we’ve seen Vassell continue his rise as both a scorer and playmaker, particularly in late-game situations when his shot-creation skills are badly needed; we’ve seen Doug McDermott become a barometer for team success offensively with his constant motion and deadeye shooting; we’ve seen Tre Jones become a damn ironman for this team, an essential initiator of everything they do on the floor; and we’ve seen Jakob Poeltl find his legs again after a seven-game absence due to a nasty bone bruise in his knee.
Little by little, there is something coming together — something people can enjoy watching. Were you at least a little angry about the 126-125 loss to the Mavs on New Year’s Eve? That’s because this team is making people care, that in the final minutes of a hard-fought game against one of the best players on the planet there was a chance to win. There was a feeling of real competitiveness in that building on Saturday, of an outcome that mattered, and not even a smidge of disinterest or apathy.
After the game, Jones lamented his missed free throw in the closing seconds, and Sochan admitted he wasn’t physical enough with a late missed layup attempt against a backpedaling Doncic in the game’s penultimate defining sequence. But the only reasons those plays were possible were because Jones had just perfectly executed an intentionally missed free throw to retain possession and give his team a chance to send the game to overtime, and in Sochan’s case, because he had ripped the ball away from Tim Hardaway Jr. in a critical defensive moment and raced the length of the floor with an opportunity to give the Spurs the lead with 5.7 seconds remaining.
It was a microcosm of the Spurs’ season: Despite their inexperience and talent disparity relative to many teams, they’re putting themselves in the right positions to make plays. They’ve just been inconsistent in finishing them.
“Youth kicks in in fourth quarters for everybody. Having some success is the only way to get over that,” Pop said. “You can practice all you want or talk all you want but unless you are under the lights having a good fourth quarter, that’s when you build that confidence and they become more mature.”
Between the February trade deadline and general priorities of the coaching staff and front office moving forward, there’s no telling exactly what San Antonio’s roster or rotation will look like in the coming months. But during a time of both reflection and anticipation of what’s next, these dog days of winter have provided us glimpses of the stuff that’s important.
The young Spurs are improving on a nightly basis while simultaneously experimenting with their limits and capabilities in the process. When a team is rebuilding and far from contending, professional goals and responsibilities change, and so do expectations. The job of these players isn’t simply to play out the aforementioned string until this summer’s batch of reinforcements arrive, but to perform well and make the most out of the ride.
It’s in these types of atmospheres where young teams learn how to win, even if the victories still remain an arm’s length away.