Spurs race past another big favorite, have no interest in slowing down

San Antonio is letting its opponents know they'd better be ready to run, because it's not going to wait around.

In the face of understandably low expectations from the public, Devin Vassell was adamant early in camp that this version of the Spurs’ offense was not going to see a drop-off from last season after the departure of Dejounte Murray. It was just going to be different, with a change of approach and added versatility.

“I think ‘one’ through ‘four’ we can all bring it up,” Vassell said then. “That’s going to be one of our advantages — you can’t just focus on one guy, you have to focus on all of us bringing the ball up the court and getting into something.”

He wasn’t the only one stressing this, either. To a man, players were letting us know through grins this offense was going to play faster, looser and more aggressively than it did last year — they were going to get out and run, looking for different ways to score beyond just the bread-and-butter pick-and-roll attack for which Gregg Popovich teams are known.

This is always the kind of stuff you hear on media day and throughout the run up to the regular season, however. Players are excited, optimistic, and looking forward to big things with high expectations. Besides, San Antonio played at one of the fastest offensive paces in the league last year at just over 14 seconds per possession. There’s not a ton of room for more speed while staying efficient at the same time.

But the Spurs have launched themselves into each of the last three games, shot out of a cannon during pre-game introductions to stay warm for the race ahead.

Generally speaking, players like to get a feel for their surroundings early in games. They like to gauge the flow and pace of their opponents, and to measure early signs of the effectiveness of their team’s game plan that night.

But San Antonio (3-1) took a hatchet to whatever Indiana, Philadelphia and Minnesota had strategized in each of the last three games, hitting them right in the forehead before they even had a chance to react. So far, the Spurs’ game plan has been to attack, attack, attack — to give their opponents no time to assess the situation. In their 115-106 win over the heavily favored Timberwolves on Monday, they scored 39 in the first quarter and hit 50 points in the opening 15 minutes of basketball. It was an all-out blitz that left Minnesota defenders flat-footed with their heads spinning.

Vassell was once again in attack mode, using ball-screens to get to his pull-up spots, curling off picks for quick-hitters off the ball, putting his head down to get to the rim, and firing away from the 3-point line on his way to 23 points; Jeremy Sochan had his best game as a pro (14 points on 7-for-9 shooting), spending time defending both Anthony Edwards and Karl-Anthony Towns, bolting out in transition for easy score after easy score, and even mixing in a sweeping layup off dribble-penetration and a turnaround catch-and-shoot jumper from 12 feet; and Jakob Poeltl (14 points, 14 rebounds, four assists), as he always does, planted himself in the middle of everything the Spurs were doing.

Whether it was dealing with KAT’s bullying drives to the basket or bodying up Rudy Gobert, he took on everything Minnesota sent his way defensively. On the offensive end, Poeltl was dancing around the Timberwolves’ newly acquired center all night. When Gobert was forced to step up and defend a driving ball-handler, he would dip behind him and give his teammates an easy outlet under the basket; when Gobert would stay deep in drop coverage, he’d flash to the middle of the paint, catch the pass and drop in his patented pop-a-shot; if Gobert didn’t account for him once the shot went up, he was attacking the offensive glass. It was all just textbook stuff from Poeltl, per usual.

“He does that every night,” Pop told reporters in Minneapolis. “He might not score as much as he did tonight, but he’s gonna pass when appropriate, he’s gonna rebound, and he’s gonna play (defense) as much as he can. He’s just a solid, solid player who really is the ultimate pro.”

We’re used to this from Poeltl by now, but Pop’s analysis of the big man could apply to damn near any of the regulars through four games. The Spurs are humming right now, and it’s because everyone is getting in on the act. The defense is swarming, players are rebounding, the team is running the floor like the basket is a finish line, and every pass is made with ‘good to great’ intentions.

For now, the ‘feel good’ is real. A team that, in the eyes of many, is supposed to be tanking its season for the betterment of it future is biting back against the notion it isn’t as good as it thinks it is. The Spurs know they’re young, and they understand how little experience they have. They just don’t care.

“We came in with the mentality of, we’re gonna try our best to win every game, never stay too high and never too low,” Sochan said. “So it’s just finding the right balance.”

But inevitably, there will soon come a time when San Antonio gets a flat — when the shots aren’t falling, the other team can’t miss, the motion offense goes stagnant and the air is sucked out of the room. A time when that mental balance is needed. We saw it on opening night, and we’ve seen glimpses of it in each game during the current three-game winning streak, when the opposition has picked up the pressure and forced the Spurs to execute. It might even happen again Wednesday, on the same court, against the same team. It isn’t easy to beat the same team twice in a row, especially when it’s a team as talented as the Timberwolves.

Pop knows. He’s seen this movie before.

“We’re not gonna show up on Wednesday. We’re not coming,” he dead-panned. “You know, you take your chips off the table in Vegas… we’re not coming.”

But when they do actually show up, there will be no waiting on Minnesota to find its footing. The race starts at tip-off. It could be smooth and fast and clean, or it could be filled with spinouts and fiery crashes, but either way you’re going to get one.