After the 126-113 road win at the home of the Golden State Warriors last week, I spent most of the two hour public transit ride home flipping back and forth between these two views of the standings:
ESPN’s overall league standings:
The best thing about this successful season is that there are no more instances of Warriors-loving friends sending me smack-talk pregame or postgame. This was the type of game that previous Spurs squads may have just accepted their fate and taken
the deflating loss. However, San Antonio never seemed too far out of it this time — despite the sizable deficits — and was able to pull even with and away from the Warriors.
A Warriors fan behind me kept asking the Spurs fan to my left why he kept recording everything on his phone, and the young man turned around and simply said “These guys don’t make it out our way very much.”
One of the benefits over the last decade-plus of living in the Bay Area is being able to see San Antonio visit Golden State and Sacramento at least twice a season for most years. Here are some of the highlight plays that I captured after the very sluggish start (there was a group of people that had more alcohol to drink during the game than I had consumed water that entire day, so the angles of the videos got increasingly higher and higher to minimize invasive scalp appearances):
2nd Quarter Hustle Plays
Carter Bryant seems to have found his way into the Bruce Bowen corners, like Keldon has, in order to find some offense:
The ability for the Spurs to chase down loose balls gifted Vassell free throws here:
3rd Quarter Comeback
This Fox to Wemby lob that was volleyballed in makes me think of how hard it was in previous seasons for the guards to feed the big man these types of ‘rewards’ for his great defense:
If Castle can get 6-8 points a game in this way, it’ll be a great halfcourt shot diet to rely on:
Harper seems to be able to make the easier passes – in this case, the pocket pass to an eager Kornet:
Barnes seems fit to be a checkdown shooter at this stage, and he came through late in the clock here:
Fox’s stepback jumper tied things at 94 heading into the fourth.
4th Quarter Finish
Fox went deep in the paint to Wemby for a Nerf lob – hope to see this 2-3 times a game going forward:
Spurs milk the shotclock to find the best shot possible in the moment:
Devin Vassell asserted himself in a way that he will be needed in the playoffs (shot creation genius):
It was jarring to see Keldon do things to Draymond that the Warrior used to do to other players in years past:
Wembanyama, Vassell, and Fox ran a nice play here to free up Fox for a pull-up:
Keldon drove baseline for a floater to salt the game away:
It fun win to watch in a place where the Spurs don’t always get them, so hopefully they can repeat it when they visit again on April 1 — and possibly even a few weeks later if a thing or two changes in those standings.
