In an effort to calm my nerves before the game on Friday, I went to an art museum.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for other than a distraction. Anything to stop myself from listening to one more increasingly obscure basketball podcast.
The exhibit on display was titled “International Surrealism: 50 Years of Dreams,” something I was passingly familiar with in the sense that if someone asked me if I know what surrealism was I’d say, “sure” and then if they pressed me on it, I’d probably go on to say, “It’s
like, when something is surreal.”
Now, as I learned during this rainy afternoon stroll through the Frist Museum in Nashville, the artistic movement grew out of Paris in the 1920s, and its practitioners were super into the teachings of Freud, obsessed with the unconscious mind. However, where Freud was interested in this concept for therapeutic purposes, the surrealists were more like, “sure man, whatever, but what if we actually just used it to unlock the mysteries of the universe? Or at the very least, maybe paint some cool stuff?”
I passed through the galleries, nodding along, armed with my newfound knowledge and ready to be enlightened or inspired. I saw shapes. I saw colors. I saw sculptures. I then turned a corner and was, all of a sudden, alone in a room with Salvador Dalí’s Autumnal Cannibalism.
Like most things with Dalí, it was weird.
This painting…it’s somehow bright and yet muted, vivid and yet enshrouded in this deep grey darkness that pulls everything in the landscape towards it. Two figures, front and center, are locked together in some kind of unholy embrace, consuming each other. It’s somehow violent and peaceful at the same time. They’re melting into each other. I still don’t even know what I was really looking at, but it held me there for a long time, locked in that same embrace.
As the Spurs raced out to that 15-0 lead in the first quarter, I felt like I was having an out of body experience. It was exactly what I wanted. I’d spent two days obsessing with how the Spurs were going to respond to that Game 2 loss and this was the stuff dreams were made of. Our guys were everywhere. The Thunder looked like they couldn’t breathe. There wasn’t a shot that wouldn’t fall. A pass we couldn’t steal. Every single person in the crowd seemed like they were about to exit the physical realm and spend the rest of the game having to astral project into the AT&T Center.
The furthest reaches of my DNA felt like they were on fire. Flames were shooting out of my ears. I could feel my body shaking. I think I’ll remember that stretch of basketball for the rest of my life. I’ve never seen anything like it. When Hartenstein finally hit a floater, I thought to myself, surely, the game has got to be wrapping up soon considering I’ve lived a thousand different lifetimes since tipoff. I’d been to the molten core of the earth. I’d travelled to the outer reaches of the cosmos. I’d traversed through the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. Surely, Mike Tirico was moments away from telling us, “So long, from San Antonio.”
It had been 4 minutes.
Four. Minutes.
I just wasn’t sure what to do with that information. My brain couldn’t process it. The Spurs had done it, you know? They’d figured out how to beat the Thunder and they’d gone out there and done it. Who cares if they’d taken care of the job in only four minutes? Stop the count. This was over. It had to be.
I spent the rest of the game, as I’m sure most of you did, melting into the floor, the euphoria slowly draining from my body as the cold realization came into focus that this thing was unraveling in front of us. It wasn’t even some kind of spectacular blow up, just a mundane, systematic dismantling of everything we’d built. The Thunder had grabbed ahold of the thread, and walked away.
Lying on the floor, lying on the floor, we’d come undone.
Surrealism, at its core, is the belief that two contradictory things can be simultaneously, uncomfortably true.
Something can be beautiful and horrible at the same time, occupying the same space. Terrifying and comforting. Completely fictional and utterly real.
It can be a pipe, even when it’s not.
I keep thinking about those two figures in the Dalí painting. Huge. Looming over everything. The act of destroying each other is grotesque in nature, but feels at home in their warped reality. Like they were meant to be here all along. The closer you look at it though, the more you realize the endgame. This isn’t a fair exchange between equals, not really. They take from each other, sure, but the darkness is overwhelming the light, threatening to consume it all.
The Spurs and Thunder are devouring each other in these games. It was a fight that, two days ago, felt like it was on equal ground. Today it’s starting to feel like the Thunder are absorbing everything the Spurs have to offer and the Spurs are simply trying to hold their shape.
It doesn’t feel like this can be the end. It doesn’t feel like it should be. Not yet.
Then again, none of this was the way it was supposed to go in the first place. The Spurs weren’t supposed to be this good, this fast. They weren’t supposed to get the 2 seed. They weren’t supposed to be able to challenge the Thunder. They weren’t supposed to be ready for any of this.
The Spurs are as good as we think they are. The Spurs are not as good as we thought.
The Spurs are flawed.
The Spurs are perfect.
I watched the Spurs go up 15-0 and then I watched them lose 123-108. I’m being asked to tell you which one was real.
The answer, as best I can tell, is both.
Takeaways
- It feels pretty simple really. Guys just didn’t have their legs. I know that’s just my uneducated, guy on the couch analysis but like, were any of you seeing something else going on out there? Shots that normally drop were coming up short. Drives that usually end at the rim were stalling out. Things I’ve seen the Spurs execute all season long, including against this very same Thunder team, just weren’t working. I don’t think there’s an issue with our schemes or our talent or our heart. Like, we’re good on those fronts. We’re just out of gas. Again, it feels pretty simple.
- The Thunder are really good. (barf). They remind me of watching Novak Djokovic play tennis. (barf). Making them bleed only seems to steel their resolve. You can take a set off them, sure, but they have these wells of energy fueled by spite that seem to endlessly spring forth whenever they need them. They are mechanical and brutal and technically perfect. They are taking something beautiful, tearing it down to the studs, and showing us how it works. I hate it. I’m offended to my very core. Congrats to them on the enormity of their success.
- Alex Caruso makes me want to throw rotting fruit at passing cars just so that someone else in the world can experience my pain. That’s right. Every time Caruso hits a three it feels like a moldy peach just slammed into my windshield while I was trying to change lanes on the interstate. If this series goes 7 I might have to go take a walk every time he checks into the game.
- I really wish I had something more substantive to give you from an analysis perspective, but if we’re being real, I do not want to think critically about this thing any more than I have to. I don’t want to see the stats. I don’t want to see the highlights. I don’t want to see the tweets or the pods or the shows. Nothing. In fact, as soon as I hit publish on this thing I’m going to endeavor to never think about this game again for as long as I live. Cheers.
WWL Post Game Press Conference
What goes into the decision to start a recap like this with a total non sequitur?
Well. See. What happened was that the game ended and I immediately sat down at my computer and started typing in an effort to avoid having to sit, think, and process what I had just watched.
So you sat down and started typing your piece, a piece that is, by nature, designed to help Spurs fans process their feelings about the game, in an effort to avoid processing your own feelings about the game?
That’s right.
So it wasn’t intentional to spend 400 words recapping your field trip to the museum instead of the Spurs game, it’s just what came out?
That’s right. Look, I knew I would have to talk about the Spurs eventually, but I also knew I wasn’t ready to do that yet so I decided to let my subconscious take a little walk before we got there. See what that turned up.
Honestly, that feels like it’s pretty in line with something the surrealists would approve of.
Their approval means the world to me.
Speaking of looking for approval, some guy in the comments of your last piece called your writing “middle school girl sludge.” How did that make you feel?
Hey, if I could actually ever write something with half the ethos, pathos, or logos of a middle school girl I’d basically pack up shop and call it a career.
So, really, he paid you a compliment?
It can be both.
