What We Learned from the Spurs loss to the Warriors

A historic night doesn’t fall the Spurs’ way

Summarized by AI ⓘ

What is the story about?

Well, at least the court looked nice?

This was a game that basically highlighted everything good and bad about this current iteration of the San Antonio Spurs. All the promise and potential coupled with the rough edges that simply must get sanded off before anything of substance can get accomplished around here. They need to figure out how to pour cold water on an opponent when they’re heating up. They need to play a full 48 minutes. They need win games like this. Not because of the standings or the narrative

or anything like that, but because they haven’t done it yet.

The Spurs have to prove it. To us, sure, but mostly to themselves. This season is going to hand them test after test, and until they show they have the answers, we’re allowed to assume they don’t. And look, that’s not really a complaint. This stuff is hard. Stephen Curry is one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, and he put together an actual historic performance. You’re not supposed to just instinctively know how to stop him when he gets going like that. It isn’t intuitive.

I know you don’t want to overreact to a single game, but this one felt like another example of the Spurs being exposed in the ways we already suspected. The record looks impressive. The defensive metrics look impressive. The talent is impressive. All the positives are loud enough to drown out the quiet but persistent hum underneath that maybe, just maybe, they aren’t quite there yet. They’re young. They get sloppy. They don’t execute when a smarter, more seasoned team changes the terms of engagement. The talent on this roster papers over a lot of flaws, and when it works it looks incredible. When it doesn’t, it looks rough. The truth, as always, lives in the middle.

Is that a satisfying conclusion? Probably not. I can tell you it doesn’t feel satisfying to write.

But I’m not sure what else there is right now. This team has been consistently inconsistent. They check every box of a young group trying to make the leap and discovering that the leap is less “graceful ascension” and more “scrambling up the side of a cliff.” This is probably going to be the story of the season. The work is messy. The results are uneven. And the conversations are going to feel repetitive until the team starts giving us something new to say.

What we learned tonight is the same thing we’ve been learning: the Spurs are ahead of schedule, but still very much under construction. And that’s fine. It just means nights like this will keep happening until they don’t anymore.

Takeaways

Look, some of this is just Steph doing Steph things. Sorry, I should specify. Steph C. Sorry, I should specify again. Steph Curry. Forty six points. Twenty two of them in the third like he was cramming for a test or something. He tied Michael Jordan in one age category, passed LeBron in another, and did all of this on the second night of a back to back while allegedly “sick.” I’m doing a lot of complaining for someone who doesn’t exactly know how you’re supposed to deal with him when he turns into this version of himself. Honestly, I’m not sure anyone does. People have been trying to solve this for almost two decades. You’re welcome to stay calm and rational about what happened to the Spurs tonight it if you want. I’m always operating at a baseline level of mildly hysterical just in case, but like I said, you do you.
Have you heard the good news that Victor Wembanyama is tall? It’s awesome. He’s really tall and he’s really good at being tall. It’s a huge advantage when it comes to playing basketball! You know what else is cool? A lot of the other Spurs players are tall too. They are tall and rangy and athletic and, again, this is all amazing. It basically allows them to start every defensive possession on second base because the other team is forced to reckon with that size before they can do anything else. The thing I’m desperate for the Spurs to unlock is the part that comes after being tall because, frankly, I don’t think they are there yet. We saw it against Chicago on Monday and we saw it again last night. Once teams adjust to the physical scale of the challenge, the Spurs have to be able to adjust back. Teams are going to throw cuts and screens and constant movement at the Spurs to undercut their size advantages. They are going to flip the paradigm and find angles and generate open looks. The Spurs are big, but no one is big enough to cover everything. Right now they feel like a blunt instrument and it’s effective only to a point.
I guess we should discuss the double triple-doubles, yeah? Two guys getting one on the same team in the same game is not something that just happens. It is a legitimately rare occurrence. I think it has only happened like 20 times before? Don’t fact check that, but trust me, it’s rare. (In fact, as a rule, never fact check me.) Throw in the fact that they did it in a losing effort and we have something pretty special on our hands. It is honestly sort of disappointing when Wemby is not sniffing around one these days, but Castle’s was a really nice surprise. He has been so impressive so far this season, and if we take nothing else from this first stretch of games it should be that we can go ahead and put it in the papers that Steph is cementing himself as one of the top players in the league. Sorry, I should clarify, Steph C. Sorry, I should clarify again, Steph Castle.
The court really did look nice. I have been on the record in the past saying the Spurs rely too heavily on the Fiesta colors to pump in good vibes and fan enthusiasm, and I think I still stand by that take for the most part, but also, like, what are you going to do? The colors look rad. The court looks rad. It should probably just be the court from now on if we’re being honest. Why did they stop using these colors in the first place? Was there some blanket statement that went out to every sports league in 2002 that legally required everyone to stop doing cool stuff that people actually like?