Right now, Kelsey Pfendler is out on the open ocean, trying to become the first American woman (and the youngest + fastest) to solo row the Mid-Pacific.
Typically, the route runs from Monterey, CA, to either Hanalei Bay or Honolulu, a distance of roughly 2,000+ nautical miles (depending on how much one gets knocked off course).
Only two other women have accomplished this feat. The fastest, Lia Ditton, did it in 86 days. Pfender is currently on Day 9. And as of 5 pm this afternoon, she has traveled
327 nautical miles so far.
Her tracker estimates that she will arrive in Hawaii on August 28th.
I’ve always wondered what it is that spurs people into taking on tasks like this. Is it just something different in their brain chemistry? Is it a latent ability to turn a journey of 2,000+ miles into digestible chunks of distance and time? A talent for being able to ignore discomfort and focus purely on the light at the end of the tunnel?
Every now and then, I find myself tuning into the History Channel’s survivalist competition show Alone, watching people who’ve willingly isolated themselves out in the subarctic wilderness huddle in makeshift shelters, collecting food in the most rudimentary ways imaginable, and trying to avoid predators, while the voice of Ned Stark echoes in my head.
“Why would anyone sign up for this?” I say to myself, as I contort my body into just the right angle for me to flick a particularly large food crumb from my chest into the trash can.
Impressive display of physical and intellectual powers aside, I think this neglects a question that’s almost as good: why would anyone watch this?
It’s days upon days of watching people making minor improvements against a tide of self-imposed difficulties, while they try to avoid committing/falling prey to a competition-ending mistake.
And yet, I know that if there were a live camera of Pfendler’s journey, I’d be checking it at least a couple of times a day, just out of sheer morbid curiosity.
How do I know this? Because I’ve been writing about the Spurs for years now, from the last season of playoff berths through both the worst and most middling parts of a rebuild, and I couldn’t stop watching their games.
Not even on nights when they were blown out in the middle of already sprawling losing streaks, and the game wasn’t mine to write about. Even if I missed it in real time, I’d find myself watching it later, combing through the carnage for a bright spot that I could cling to.
I can’t for the life of me explain why I did that. And I think it’s safe to presume that I’m not the only Spurs fan who is at a loss in this regard. I could have just tuned out until the Spurs were good again and skipped out on the self-imposed misery of trying to chart progress in a vacuum of talent.
Instead, I found myself paying even closer attention than I did during the good years. You just cannot plot the minutiae of positive development at a distance; it asks more of you than that.
There’s something extra precious about joy when you really have to dig for it. When you’re trying your best to find something good in a challenging situation, championing players whose stories or improvements you might otherwise have glossed over in the heady days of consistent victory.
I think in some ways I learned more about what makes for good basketball watching bad teams than I did watching the Spurs when they were at their best. You develop an even stronger appreciation for the miracle of the 2014 Beautiful Game when you’ve seen what the opposite of what that looks like, and how hopeless it can feel.
This might be the most I’ve ever appreciated a Spurs team, even as someone who was there for all five championships. I didn’t have this context in 1999. Suddenly, they were on the television, and I had missed most of the struggles prior to 1995.
And these Spurs aren’t just winning. They’re thrashing a championship roster. They’re going toe-to-toe with a team that’s every bit as deep and brimming with assets, and that already made it over the hump, and they’re doing it through injuries, and adjustments, and spurts of officiating so questionable that fans from other regions of NBA Twitter/the media have united over it.
They’re on the cusp of greatness. It happened so fast, and so agonizingly slowly, like the accruing defeats and eventual victory of potty-training one’s children. I don’t wanna go back, but I can’t exactly forget the journey either.
I watched the Spurs play perfectly balanced basketball last night with the satisfaction of Thanos wiping out half a planet in service of his vision of the greater good. You could see the desire in their faces, like you do when a good boxer pulls himself up off the mat.
Every increment we’ve watched so far, they’ve lived. You could see it in the way that Devin Vassell stuck doggedly with his man, and the extra effort that Keldon Johnson made to avoid being a defensive liability, after spending years in no-man’s land and focusing on the little things while other teams and players contended for something that felt more substantial.
You could see it in Julian Champagnie’s focus, as he played at with such ignited fervor that he led the starting lineup in +/- after spending most of the series being targeted by the Thunder on the less-glamorous end, and after years battling his way through the G-league, to the bottom of the roster, to a critical slot spacing the floor for a monk-like Victor Wembanyama, so locked in that he was almost detached in his fury, detonating on Oklahoma City players both inside the paint and outside the arc, until their heads were almost visibly spinning.
You could see it in the old-man voodoo that Harrison Barnes broke out, determined to make the most of his time on the court and his first (and maybe last) legitimate shot at the Finals in a decade, after almost 400 games spent in the basketball purgatory otherwise known as Sacramento.
If there’s a glaring difference between the mentalities of the Spurs and the Thunder, it’s that one of these teams is still coming from a place of struggle. The pain of losing is still fresh and real and far too close for comfort — for the players, for the staff, for the fans.
Outside of the tracking map on her website, the only other record of Kelsey Pfendler’s journey are the short daily videos she posts as updates (and, I suspect, proof of life).
On the 6th day of her journey, she encountered incoming rough-weather conditions. Though her small boat is built to self-right in the event of capsizing, she spent part of the day securing items to the tiny vessel and charging her solar batteries.
I can only imagine how frightening it was to continue rowing on the open, endless water cresting in 14-foot waves and storm-force winds, but her video from the 8th day was much more disconcerting.
Still enduring the remnants of undesirable weather in combination with the forceful opposing currents off the coastline of California, she had been rowing with all her might to merely hold her position for over a day, and she was near tears in a mixture of physical exhaustion and sleep deprivation.
But then, near the end of the two minutes of explanation, she visibly rallied. Having rowed this route once before, in a team of 4, she had known what she was getting herself into. She had known how hard this would be, she said, and then she focused on how close she was to finally turning fully west and hitting the trade winds and currents that would assist her in the length of her journey.
She wasn’t focused on the remaining distance or how early she was in her journey, just that (what she believed to be) the hardest part was almost over.
And that’s exactly what this whole stretch of seasons has felt like to me. The Spurs are going into Game 7 of the Western Conference Finals. Win or lose, they’ve finally turned the corner westward, and though a considerable distance is still stretching out before them, the currents and winds are friendlier than they’ve been in a long, long time.
There have been so many days where it felt like the Spurs were fighting to just hold position, both in the past and in the current series from Game 2 onward. Maybe that’s why I couldn’t stop watching.
I’ve always argued that much of the interest in sports revolves around its imitation of life, and the way it rewards hard work in opposition to reality. But perhaps it’s just that it’s easier to access optimism in that arena.
Live is long and full of so much losing, and sometimes it feels like we’re all just fighting to reach the trade winds.
The Spurs and Kelsey Pfendler are both finally there, and we get to rejoice with them. Maybe it’s always been about the rejoicing.
One way or another, the Spurs are almost through the storm. Strap everything down. Prepare for the worst. But we’re all going to end up on the other side of it, and there’s still plenty of ocean to cross when it’s over.
It’s just nice to know that the current is finally flowing with us. However it goes, there’s comfort to be found in that.
Takeways
- After having difficulty finding a groove against the Thunder big men, Luke Kornet had his best game of the series, and it allowed San Antonio’s bench to both build and help hold their 20-point lead over OKC. While some of his ineffectiveness in the series was due to the difference between what he and Thunder players were being allowed in the paint, it was good to see him rise above it in such a critical game. He only tallied 3 points, but he diverted far more shots than his block count would suggest, and then threw down a dunk in the fourth quarter that felt like a spiritual game-ender. And though rebounds have been hard to come by, he made the most of his 13 minutes by bringing down five of them, two very critically on the offensive end. If this version of Kornet shows up in Game 7, I’d put all the money on the Spurs to win it, because the Thunder had a hell of a time making any headway against it.
- This game would not have been a blowout without Dylan Harper summoning his best, as he was an absolute nightmare for the Thunder to contain. I get that same sense of abject unfairness in watching bench players trying to deal with him that I used to get when peak Manu Ginobili got unleashed against 2nd stringers trying to make a name for themselves in the league. I don’t know how long Harper will play from the bench. He seems like he’s on too stratospheric a course for it to last too much longer, but what’s scary is the ease with which he’s dissecting championship-level defenses. He’s been playing through hamstring issues since the last series, and any lack of explosiveness hardly seems to matter because he just sees space differently than other players and/or creates it to the point that he just glides right through it. I have no idea what this kid’s ceiling is, but he’s breaking into/approaching some freaky territory for a rookie guard, and any time you’re in the same company as Magic Johnson, Manu, and Tony Parker, the future is bright beyond belief.
- I haven’t talked a whole lot about the third-stringers this postseason, seeing as they really haven’t gotten a lot of play unless it’s in a blowout, but that unit really decided to secure the lead last night, closing it out with a sequence of passing that I had no idea they were even capable of, and have sadly been unable to find in video form. I’m sure the Spurs will tighten up this part of the bench in the off-season, with Bismack Biyombo and Mason Plumlee both visibly past their expiration date, but I think we have a tendency to view everything through the lens of talent, and neglect how important certain personalities are to the success of a roster. There’s no negativety or resentment brewing at the end of the bench, and these guys deserve praise for being so wholesome in that way, and always ready to play (or, much more often, not play) without a hint of complaint. It’s certainly worth remembering and throwing a little praise their way.
- Lastly, in the event that this is the end of the season, I’d just like to thank you all for reading and engaging and bringing what you bring to the table. For a comparatively small market, we’re still towering amongst our peers in the blogosphere, and that’s down to the quality of the people who read and interact with our work. In the event that this goes sideways (*knock on wood*), I trust my colleague Charlie to ease us into the offseason in his characteristic style. But if not, I’ll see y’all back here for my first-ever Finals WWLs! I’ve run my best lap, and I’m passing on the baton. Here’s hoping Wemby’s (and Charlie’s) anchor leg gets there. In the meantime, we’ll all just keep paddling.
Playing You Out – The Theme Song of the Evening:
Currents by Eisley
