The horn sounded about 30 seconds ago and I’m just typing. Just trying to get it out of my system. Vent the air. The poison. The fury. Whatever it is that’s coursing through my veins at the moment, I want it out and I want it out now.
That was horrible. Man, that was horrible. I’m just so mad about every single turn of the screw that brought game 2 crashing down around us tonight.
I hate that it happened. You know, that thing we were all worried about? The axe swinging so delicately over our heads
all season dropped in maybe the least dramatic way possible. Jrue Holiday simply stepping aside and Victor crashing to the floor unceremoniously. I don’t know what the prognosis is. I don’t know when he’ll be back. I just know that he was there and then he was gone and it felt like all the air was sucked out of my lungs.
I hate the refs, who were obviously biased and conspiring against us. I hate every non-Tiago Splitter member of the Blazers organization, who are all obviously bad actors with ill intentions. I hate fouling up three. I hate injuries. I hate the Oklahoma City Thunder, who are probably sitting up there laughing at this cute little crash out we’re all having during our first foray back into the playoffs. They’re probably smugly thinking that after a whole season of people talking up the Spurs, it’s the highest of comedy to see us fall on our faces now that we’re here.
I hate that they’re probably right.
I hate that the crowd never got their payoff. Victor went down and every single person in that building took a deep breath and just kept rocking. They stayed loud. They kept chanting. They refused to fold. I saw them rise as one in the fourth, right after Portland retook the lead, putting every ounce of their power into willing the Spurs back out in front. I stood up too. I freaked out my dogs. I was ready to believe.
I hate that we turned it over on that possession.
I hate that the boys didn’t pull this off. Unlike me, they never got scared. They never shrank from the moment. They didn’t sit on their couch after Wemby went down, nurse a warm Miller Lite, and hyperventilate. No, they continued to grind out there. They traded punches. They battled. They put in the work to distract us from that gaping 7’4″ wound in our side and they damn near pulled it off. It was amazing to watch. My heart bleeds for them. I want to sing songs about this performance. I want to burn the Frost Bank Center in effigy. I want to rename both of my daughters after Luke Kornet.
I hate that it simply wasn’t enough. They fought and they scrapped and they clawed and it wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t enough. It was right there.
I hate it.
I’m sitting here at 9:53 P.M. on Tuesday night, my hands are shaking. My head is buzzing. I feel this one deep in my chest.
I just hate it.
So, I’m fine. You’re fine. We’re all fine.
In the cold light of the morning, we’re all….fine.
The opening game of this series felt less like a playoff game and more like a homecoming. The basketball was real, but it almost played second fiddle to everything surrounding it. The color, the noise, the pure relief of being back. We came, we saw, we partied. I felt like I was glowing for two straight days in the aftermath.
Game 2 was a different animal from the very beginning. The crowd wore black. The Spurs were back in their plain white jerseys. Whatever spell the Fiesta colors had cast two nights earlier had worn off and now we were all clocking back in for our Tuesday night shift at the Playoff factory. Stripped of that pomp and circumstance, all that was left was the basketball. Cold, serious, necessary basketball.
To make matters worse, the basketball was bad. Everyone came out flat and disjointed. The Blazers were physical and up for the fight and the Spurs just seemed distracted. Almost annoyed their opponents were even putting up a fight in the first place. Even as they wrestled the lead back by the end of the quarter, something just felt off.
Now, I’m not going to say that Victor getting hurt was a good thing because, you know, even thinking about the ramifications of his injury right now makes me a little queasy. That said, it did serve as a fascinating pivot point for everyone in the building. Basically, it was a bucket of cold water to the face.
All of a sudden, every single one of us was awake. We were no longer tapdancing through some fairytale. Things had gotten very real and you could feel the crowd lock back in. We were invincible, but now we were bleeding. This was a real fight and, more than that, it was a fight we might actually lose.
There was every reason for this team to fall apart and try to pick up the pieces later. I was waiting for it. Looking for signs that this tight-knit group, this lovable band of young guys facing their first real test, might finally blink at a challenge. I came up empty.
Before Game 1, they showed a video of Keldon Johnson bouncing through the halls of the arena with a boombox over his shoulder, loudly proclaiming “It’s ok to be nervous, but it ain’t ok to be scared.” Watching this team play the final three quarters without their best player, I kept coming back to that. Nobody got scared. Not once. They came up short last night, but they never stopped fighting.
I’m sure we all had some version of the story written in our head about how this team would sweep into the playoffs on the heels of Victor’s otherworldly powers and effortlessly ascend to the top of the mountain. This team was blessed with divine purpose and, surely, nothing would stand in our way.
So, yea. That’s out the window now, isn’t it?
Before anything bad happened on Tuesday night, Wembanyama was asked if he felt the weight of the moment the Spurs find themselves in. He mused, “I wouldn’t say weight. I would say it feels safe. It feels like if you trip, there’s a lot of hands that are ready to catch you. From Day 1, it’s felt that way.”
I love this quote. It’s an all timer.It somehow tugs at every little thing that feels special about being a Spurs fan. We’re all lucky enough to be a part of this legacy, this community, this culture. This is our home. This is por vida.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned from our decade out in the wilderness, it’s that por vida doesn’t mean you just show up for the party. You show up when it’s hard. You go until you can’t go, and then you go some more.
Our boys have been well and truly knocked off the easy path. They’ve tripped.
Are you ready to catch them?
Takeaways
- I think the Spurs will be better prepared to play without Wembanyama on Friday than they were Tuesday night. Watch that 13-0 run to open the fourth quarter and tell me this team can’t function without him. They clearly can. The, ahem, little detail where they blew the 14 point lead never really felt like a talent problem, it felt like an energy problem. A giant hole got blown in the boat and everyone had spent the rest of the night frantically bailing water while simultaneously insisting everything was fine. It was valiant and necessary, but unsustainable. Castle’s 7-of-20 shooting night and Fox going 1-of-6 in the fourth weren’t indictments of their ability, they were symptoms of an offense that had lost its anchor and never quite found its footing again. A few days to collect their thoughts, draw up some sets, and actually prepare for a game without Wemby should go a long way.
- A thing I totally forgot about playoff basketball is that weird feeling where you never give the Portland Trail Blazers more than two seconds of thought during the regular season, and then, all of a sudden, after about two quarters of playoff basketball, these guys are your mortal enemies. I hate them. They’re bad guys and they should feel bad for being so bad. Deni Avdija? Bad guy. Jrue Holiday? Villain. Donovan Clingan? If you lay hands on my sweet boy Luke Kornet one more time, the next thing you’ll be seeing is me in the octagon.
- Scoot Henderson going off like that was, truly, something you hate to see. Not on a personal level. I’m sure Scoot’s fine. But you hate to see an opponent who has spent his first few years not quite living up to his potential suddenly start living up to it while you’re fighting for your life. He punished every drop coverage the Spurs threw at him, drained step-back threes like he’d been doing it all season, and finished with 31 points on 11-of-17 shooting. Hey bud? Go do that somewhere else.
- If I could somehow manage to ethereally float outside my body and think about this game objectively, which I can’t, I’d be sitting here raving about Dylan Harper going toe to toe with Scoot all night. Two extraordinarily physically gifted guards battling it out, draining shots, mean mugging each other. That was electric. What a blessing that would be to watch if I wasn’t having a panic attack at the same time.
WWL Post Game Press Conference
Well, it was your first time writing about a Spurs playoff game. How’d it go? Was it everything you dreamed of?
That was a nightmare. How are you supposed to eloquently channel your emotions about a game into the written word while your house is on fire?
Yeah, that’s kind of the challenge there, isn’t it?
I’m exhausted. I’m drained. I feel like my head got caved in and now I’m supposed to just go about my day like nothing’s wrong? People at my day job are already asking me stuff like “how are you?” and “what’s up, man?” How am I? How AM I? What’s UP? The nerve of these people.
Is it good to be back though?
It’s the absolute best.
