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The Cavaliers beat the Spurs 130-117 on December 5, just before the Spurs started their 8 game1 winning streak, and while the Spurs were playing well above expectations with Wemanyama out of the lineup, they hadn’t quite declared themselves as Western Conference contenders yet. That winning steak ended on Saturday night as a sharpshooting Utah Jazz took advantage of a lackadaisical effort from the home team on a getback game after a road trip, and easily repelled a one-sided comeback attempt from the home team. As it turns out, if you want to erase a deficit late, you need to score points, but you also need to limit the opponent’s opportunities to score, and without getting stops, the Spurs’ comeback fell over like a soggy tortilla chip in two day old nachos.
The Spurs will have to pay better attention to detail tonight, and not allow the opponent so many open three point shots. The Cavs only hit 8-26 from the 3-point line in the previous game, but they dominated the paint with Donovan Mitchell leading the way. De’Aaron Fox, who was out for the Jazz game is listed as questionable for tonight’s game, and his return could provide some stability to the home team, even if he’s on a minutes restriction. Stephon Castle is having a great year, but the team sometimes struggles on offense as the lead guard. He’s probably going to be an elite point guard in a couple of years, but he’s not quite there yet early in his sophomore year, as he still sometimes barrels into a crown in the paint without a plan. It often works out, but sometimes it doesn’t.
The Spurs should be more focused tonight than they were a few days ago against the Jazz. Whether or not that results in a will depends on if the attention to detail is there, and that’s going to be a good measure of how well Mitch Johnson has prepared his team to handle the stress of a long NBA season. The season is long, and even good teams occasionally have bad games. The measure of a team being really good is whether they can respond to adversity and follow up those games with better efforts. Let’s watch and see if the Spurs can come back with a solid win and keep pressure on the Thunder. Let’s GOOO Spurs!!!!
- As officially counted by the NBA. [This footnote will be retired after this game.]
Game Prediction:
Dylan Harper will outscore Donovan Mitchell and will score at least one spectacular dunk on the Spida.
San Antonio Spurs vs Cleveland Cavaliers
December 29, 2025 | 7:00 PM CT
Streaming: Peacock
TV: ABC/Peacock
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