“Can he fly?”
“Who? Wemby?”
“The really tall guy.”
“Yeah, that’s Wemby.”
“Can Wemby fly?”
“No. But it sure looks like it, doesn’t it?”
“I think he can fly.”
Out of the mouth of babes, eh? It’s funny how succinctly and ardently a child can summarize how they feel/what they think about something. For someone who’s used to sitting in front of a keyboard and hoping that words will come, it’s a skill that I envy. Even Hemingway would have strained at matching the marvel of their artless brevity.
There’s a kind
of magic to it. Confined to the limitations of their vocabularies, children choose the words they know because those are the words they have, and compare new things to the things they already know, because that knowledge is all they have obtained.
They inquire about things that fall outside that knowledge base, and accept explanation within the boundaries of their insight, denying all else within reason.
It’s arrogant and innocent, and a constant reminder of how little we all change.
Our knowledge evolves with experience, but our interpretations remain ignorant in the context of the universe at large; we just acquire more words.
And, in all fairness, it really did look like Wemby flew into that block on Portland’s Deni Avdija from out of nowhere.
It was the icing on an enormously appetizing cake. The flourishing signature on a declaration. The coup de grâce to a worthy but ultimately over-matched opponent. And it wasn’t even Victor’s final block of the night.
It just felt like it.
It hadn’t been much of a competitive game. I had wondered, with the Spurs facing their first attempt at closing out a series, how they would respond to the moment. Whether we would get yet another replay of the uneven opening half, characterized by erratic officiating and a Portland team coming out hot, as the Silver and Black lethargically slouched their way towards Bethlehem.
Instead, it felt like someone had fired them right out of a cannon.
First Julian Champagnie took his turn, showering Portland with three-pointers like a rogue trebuchet and creating gaps for Stephon Castle and De’Aaron Fox to barrel their way through.
Then, newly crowned 6th man of the year Keldon Johnson and the almost impossibly smooth Dylan Harper started to get their two-man game going, and suddenly the Spurs were up by 20 points with half of the second quarter still remaining.
It was a lead they would never relinquish. It was, in fact, a lead that was, realistically, only really challenged once, in the final quarter of the game. The Spurs led wire-to-wire. They kept the Trailblazers, who committed only 3 turnovers in the first half, at arms length, like a taller sibling thwarting the attack of a younger sibling with nothing more than superior reach.
Their lowest win probability per ESPN was 82.3%, almost exactly one minute into the game.
At one point they led by as much as 28 points, and as a result they seemed to ease up a bit. In the fourth quarter Portland started hitting their threes, and the lead was cut to 9 points, and there was a real question at to whether or not things had begun to unravel.
And then they just slammed the door shut.
Suddenly Devin Vassell hit a Kobe-esque mid-range jumper to kick it off, and then Castle started flinging the ball through spaces so tight that I like to imagine even Manu Ginobili (who had been present for Keldon’s award ceremony) leaned forward.
Especially on a no-look pass that found Victor Wembanyama for a running dunk through a gap so narrow that you could almost stretch a politician’s sense of shame across it.
“Wow. That was cool”, my daughter opined, startling me as I had failed to notice that her attention had shifted from the tablet playing a popular children’s show to a sport that so far had only captured her in fits and starts.
It really was cool. Sometimes you don’t need to improve on the wording. Sometimes kids just get it right.
Abandoning the tablet, she crawled up onto my chest on the couch, sippy cup in tow, and watched things proceed from the crook of my shoulder. It was our first stretch of playoff basketball together.
And what a stretch it was.
Like a sleeper agent who’d been waiting for the return of the Soviet Union, De’Aaron Fox activated and began scoring seemingly at will, tallying 11 points in less than three minutes.
And Victor Wembanyama? Victor was unassailable.
Anything in arm’s reach was in danger. Hell, anything within several body lengths, really.
The more desperate Portland’s forays into the paint, the more zen he seemed to be. Imperturbable and impenetrable. Indomitable and indefatigable. It was like watching an episode of Shark Week where the predator had smelled the presence of blood in the water.
With less than two minutes left in the game Wemby blocked Toumani Camara’s last desperate stab at the hoop, and then took his leave.
“Wasn’t that cool?”, I said, receiving a chorus of tiny little snores in response. It was very late, after all.
Careful not to move, I watched as Champagnie added one last 23-footer as an insult to injury.
The Spurs had found their killer instinct. They had spent most of the game systematically dismantling the Trailblazers and every last shred of hope they might have left in them.
They’d faced adversity and found another gear, and even more terrifyingly, a different level of belief in themselves. The old Spurs might have strained at Portland’s attempt at a comeback, and pressed too much.
In Game 3, the Spurs unlocked something ferocious and relentless, and they’ve left it unleashed.
Watching the post-game interviews, you didn’t get a sense of relief that you might have gotten from some teams (and fans). There didn’t seem to be anything to be relieved about.
It felt like Stringer Bell from HBO’s ‘The Wire’ telling everyone that it was ‘just business’.
He made it easy to forget that he was a gangster, and so have these Spurs.
It’s funny how time flies. The Spurs just won their first playoff series since 2017. I could have sworn that 2017 was just yesterday. I see Pau Gasol in the crowd and strain at comprehending it. I feel the weight of a four year old slumbering on my chest.
I carry her up the stairs, and tuck her into bed, and move towards the door to go back downstairs and write.
Suddenly, a sleepy little voice.
“Daddy?”
“Yeah, baby?”
“Can we watch more Spurs?”
“Oh yeah, we’re definitely going to get to watch more Spurs.”
Takeaways
- With a playoff scoring average rounding up to just 13 points a game, you’d be forgiven for wondering exactly what Devin Vassell’s value to this team is from time-to-time. Shadowed by the most obvious defensive shutdowns of Wemby and Castle, it’s easy to forget that Vassell has spent most of the season as the third best defender on a team with few glaring weaknesses on that end. Before Wemby shifted into his most dominant form in the second half, it was actually Vassell who was thwarting Portland’s offensive forays, keeping the perimeter as tight as a billionaire’s wallet and taking turns harassing Henderson, Holliday, and Camara (all of whom had a rough night). It’s also nice knowing that he exists as a kind of ‘break in case of emergency’ source of offense for when things get bogged down. He was more obviously critical in Game 3, but Vassell’s cool-headed jumper kicked off San Antonio’s final, crushing offensive surge, and he’s shown up like that seemingly all series. With the obvious exception of Wemby’s concussion-related absence, Vassell’s the only other player to avoid having a bad game in the series, and those previous heated discussions surrounding his contract look to stay a thing of the past. He just makes everything work, and he’s a silent assassin. Emphasis on silent. Emphasis on assassin.
- Speaking of silent, Harrison Barnes’ shot continues to suffer from a bout of terminal laryngitis. He’s shooting 27% from the field, and has yet to hit a single three-pointer. I understand the value of veteran experience and team chemistry, and he’s not getting a ton of minutes, but it might be time to trade off between him and Carter Bryant more. Maybe on a game to game basis? One of the critical differences between the two was supposed to be long-distance shooting, but Barnes is in a drought so bad that even the Texas Water Development Board is starting to assess the situation, and that’s never a good sign. I certainly hope the drought breaks soon, because it’s likely that the Spurs are going to need a deluge from Barnes at some point.
- Julian Champagnie on the other hand is having a polar-opposite kind of run, shooting 62% from downtown and 57% from the field, and for all of the Blazer’s efforts (much like with Fox) they just could not contain him for the long run. We talk an awful lot about the importance of off-ball movement here at PTR, but Champagnie’s borders on teleportation, as he always seems to materialize in open space at exactly the right moment, and right now he’s so hot that it’s truly reminiscent of Danny Green back in 2013. If Luke Kornet’s contract is a borderline miraculous expression of value (and it absolutely is), then Champagnie’s is climbing the list of most valuable contracts in Spurs history. That he was either 3rd or 4th on the team in defensive rating (depending on the site) and 2nd in Defensive Win Shares is just a bonus at this point. I hope the Spurs make a move this off-season that keeps him in San Antonio for a long, long time.
Playing You Out – The Theme Song of the Evening:
Come Fly With Me by Frank Sinatra
