Momentum is a funny word. It has an odd history within language, and there’s still some academic disagreement about precisely when we began using it in a scientific capacity.
As early as 530 AD, we have
documented arguments about the concept, as John Philoponus (a philosopher and theologian from Roman-held Egypt) wrote a commentary apposing Aristotle’s concept of physics, arguing that an impetus was imparted to any object in the act of throwing it, essentially predicting the scientific concept of inertia.
It wasn’t until the late 1600’s and early 1700’s that the word really started to see academic use though, as English mathematicians John Wallis, John Jennings, and Isaac Newton formalized mathematical theories and laws using the word momentum as a scientific term.
That it took so long to come to a consensus on the word is fascinating. It had existed in Latin since at least 75 BC (and possibly earlier as ‘mowementom’ in Proto-Italic), and yet it took almost 1800 years to make its way into the common lexicon.
I mean, just about the entire Roman Empire spoke Latin at one point, and yet it took that long. It defies logic, or at least some degree of mathematical probability.
The root of the issue, I think, comes from its linguistic doublets, the words ‘moment’ and ‘movement’.
It makes sense in a practical sort of way. Why use momentum to describe motion when you already have movement? Why use it to describe a space of time when you already have moment?
But that’s the thing about momentum, it’s not really a static term, it contains multitudes.
You could use it to describe the way that the Spurs looked by the end of the first quarter, as the Hawks began to surge their way to a lead that looked like it would stretch to double digits based on the way that Spurs players were unable to so much as buy a shot.
You could also use it to describe the way that the Spurs suddenly found their form in the minutes after their two-way wonder David Jones Garcia took the court, as he, Keldon Johnson, and former two-way standout Julian Champagnie began to take it to a Hawks team in shock at the aggression of San Antonio’s bench players.
You could even it to describe the way the once-animated home crowd began to react to the kind of third-quarter swoon they’ve grown to fear most from the Silver and Black in a post-Big-Three world.
There’s something in the word that carries a kind of tension, an elasticity of expectation and force. It’s not just that the word is describing movement, but also the cessation of it, that imbues the word with qualities of both hope and fear.
And hope and fear cover basically the entire spectrum of emotion you can feel as a sports fan watching your favorite team. It’s not just the height of drama, but the glimmering shard of reality that pierces the human heart.
If we’re honest, our lives are themselves filled with the echoes of those same hopes and fears, acted out in proxy on a hardwood court teeming with the dreams of youth and the weight of experience.
We crave their victory out of a desire to be associated with it in some small way. We grieve their losses because they feel personal to us in the same way.
It’s an unspoken property of momentum that one good thing happening to you begets either the feeling of more to come, or the anxiety of the opposite. A win can make the next day feel better in a way that’s hard to quantify.
I should know, since I’ve mostly been writing about losses for years. It’s a nice change of pace. And yet, it stirs within me an awareness of the brevity of it all. It’s easy to forget that Spurs fans experienced two-plus decades of victory in a manner that remains unmatched in the modern era of the NBA.
This moment could end, and quickly, before it even really begins. And there are injuries and absences that remind us of that even in victory.
But that’s the great thing about momentum: it’s not constrained to just a moment in time. There is, in actuality, no limit to the word, only the idea that there is one.
It’s a concept that can bind itself to time for longer than a blink and less than a millennia. Momentum is both as eternal and as brief as our belief in it.
Aristotle believed that momentum (as he conceived it) was an unseen inner force that propelled living beings through both life and time itself. Something inner and intangible tied to very nature of living that carried us through the highs and lows.
Watching Julian Champagnie finally levitate into the kind of dunk that he’s been trying to lay down for years, I couldn’t help but agree.
Again, and again, and again he had tried, in spite of blocks and misses, a vertical that would make Bill Laimbeer blush, and a handle that falls well short of league average.
Something within him had moved him to pursue it – to chase that moment in spite of defeat and embarrassment. And the moment that he did it, even with six minutes left in the game, it felt like a nail in the coffin. That’s momentum for you, crystallized into a single highlight, but carrying itself to end of the contest, and beyond.
I don’t know what the future will bring, for myself or the Spurs. But I know that they keep winning games that they shouldn’t, with players they shouldn’t, without players they need. And for the first time in a long time, that feels like momentum.
Here’s to hoping it never ends. Cheers.
Takeaways
- I’d be the first to agree that Mitch Johnson’s coaching has been a little uneven over the past few weeks. He hasn’t been calling what feel like obvious challenges, he hasn’t gone off about foul disparity, he’s sometimes used too many players, or played some players too much, and generally been hard to predict when it comes to minutes allocation in general. But boy was he all over it in this one, making the right substitutions at seemingly the perfect times, and calling timeouts at precisely the right moments of positive and negative momentum. That this team just keep rolling on regardless of who gets snake-bitten is a tribute to how quickly he’s catching on and adapting. It reminds me a little bit of Erik Spoelstra’s first season taking over for the legendary Par Riley. San Antonio might really have themselves a coach here.
- While I’ve already given Champagnie his flowers for the game, I really want to take a moment to praise all of San Antonio’s wing shooters, who (in spite of some streakiness) have really just been interchangeably effective from long-distance. It may shock some to know this, but the Spurs are actually 7th in the NBA in three-pointers made and 9th in percentage over the last five games, and that’s with Wemby missing some games. There’s no way they’d be winning these games without these shooters stepping up and knocking it down. It’ll be interesting to see if they can keep this up for the rest of the season.
- To that end, how amazing has Harrison Barnes been? While most of the rotation has had their shooting streaks and droughts/off-games, Barnes has been reliably clutch, scoring a good share of his points over the last several game in the fourth quarter. Between his shooting and his defense, I remain flabbergasted that Sacramento paid the Spurs to take him off their hands! I mean, the Kings are gonna Kings, and he has been playing a little better in San Antonio, but the point stands. They didn’t even get 2nd round picks for him!
- I also need to note that as a frequent critic of Devin Vassell lately, I’ve been very impressed by how well he’s been playing on the defensive end. I honestly think he might be playing his best ball on that end of the court, and while he was touted for it in draft, we’ve only seen flashes of this in the past. If he’s able to turn it up just a little more on the offensive end without losing that form, this team will be nigh impossible to beat once Wemby and Co. are healthy. It’s a close contest between him and Barnes for best wing defender on the team right now, and that’s a big deal.
Playing You Out – The Theme Song of the Evening:
Gaining Momentum by MC Hammer
