Season 48, Game 33
Memphis 95, San Antonio 87
19-14, 7th in the West
This team is worn down.
Short-handed and worn down. It’s one thing to play 18 games in a month, with 7 back-to-backs, with a good chunk of those games coming against the top teams in the West. That is a tough task. It’s another thing entirely to play that schedule without Tony Parker, Kawhi Leonard, and (mostly) Patty Mills. You know, 3 of the 8 most important players from last year’s title team.
A stretch like this has a cumulative effect. A day off is nice, but this team needs a week off. December can’t end soon enough.
The effort was there tonight, but the execution and the necessary energy just couldn’t be mustered. This game felt out of reach from the beginning. Even when the team climbed to within 3 in the 4th quarter, it never felt like they would ever get back in it. It was just one of those games. There was never a stretch of really great play, no line-up that just clicked, no momentum-swinging shots, no great defensive stops. Just a long slog towards a loss against a very good team.
Every crack of daylight was quickly snuffed out by Memphis. Those momentum swinging shots? All Memphis. Big steals? Memphis. The Spurs were 5 of 22 from 3 tonight. Marco was 4 of 7; the rest of the team 1 of 15. Yikes. If even 2 or 3 of those 14 misses goes in, perhaps this is a game. But like I said, it was one of those games, the game where all of those shots miss.
This stretch in the month of December without Tony and Kawhi is more about survival. But with each mounting loss and each tiny slip away from the top of the West, the Spurs’ margins for error are vanishing. When the team is used to gearing up and tightening up in March and April, they will be scrambling and fighting for playoff position. Pop preaches health, but now they must enter the playoffs healthy, because it will be their only reasonable chance at an advantage. Winnable games against the East now turn into must-wins. Finding rhythm is not a luxury, it’s a necessity.
A team that is the most stable in the league must rediscover its identity.
It seems crazy to think that this would be the issue for a defending champion returning its entire roster. But the Spurs have found no consistency this year. They have started at least 23 different line-ups in 33 games. Mishmash lineups abound. Pop is looking for anything that will work, if even for a quarter.
But lest we worry too much about that falling sky, let’s remember that we have an All-NBA PG and last year’s Finals MVP (with two Finals MVPs between them) returning, one the lynchpin to our offense, the other the lynchpin (probably more like co-lynchpin) to our defense. The team will be fine.
There will just be no margin for error in the punishing Western Conference.
