Season 48, Game 82
San Antonio 103, New Orleans 108
55-27, 6th in the West

That was about as bad of an end to the regular season as was possible.

First off, though, congratulations to the New Orleans Pelicans for winning the game and making it into the playoffs. The 8-seed wasn’t given to them; they took it. At the top of the game I was most interested to see how the Pelicans might handle the pressure of a true playoff atmosphere and a “Win or go home” scenario. Would the pressure get to them? Would they play tight?

Instead, it was the Spurs who looked like the playoff neophytes cracking under the pressure. They could barely complete a bounce pass without it flying out of bounds or (worse) into the hands of a Pelican player streaking the other way. They couldn’t get stops, and when they did, they couldn’t get rebounds. New Orleans won this game early, and San Antonio didn’t have it in them to make a comeback.

To be fair, the Pelicans always play us tough. Remember, the only game we won against them this season was that OT game where Duncan had the crazy tip in off the lob pass from out of bounds at the buzzer. Remember that? It was wild. That’s what it took for the Spurs to beat New Orleans this year. This team is just a horrible match-up for us for whatever reason.

And while the game certainly meant something to the Spurs, it clearly meant more to New Orleans. Sometimes it’s as simple as that: a great seed was on the line for San Antonio, but a shot at the playoffs, possible job security, and so much more was at stake for New Orleans. So we can write it off to that. The Spurs still get in, and we can still say that no team is hotter over the last two months.

But this game left a bad taste in my mouth for a few reasons.

After a sizzling stretch of games, the Spurs haven’t been as sharp over the last 3. They won a tight one in Houston that had a playoff vibe, but it was a weird and disjointed game and lacked the beauty that the Spurs had been winning with; they seemed to sleepwalk their way through a win against Phoenix, only waking to put it away in the 4th quarter (by comparison, the Clippers killed Phoenix in Phoenix only a few nights later); then, tonight, in what could very well have been a playoff tune-up, the team was really out of sync and lacking in execution and rhythm.

Funny enough, the same thing happened last year. Nobody remembers this because we’ve rewritten the entire season to reflect how we destroyed the Heat. By the end of the regular season, the Spurs were so locked into the top seed, they rested players and sort of took their foot off the gas. The last few weeks of the season were pretty mediocre. Then they found themselves in a battle in the first round, and it took 6 games before they became the team we all romanticize. My fear is that we’re hitting another lull, only this season we don’t have the advantage of home court and an 8-seed to ease our way back in.

Which brings us back to tonight: the worst case scenario.

A win and we’re the 2-seed. Nope. Well, if Houston and Memphis both lose, we’re the 3-seed. Nope. OK, but if Memphis loses, we’re the 5-seed and at least get home court in the first round against Portland. Nope. (Hell, all we needed was Portland to play its starters on Monday against OKC to possibly make this game irrelevant for New Orleans tonight, or for Houston to lose just one more game. Or for the Spurs to have won one more game, but then we start thinking about OT losses to the Knicks and the Lakers and we might never get out of bed again.)

Everything goes against us, and we end up back at the 6-seed, facing the sneakily red-hot Clippers in the first round. We finish the season on a tear, posting some outrageous numbers, and all we do is jump one spot in the standings. Being the 6-seed with the Clippers the 3-seed was the one scenario I didn’t want.

We’ll dive deeper into the match-up in our series preview, but the Clippers are going to be tough. By most advanced statistics, the Warriors, Clippers, and Spurs have been the 3 best teams in the league over the last several weeks. Now two of them are playing in the first round. Only a handful of teams have legitimate Title aspirations, organizations built to win it all with no alternative. Now two of them are playing in the first round.

It all could have been avoided so many ways.

I’ll take a day or two to rue the end of the regular season, then I’ll start looking forward. The path to repeating is insanely difficult. But if we need inspiration, it’s this: the last 6-seed to win it all was the 1995 Houston Rockets, and it was also a back-to-back championship. They were a veteran team that fought through a slog of a regular season and found their groove at just the right time.

Never underestimate the heart of a champion.

Go Spurs Go.