Season 50, Game 18
San Antonio 83, Orlando 95
14-4, 2nd in the West

As far as turd games go, that was about as shitty as it gets.

There is sure to be some recency bias here, but I can’t remember a more lifeless Spurs performance. It was certainly the worst performance of the season. The team posted a season high in turnovers, a season low in points, and a season low in overall shooting percentage.

This “trend” of playing poorly at home is no longer funny. (Not that it was ever “ha ha” funny, but it was curious.) After losing all of one game at home last season, they’ve already lost four this year. They look more lethargic, more discombobulated, and less connected at home than they do on the road. They play with no force; they don’t play for each other. Against the Magic Tuesday night, they had the air of a team that expected to lose and couldn’t be bothered to try and change it.

And Orlando was just dying to lose this game. They’ve been one of the bigger disappointments in this early NBA season, with one of the absolute worst offenses in the league. They only scored 16 points in the 1st quarter. The game was there for the Spurs.

But they did absolutely nothing on offense. They refused to attack the paint. They passed the ball, but never to any advantage. They played a lot of one-on-one, often leading to contested long jumpers. As Sean Elliott said on the broadcast, there were “a lot of passes and cuts going nowhere”. The end result was that the Magic looked like the 2004 Detroit Pistons. (Spoiler alert: they’re not.)

Defensively, the Spurs also stunk up the joint. In the next two quarters, the Magic scored 59 points. To be certain, they were hitting shots that they might not normally make. But when you give little resistance, a team starts to get confident, and shots start falling. To begin the 3rd quarter, the Magic got two wide open dunks in half court sets from poor Spurs’ miscommunication. For most of the quarter they were able to create mismatches simply by having a big set a simple pick up high and forcing the Spurs into a mismatch. The Spurs took the path of least resistance on defense and paid for it.

Parker had perhaps his worst game of the season. When critics talk of him being ‘done’, games like these are why. He couldn’t run the offense, couldn’t guard anybody, and couldn’t make a shot (he was 0-for-6). He was worthless on the floor.

Mills wasn’t much better. Nor was anybody else on the second unit. Even as the Magic struggled to really put the game away (as will happen with poor offenses), the Spurs could not make a dent in the lead because they could not score the ball. Pop tried everybody, and nobody had it.

If we’re looking for a bright spot, Dewayne Dedmon played effectively in his return to the court. That’s all I’ve got. Dedmon is a role player who functions best playing off of other players, though. When those other players fail to produce, Dedmon will not elevate the team.

Every NBA season has a few stinkers in it. It’s unreasonable to expect 82 games of consistent effort and excellence. This was a bad stinker, though. Coming off of nine straight wins and a three-game road sweep, you expect more from the team at home, especially after two full days off. Early season home games against the bottom of the East is where you pad your record, to give yourself some cushion when you’re fighting the elite of the league late in the season.

It’s easy to write off one bad game, but remember two seasons ago, one loss made the difference between the #2 and the #6 seed, and might’ve cost the Spurs the shot at a sixth title.

Every game counts.

And with that, let’s wash away the memory of this game and agree to never talk about it again. (Unless the Spurs continue to stink it up at home, in which case this game will be an easy reference point.)

In a weird statistical quirk, there were six NBA games tonight, and in each game, the team with the worse record won. So maybe it was just a quirk of fate. (Plus, the Clippers lost in Double OT to the Nets, and it’s always a good night when the Clippers lose.)

In good news, the Spurs face the Magic in Orlando in February, so that will probably be a win. And they play 4 of the next 5 on the road, so we won’t have to worry much about these home woes until mid-December.

The Spurs play the Mavericks in Dallas tonight.

Go Spurs Go.