Season 48, Game 56
Utah 90, San Antonio 81
34-22, 7th in the West

In a vacuum, this loss isn’t quite as bad as it first appears. Utah is actually a very talented young team with a good defense and elite rim protection. They completely whupped the Blazers a few nights ago, which is no easy feat. They are young, well-coached, and play hard. On any given night, they can beat any team in the NBA.

But given the context, this is a pretty dispiriting loss. Coming off two straight losses with two days off to regroup and game plan, more was to be expected from the Spurs. Despite all the attributes previously ascribed the Jazz, this is still the Spurs we’re talking about, on the fabled Rodeo Road Trip, the team that has a record 17-straight seasons with a winning record on the road. It’s time to turn the corner and become the Spurs we all know and love.

Instead, it appears they turned the wrong way in this game.

This was such a tough loss on so many fronts. Parker continued to struggle, erasing all memories of that game against the Clippers. In the two games since he’s scored 7 points TOTAL on 2-13 shooting with 10 assists and 6 turnovers. Everything about that sentence is shocking. Meanwhile, opposing PGs are either shutting him down on defense, torching him on offense, or both.

The starters just have no cohesion right now, and are miles away from ‘the beautiful game’ we all witnessed last year. Too much stagnation, too much standing around watching other players try to do it alone.

He can shut down Kevin Durant and LeBron James, but apparently Gordon Hayward is Kawhi’s kryptonite. Kawhi seems a step slow on defense and really out of sorts on offense. It seemed like he was on the precipice or really taking a huge step offensively; instead, it appears as if there are significant growing pains left to be had. (A shooting slump doesn’t help.)

The team is giving up way too many turnovers, and they all seem to be the stupid kind AND the kind that lead to easy, crowd-energizing fast break points. In general, the team has been very careless with the ball this season, partly because the offense is all out of whack and the ball and player movement just isn’t right. So lots of passes are off by an inch, or the cuts are a second late or early, and the ball ends up in the hands of a streaking guard heading the other direction instead of in the corner for a wide-open 3.

When we do get those wide open 3s, we’re missing a lot more of them than last year. Sometimes it’s as simple as the old adage: it’s a make or miss league. All the beautiful offense in the world (and there has still been some this year, if not enough) won’t matter if the shooters don’t his shots. Most every player on the team has a lower shooting percentage than last season.

The team also continued its trend of mystifyingly missing as many FTs as possible.

To make matters worse, the team next heads to Portland, their personal house of horrors. Much like the loss to the Clippers, tonight’s loss is doubly damaging because Wednesday night’s game is as certain a loss as the Spurs have (much like Friday’s game against Golden State). Tonight was supposed to be the “easy” win on this leg of the road trip, the ‘turn around’ game. That will be even harder in Portland, and a 4th straight loss seems more likely than snapping the 3-game losing skid.

The bright side: whatever it is the team is searching for, whatever is missing, it’s there. It’s attainable. We’ve seen the team we all keep expecting to show up, and it wasn’t that long ago. Maybe the mileage and the age and whatever else you want to say finally caught up to them, but this isn’t a team struggling to reach something that it’s not even sure exists. We know it exists. That “perfect” Spurs’ basketball is out there, and its been played by this cast of characters. There’s no reason to stop hoping; nothing’s fundamentally changed.

Also on the bright side: it would take a significant collapse for the Spurs to not make the playoffs. OKC is without Durant for an unknown period of time, Phoenix completely blew up their roster, and New Orleans is without Davis for an unknown period of time. After the road trip, the Spurs have a majority of their remaining games at home. While the last 3 losses have taken them a bit out of the hunt for the 3-6 seed, they are still firmly in control for the 7-seed, which might be a fine place for them.

These are dark days for Spurs fans, but it’s not all black. There’s still plenty of silver in there. No matter how much tonight’s loss sucked.

(And it sucked bad.)