What We Learned from the Spurs loss to the Suns

I was recently given a little attitude about the relatively sunny outlook I’ve been injecting into my little Post Game Roundups on here. I get it! Optimism and positivity are specific flavors that really do the trick for some people and can end up tasting like soap for others. Not a problem. Let’s go negative for a bit and see how it feels, eh? Join me!

The Spurs are trash. They’ve been trash for a few years, they’re trash now, and they have just north of a zero percent chance of not being trash in the future. It’s time we faced facts out here, my friends. We are fans of a bad basketball team. We’re those people now. Wise up!

A lot of people out there will want to make excuses for this loss and, let me tell you right now, those people are blind to the truth. Oh, are the suns one of the best teams in the league? Maybe. Why does that matter? They were on the second night of a back to back and the Spurs were up double digits on them in the third quarter. They still couldn’t close the deal. If you hold a lead like that in the NBA you need to finish with a win 100% of the time. This is a fact.

The reason the Suns were able to sleep walk through their visit to San Antonio and still come away with the victory is because none of the players on our team are any good. Maybe that sounds harsh but it’s something we all need to come to grips with. Some of you nerds seem to think Dejounte Murray deserves to be on the All-Star team. The All-Star team? That team that’s made up entirely of Stars? I believe Dejounte is missing a pretty crucial part of the criteria there. I can think of ten guys off the top of my head better than this guy, the 36 year old grandpa in a Suns jersey who roasted Murray down the stretch being one of them.

What’s even worse is that, out of our terrible players, Dejounte is the best one! The team completely falls to pieces without him. Derrick White regularly forgets how to shoot the ball. Jakob Poeltl looks winded after every possession. Devin Vassell is years away from being a decent role player. Lonnie Walker is working on his fourth different “breakout” year. Anybody else? Oh, sorry, I forgot we had a Gold Medalist in Keldon Johnson on the roster. Excuse me while I go roll my eyes in the corner.

I’d say we should trade the whole lot, but who would even want these guys? Maybe we could get some “valuable” 2nd round picks and then we could restock on on role players with “tons of upside.” Yay. The brain trust that built the Spurs teams of yesteryear are still sitting around in their offices gathering dust and coasting on their past success while the rest of the league is out there passing us by. People still blindly think the Spurs draft well because they found Manu back in, literally, a different century. Give me a break.

Gregg Popovich. I just...I know he deserves our respect but, also, does he? I mean, what has Gregg Popovich ever really done for us besides stand on the sideline while Tim Duncan put on a Spurs jersey for 19 years. We all laugh every time he makes that “joke” but I’m starting to feel like the joke is on us. I know how this is going to play out. We’re going to keep trotting him out there year after year because he has everyone convinced he’s some mystical basketball sage who can magically nurture these young nobodies into a team that can actually contend someday. By the time we realize the mistake we’ve made, a decade will have flown by and we’re going to be back to square one.

What does square one look like? Well. We’re a small market team with limited resources in a town that other NBA players regularly make fun of on social media. Maybe we’ll get the first pick in the draft again someday. Cool. How’s that working out for people? Zion wants to leave New Orleans. Ben Simmons wants to leave Philly. Markelle Fultz did leave Philly. Andrew Wiggins got traded. Anthony Bennett Washed out. Anthony Davis Left for a big market. Kyrie left for a big market. I can keep going down the list of #1 picks if you want but, spoiler alert, It’s a lot of “left his original team without winning a championship.”

So, sure. The Spurs could tank, but what good would that even do? We’re doomed to play mediocre basketball for the foreseeable future. The pandemic is never going to end. The earth is getting hotter. The bees are going extinct. No one seems to be able to make a good Star Wars movie anymore. It’s just bad news all the way down, folks. So maybe cool it with all your optimism. It doesn’t do anyone any good.

You’ll have a way better time over here in the real world anyway. It may be dark, but at least we aren’t getting burned.

Takeaways:

• It didn’t even look like Devin Booker was trying as he cruised out to get his 48 points last night. The Spurs have no answer for someone like him who is just a pure scorer. I don’t know why we even bother showing up for games like this. Just save everyone some time, put a mark in the L column, and move on.
• I can’t believe Jakob Poeltl was our leading scorer last night. Some people seem to think being a huge fan of Jakob Poeltl is cool and let me tell you right now that it isn’t. It’s embarrassing. The only reason he’s even considered a top 5 center in the NBA is because the position has become so irrelevant that there might only be 5 centers left in the NBA. If Jakob is leading your team in scoring then you should probably just have to shut your team down for a few days and seriously think about whether or not you want to keep playing basketball anymore.
• Remember when the Spurs used to run through the regular season racking up historic win tallies in part because our bench units were just always better than everyone else’s bench units? Well, this is the opposite of that. This bench unit would be more useful if we could actually sit on them. I have more confidence in my dog being able to hold an ice cream cone than I do in this group being able to hold a lead.
• The “coolest” thing the Spurs did last night was the Coyote running out and doing a call back to that stupid Devin Booker thing that happened with the Raptor’s mascot. You know, that thing everyone mildly laughed about a couple of days ago and then forgot about? Seems like it really shook Devin up. I have to imagine he would’ve definitely gone for 50 if it wasn’t for the Coyote.

WWL Post Game Press Conference

- Well. That was bleak.

- Things are bleak! I call ‘em as I see ‘em.

- Is that all stuff that you actually believe?

- All of that is stuff that I think. I think it all the time. It is a sentiment that I am constantly worried about whenever things aren’t going particularly well for the Spurs at any given moment. Now, is it stuff that I believe? Not really. I think that’s an important distinction.

- The difference between thinking something and believing something?

- Sure. Thoughts pop in and out of my head all the time. I think a bowl of cereal sounds good right now. I think the Cowboys shouldn’t have run a QB draw with 14 seconds left in the game. I think I should buy a boat and go be a diving instructor down in Aruba. Thoughts are fickle. They come and go. Beliefs are made of sterner stuff.

- So what do you believe about the Spurs?

- I believe the Spurs are on the right path. I believe they’re going to turn the corner. Maybe not this year, maybe not the next, but soon. I believe they’re building something cool, exciting, and good. I believe they’re going to win another championship in the next decade. I believe Jakob Poeltl is the best.

- The best what?

- The Best.