What We Learned from the Spurs Opening Night loss to the Thunder

I don’t think I was ready for the season to start. After that car crash of a series in June where we watched the Spurs’ magical run go up in flames, I just shut everything down. I simply did my best not to think about it.

I tried watching baseball. I tried going outside. It’s not “repressing your feelings” if you’re doing it in a healthy way, right?

And it worked. Mostly. I spent the whole summer without rage baiting myself with clips of the OG’s tip-in or Knicks fans dancing around in our building.

I didn’t watch the draft. I didn’t follow the offseason. I boycotted the most controversial SNL host of the year (Jalen Brunson).

You know, it’s often said that cool guys don’t look back at explosions, but sad boys don’t look at them either. The flames are hot but the heart is chill . I was feeling pretty good about everything, in the sense that I was feeling nothing at all.

The only real downside to this strategy was realizing I maybe took the bit a little too far when Opening Night sort of materialized out of nowhere. Tuesday night? This Tuesday?

No. Really? If the Spurs were playing on Tuesday I would’ve heard about it.

In spite of all my best efforts to ignore the dripping faucet noises coming from down the hall, the reality of my flooded emotional basement was aggressively brought to my attention come tip-off against the Thunder last night. The peaceful calm I had worked all summer to cultivate dissipated in moments.

Hartenstein hit a layup. Shai hit a three. We were already down two points and I wanted to die.

The season was 3 minutes old and I was as miserable now as I was watching another 4th quarter lead against the Knicks disappear in June. Crap. For the first time in my living memory, it was not fun to have the Spurs back in my life.

I wasn’t awash in the glow of anticipation that a new season usually brings. Where I normally would be drooling about the prospects of what could go right, I was instead drowning in the possibilities of what could go wrong. Do I think my bad attitude somehow bled across time and space, infecting the Spurs with terrible energy and leading to a truly putrid first half?

No. No? Yeah, No.

However! Did what I watched eerily reflect the deep, black rot I could feel manifesting itself in my basketball soul? Suspiciously so.

Mitch Johnson said afterward that they came out too amped and put their energy in all the wrong places. Stephon Castle said they were taking the first good shot instead of making Oklahoma City work for it. I know that feeling.

It’s what happens when you spend months pretending you can’t see the monster in the corner, and then when something else walks into the room you just start swinging at whatever. What I’m using entirely too many words and overwrought metaphors to say is...the vibes just feel off. At media day, everything the Spurs said sounded like a team facing it head-on.

Wemby said they weren’t going to hide from any of it. Motivation, accountability. I’d love to imagine that’s all it takes to shake off last June, reload, and go again.

It sounded right. But the Knicks series was a Ray Allen level emotional event, and whatever they did this summer, they didn’t show up Tuesday looking like a team that had made peace with anything. It doesn’t feel fine.

In the second quarter, we were down nine, and De’Aaron Fox threw Chet Holmgren to the floor. Like, full on, WWE tossed him to the ground. I grimly nodded along.

The game was slipping, the shots weren’t falling, and some feral part of me stopped wanting to watch basketball and started wanting to watch a fight. Forget the basketball, let’s just go at it, and whoever is left standing can continue on to play Houston on Friday. It was, frankly, the only moment all night I couldn’t look away from.

Over the next six and a half minutes, they outscored us 22-5. By the time the dust settled it was 59-33. Maybe I’m wrong.

I’ve been guilty of projecting all of my own weird stuff onto a group of guys that are just trying to go out and play some basketball before, and I can assure you I’ll be guilty of it again. But this team seems to me like it has a wound. A deep wound that hasn’t healed yet, and I’m not exactly sure how that’s going to look as the season wears on.

This team isn’t like the 2014 squad, a crew of battle-tested vets who had been through the ringer and knew how to claw their way back. This is everyone’s first time dealing with the pain and heartbreak that comes with coming so close to the ultimate prize, only to have their dreams detonated on the biggest stage imaginable.

Mitch Johnson isn’t Gregg Popovich. Yet. Castle and Harper aren’t Tony and Manu.

Yet. Victor Wembanyama isn’t Tim Duncan. Yet.

There’s no real roadmap for how to fix this. It’s going to be a process and it might look pretty messy for a while. It’s the type of thing that might linger a lot longer than any of us are comfortable with.

Brace yourselves. Time will tell if this group can do that work on the fly, but if we learned anything last night, it’s that whatever broke last June isn’t fixed and everything else is on hold until it is. Takeaways I feel very wrong-footed by the idea that Victor is just sort of reviled on the national stage now.

One minute everyone was on board with us overthrowing the Thunder and then, all of a sudden, it’s sort of just become accepted that he is a villain in the league. It’s been agreed that he’s just embraced this heel turn or whatever and we’re all just kind of along for that ride. I don’t love it.

In fact, I kind of hate it? I know there are reasons. People think he’s arrogant (he is) and people think he’s French (he is) and people think he elbowed Naz Reid in the head (allegedly).

Whatever. Look, nothing matters beyond what we think about him and we think he rules so I guess we’re just rallying around the flag. Seems unfair though!

That said, Wemby, need you to hit a few more shots, brother. One silver lining to the fiasco that was opening night is that the game doesn’t actually count because Tobias Harris wasn’t playing. Enjoy the big fat asterisk on your good vibes, OKC.

Toby’s coming for you! I know it’s just one game, but melting into my seat as three after three got flung up at the basket only to jarringly clang off the rim was dispiriting. The Spurs went 10-for-37 from deep, and Castle accounted for half of those.

I don’t think I can live like that all year. I like the three-guard lineup, and Tuesday is the best evidence I have. Fox, Castle and Harper started the second half together and the Spurs went on a 23-9 run to chop a 21-point deficit down to seven.

Those three scored all 23 points, 11 of them from Castle, while Wemby didn’t score at all. Mitch Johnson had them split up for most of the first half, and I think they only got only like 12ish minutes together all night. I’m glad we’re leaning into it.

Let’s lean more! Let’s go! WWL Post Game Press Conference Another season on deck, are you ready?

Not even remotely. I’m woefully unprepared. Didn’t you hear me up there?

I was watching baseball all summer. I was going on hikes. I don’t even remember how this was sport is supposed to work.

I couldn’t remember my Peacock login. I’m a mess. It’s all a mess.

Oh no! Yea it’s bad. I truly just like, I mean it’s been a long time since the Spurs went that far in the playoffs, I think I just wasn’t ready for the summer to feel so short.

I’m lashing out because I feel cheated out of time to like regroup and reconnect with my feelings. I mean, you did have almost four months to do that. Yea but, like I said I was watching baseball.

Who’s going to win the World Series? The fans. Lame .