Lemon Face: Spurs conditioning.

I touched on this over at FanHouse, but I don’t give a damn if it is the second game of the season. That’s a reason they should be in better shape. The Spurs have championship aspirations. That means they don’t get to just say "Oh, well, it was a back to back." You get beat by the Kings on a back-to-back at the end of a road trip? Okay, that’s just an anomaly. But they were flat out outworked tonight in Chicago against a playoff team. They looked slow, confused, and frustrated. They can give this one up. But the Spurs cannot afford to start this as a pattern. The seed does matter. The Spurs need to face Utah or Phoenix in round one, not Portland or Denver. They need to give themselves the best opportunity they can to beat LA, and that means setting up as easy a playoff run as possible. What’s more, they’ve got to prove themselves dominant. This game was fine and understandable for last year’s Spurs. No biggie. But the stakes have been raised.