Western thought, traceable down through Locke and Hume, past Thomas Aquinas and all the way back to Aristotle, rests to a great degree on the endurance of identity. A thing is what it is - an apple is an apple, an orange is an orange, I am me - and our way of thinking revolves around the generally-accepted assumption that an apple today will not be an orange tomorrow. That is all well and good. However, it leaves us open to certain types of intellectual laziness. We are so anxious to quantify, we tend to overlook the inherently transient nature of that being quantified.

In all things we must see reality through the prism of change, even though by doing so we force ourselves to grapple with the thorniest of questions. Is a man who has spent the last ten years in jail the same man who committed the crime that put him there? Can you step into the same river twice (or, to follow St. Augustine's conjecture, even once)? And who are the Spurs?

This season we have seen many different Spurs teams. But have we ever seen the Spurs? We know that there is a certain rock-ribbed poetry about a Spurs squad that has hit its stride, an inevitability that sucks the life out of opponents. We've been good, on occasion. But have we ever seen prime Spurs ball this season? I think not.

Certainly, there have been injuries. There have been acquisitions, and new players added to the fold. But our team's character hasn't changed, has it? Timmy, Tony and Manu have all, at times, shown the kind of dominance that makes them the only true Big Three. But we still haven't seen that true magic.

Maybe it's gone.

Or...

Maybe Pop's tired of hearing about how 'the Spurs always come on strong in the second half of the season'. Maybe he doesn't want to reel off an umpteen-game winning streak right before the playoffs. Maybe he's been telling the truth all along: the regular season doesn't matter.

Maybe he means it.

I've always been eager to give Pop the benefit of the doubt. God knows he's earned it. And now, with Timmy taking it easy and Manu getting comfortable (and Tony playing out of his mind) ... well, isn't this a squad that's about ready to gel? These are all great character guys, guys who know their role. We've got a few more regular-season games to get warmed up, and then the start of the postseason itself to fine-tune. With luck on our side, we could end up facing the Fakers with 80-90% of Duncan and Ginobili, plus 110% of Parker, plus the best set of role-players and specialists this team has seen in recent history.

So c'mon, Spurs. Saddle up. The real season's about to start, and the best is yet to come.