What We Learned from the Spurs loss to the Grizzlies

It’s cold in San Antonio. The weather is, at least. Right now it’s grey and it’s wet. The wind is intermittent but when it rolls through, it's that kind that makes your knees ache. Every once in a while the sun will pop out from behind the clouds and try to trick you into believing it’s safe to go outside again but, I can assure you, it will not be comfortable out there. People who have to live with REAL winters are welcome to roll their eyes and tell me that I don’t know what I’m talking about but, look, I’m just a simple journalist out here reporting the situation on the ground. It’s cold in San Antonio.

This is the kind of weather where you throw on a thick sweater and stare out the window pondering the shifting leaves and the changing of the seasons. It’s the kind of weather where you might have a little too much time on your hands to reassess your priorities. All your plans for the future, the ones you seemed so sure about, all of a sudden seem a little shaky. It’s weird how the weather can affect your mood like that, right? Nothing has really changed except the temp and yet, now that we’re in it, everything is murky.

There’s no Thanksgiving to look forward to. No Christmas. This is the part of Winter where the only relief on the horizon is the vague promise of a Spring that seems to have an eternal Coming Soon sign sitting in its window. You know that it’s not rational, but you can’t help wondering if this is going to be forever. Maybe this is just how it is now. Maybe you’re just doomed to be a little bit uncomfortable for the rest of your life. Maybe you should invest in some gloves.

I know that Winter is cyclical. It comes and it goes like everything else, it just doesn’t work on the schedule we want it to. We want it to be a clock, steadily marching forward through time and hitting its marks. We want it to be something we can, quite literally, count on. This thing it does right now is so much worse though, right? You look at the forecast and go, “hey, sunny with a high of 65 this weekend, we’re back baby!” and then you keep going and see a very suspect “cloudy with a low of 29” next week and realize that Winter will be done with you whenever it feels like it and not a second before.

The ebbs and the flows, my friends. The ebbs and also the flows! It’s a nightmare! Who decided on this? When I signed up to hang out on this rock I was promised endless summers and cheeseburgers in paradise. No one said anything about the part where we’d be hanging out in an Adele video forever. I just want the sun back. I want to wear shorts. I want a piña colada.

I don’t have a tidy little end for this. I’m not walking around outside and seeing the burst of color from a single daisy sprouting out through the greys and browns. I don’t see a beautiful pair of birds outside my window serving as nature’s little signals that change is on the way, and viewing that change as a symbol of the Spurs rebirth as a winning team. None of that. I’m just sitting at my desk, drinking my coffee, and complaining about it being cold. I’m in the bunker. I’m waiting it out. I don’t know when Spring is coming, all I know is that it will. I’m pretty sure it has to.

It’s cold in San Antonio right now, but it won’t be forever.

Takeaways:

• When the Spurs made their little run in the first half, I definitely had that thought of, “naw, no, they did it too soon, this is a mistake” and, sure enough, the Grizzlies saw through the façade of that earlier push and stretched everything back in the 3rd. Imagine my delight to find out that our boys had another run in them. The only thing we love more than a comeback is two comebacks! The only thing we love more than two comebacks is, you know, actually finishing a comeback off with a W. Maybe next time.
• I guess a thing we’re going to have to settle for is the Spurs being other team’s homework this year. It seems like our fate at this point. It will not be fun to play against us. They’re not something you can just ignore. By all accounts, a win is certainly available to you when San Antonio is on the schedule, you’re just going to have to work for it. Is that anything? Does it make anyone feel better?
• Obviously, I think that tanking is a logical fallacy and a bourgeois construct sold down the ranks to placate the huddled masses out here in order to keep us perpetually striving for a fantastical lottery ticket to cash in while keeping the upper class secure in their position atop the food chain...BUT...I sit here and watch Ja Morant run around out there and I can’t help but think to myself, “boy, I’d sure like for us to get our hands on one of those Ja Morant types.”
• It feels a little bit like the strain of carrying this team around on his shoulders all season is starting to wear on Dejounte Murray a little bit. A tiny bit. Not enough to be worried about him, but certainly enough to cut him a little slack when he starts out a little flat from time to time. He’s got a hard job at the moment and an awful lot on his plate. Watching him on the court right now feels like watching someone run around putting out tiny little fires all over the place while ignoring the fact that his own shirt keeps catching a flame here and there.
• I just want to watch Devin Vassell run up and down the court. I’m a man of simple needs.

WWL Post Game Press Conference

- I’m sitting here looking at the weather report in San Antonio and it honestly seems fine.

- To you, maybe, but I am sitting here at my desk currently and am very cold.

- Have tried turning the heat on in your house?

- I don’t really want to pay for League Pass and, even if I did, Jimmy Butler sort of gets on my nerves.

- What? No, not the Miami Heat. Turn the heat on inside your house. Like, press a button and then heat will be on.

- How will that help? Look, I know it’s got De Niro and Pacino and all that but I just have a hard time getting worked up about it. It’s cops and robbers, what’s the big deal? Bill Simmons has done like a dozen podcasts on this film in the last decade and I just don’t get it. It’s not for me, I’m sorry.

- The thermostat, dummy. Go to your thermostat and raise the temperature in your house.

- Whoa, whoa, whoa. You want me to pay extra money for heat inside my house? I think I’d rather watch Heat.