22-23: Spurs Are 2-1
Full disclosure: I did not watch the Pacers game. Yours truly is in the Midwest now, and even though I am approximately 4-hours from both Memphis and Indianapolis, the NBA considers me part of both teams’ core audience. That means the games are blacked out for three-days on League Pass.
Sometime around the final minute of the third quarter, Joel Embiid got the ball at the top of the key, took a calm dribble as he sized up Poeltl and pulled up for an easy jumper. He is a big target, he’s skilled, and can do that all day. Immediately following, the Spurs went into their motion set, with lots of passes and cuts that each have options. The ball flew around, the Spurs did their dribble-drive -and-kick thing that they practice often (look at old YouTube of the Spurs doing 3v3 drills with it) and Josh Richardson got the ball about the same spot that Embiid did and hit his own jumper.
The Spurs are not as good as the Sixers. Embiid had 40 and did not look like he was working very hard for it. I mean, he did not have to. He’s a big target, and has enough skills that he can get a shot from just about anywhere he wants to. The Spurs are not good enough defensively to make it much tougher than simply putting a hand up and that is how you get forty points. Meanwhile, the Spurs had to run and work hard for each bucket. It was all in rhythm, mind you, which is a subtle difference in working for shots that happens. Working hard for shots and ending with one you have to take rather than one you want to take are different things. The Spurs cannot simply throw it to a guy and say “go score”. That is a change from just about the the last 30-years of Spurs basketball. I imagine this is extra fun for Pop, who believes in a free-flowing basketball philosophy where the ball finds the open shot. The mid-decade Spurs squad that went to two Finals did this while also having HOF talent and it was beautiful.
This version has some journeymen, and young guys trying to find their way in the NBA. When it works right, it is indeed beautiful.
The nature of this version of Tank-A-Thon is the the Spurs are giving time to guys who are young but talented, vs the version of intentionally playing bad players. The squad will beat unsuspecting teams that are not ready to run, and scramble, and play harder than they want to.
The Spurs don’t know they aren’t supposed to play hard.