Neuf de moins
2026 NBA Finals, Game 4
tv off - The universe can be a cruel, cruel place. Having to endure two of the most devastating cut your heart into a thousand pieces with dull scissors and then put those pieces in a blender with the lid off but still turn it on and turn it all the way up to watch the now even smaller pulverized pieces splatter against the walls and ceiling losses in NBA Finals history in 13 years is so incredibly arduous but having to endure two of them in six days? That is just plain sadistic. I want to scream and cry and punch the air and curl up in a ball and clench my teeth and go for a run and pull my hair out and disappear in South America and smash a ceramic mug and float out into the ocean and write 16 bars for a diss track and snuggle with my cat and drive on the autobahn and binge-watch Friends and break a window with a brick and sleep for a day because more than anything, I just want to forget. My emotions are such a stew of anger, embarrassment, frustration, disbelief, befuddlement and disappointment but the star of the dish is indisputably sadness. As understandable as it is given our youth, It’s just so heartbreaking to watch us lose our composure and allow an inferior opponent to not only create their own luck but also continue to be this staggeringly lucky over and over again. The karmic injustice of the idea that we are not yet living in a universe where the ball is bouncing towards results that punish the wicked is excruciating. I refuse to submit to the despairing notion that we won’t be living in that universe soon so I suppose the comfort of knowing the sequence of events leading to its actualization has to begin now means exoneration from this unbearable pain is forthcoming. But forthcoming provides no relief from the barbarity of the moment. There is no way to alleviate the suffering just yet so I have no choice but acceptance. The pain is momentarily inescapable but thankfully there is an elixir that can help with its management. That elixir is hope and hope is a commodity I possess in abundance. I have faith that the ball will start bouncing towards results that reward the virtuous and in so doing, we will flip this series on our opponent in the exact same manner as they flipped the last game on us (but on the largest possible scale) and the satisfaction of experiencing jubilation take the place of misery (and knowing they are experiencing the reverse) makes the temporary suffering worth enduring through in order to eventually get to live in a better, more just universe. It’s the hope that saves me.
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Let me start by saying this is not De’Aaron Fox’s fault. He made the most mistakes in crunch time including one of the most inexplicable decisions in NBA Finals history but Victor Wembanyama also made mistakes in crunch time and so did Dylan Harper and so did Devin Vassell and so did Stephon Castle and so did Mitch Johnson. Keldon Johnson, Luke Kornet, and Julian Champagnie also made second half mistakes. All of the cumulative mistakes were equally costly. (There were also some officiating mistakes that cost us but unlike Knicks fans…) We had such a margin for error with a 27 point halftime lead, it took a perfect storm of self-inflicted wounds for the San Antonio Spurs to lose Game 4 of the NBA Finals 107-106 to the New York Knicks but that’s exactly what we conjured up. After we matched our biggest lead of the game—29 points at 81-52 with 9:40 left in the third—we could have literally picked one or two of the possessions later in the quarter where we took three point attempts early in the shot clock and instead dribbled out the 24 seconds for a violation and with that alone, we would have won the game. Unfortunately, from the 9:40 mark of the third quarter on, we collectively (Mitch and the coaching staff included) fell into the seductive trap of relaxing in the comfort that a mistake here or there was no longer existential because we were playing with such a massive cushion and because of our immaturity in that area, the mistakes compounded possession after possession until all of a sudden, their cumulative impact was existential. It was a hard lesson but (despite the outside noise) a valuable one that we will learn and grow stronger from going forward to not only finish this season out on our own terms but also to build the proper foundation for the dynastic run we intend to have over the next ten to fifteen years. The bottom line is blaming De’Aaron Fox for what was clearly a collective failure is such a sophomoric reaction. Declaring him fully responsible and calling for him to be benched, traded, investigated for fixing the game, etc. is just plain lazy scapegoating. There’s no question he had a terrible second half. And do I wish he was the type of point guard who would have instinctually attempted to dribble the clock out until he got fouled up one in the fourth with the shot clock off? Of course. But, for better or worse, that’s not how he’s wired. He’s instinctually wired to go for the kill shot and his Swipa mentality has provided us a lot more better than worse this season. We wouldn’t be here without it. De’Aaron Fox is still going to play a major role in determining which team gets to lift the Larry O’Brien at the end of this series and yes, he had a rough night out on the prowl on Wednesday but he’s still a stone cold killer. Anyone who underestimates his capability to out-Brunson Jalen Brunson to decide the 2026 NBA Finals does so at their own risk.
We know we are more talented than our opponent and our deficit in this series is of our own making and that serves as the original position for why it is surmountable. If we start to legislate a performance worthy of the stage we are on for 48 minutes per night (rather than in fits and starts), all of human society will benefit from this series concluding with the crowning of the proper champion. There is no justice for anyone if history records New York breaking a 53-year title drought because San Antonio beat ourselves, least of all Knicks fans. Thankfully, the opportunity to put history back on its proper course still lies before us and the path to actualization can be found by reincarnating the beautiful game. Wednesday’s player of the game Dylan Harper, his iconoclastic ride or die partner Stephon Castle, and his iceman Unc De’Aaron Fox + Devon Vassell, Julian Champagnie, Keldon Johnson, Luke Kornet, Sean Sweeney, and Mitch Johnson all have to give of themselves to create the harmony for its manifestation but the two phoenices most central to rising it from its ashes are Victor Wembanyama and Gregg Popovich. The Alien is not only the best player in the series, he is the best player on the planet 👽 Greatness, however, must be earned and he’s three wins away from ending all argument that he’s not also already the greatest player on the planet. It’s there for Wemby’s taking and if he brings the same unrelenting focus and execution to elimination games in this round as he did while facing elimination twice at the hands of the defending champs, there is absolutely nothing the New York Knicks can do to stop him. Give them credit. They have a collection of talented players (including a couple of special ones in OG Anunoby and Jalen Brunson) who play tough-nosed basketball and play really well together as a team but even the Oklahoma City Thunder had no answers when Victor played with pique concentration and desperation. The Knicks are not in the position they are in because they have unique answers for stopping a generational force, they are in the position they are in because they haven’t had to face it yet by Wemby’s own making. The big variable in the feasibility of the Spurs becoming the first team in Finals history to come back from an 0-2 hole at home that conventional wisdom is ignoring is the level of dominance Victor reached while facing elimination against the Thunder and the reality that that is a level New York is not equipped to overcome. He’s about to go there again and remain there for the rest of these Finals. He’s too competitive to expect anything less. Circling this back to reincarnating the beautiful game, I think the aspect of Wemby’s game that when fully unleashed will finally break this stubbornly unflappable opponent is his playmaking. As soon as Wemby starts using the threat of his scoring to unlock all of the dynamism of his teammates so that he is dictating the game on the offensive end with the same dominance with which he is dictating it on the defensive end, not only will he be able to conserve some more energy for crunch time but forcing the opponent to come to the realization that they have no answers for this version of The Alien will become demoralizing, especially for a team feeling the pressure not to squander their once in a half-century lighting in a bottle opportunity. The parallels I drew in Sept de moins haven’t come to bare but I think it’s because (knowing what we know now) it wasn’t my most astute observation about where Victor is on his journey. He doesn’t yet have the seasoning to win this title with the precision of a 28-year-old Michael Jordan in 1991. He’s going to have to win it with the imagination of a 20-year-old Magic Johnson in 1980. He’s going to have to dazzle.
The person most capable of helping to unlock Wemby as the hub for a reincarnated beautiful game was not in New York City this week but he is with the team back in San Antonio for Game 5 tonight. This of course is the mentor of the 2015, 2017, 2018, 2021 & 2022 title-winning coaches, the 2025 title-winning general manager and both of the coaches in the 2026 Finals, five-time NBA championship and one-time Olympic gold medal-winning coach Gregg Popovich. It’s easy to forget that Mitch Johnson—while ultra talented like his franchise players—is also incredibly young and is also learning on the job. Mitch is 39-years-old in his second year as a head coach and first playoffs going up against a 59-year-old in his twelfth year as a head coach and eighth playoffs in Mike Brown, someone with previous Finals experience. Johnson has done a fantastic job in leading us here but experience makes a huge difference in coaching the NBA Finals. Last year, 65-year-old 2011 title-winning coach Rick Carlisle led an overmatched Indiana Pacers team to a star player’s catastrophic injury at the beginning of Game 7 away from defeating 40-year-old Marc Daigneault’s vastly more talented Oklahoma City Thunder. Without taking away from the phenomenal job Mitch is doing and with complete confidence that he is learning and growing through this experience just as much as his franchise players, it needs to be mentioned that this wasn’t the plan. The plan was for Coach Pop to be coaching these upstart next generation Spurs supernovas through their first playoff experience and that was taken away from him in a sudden and lamentable way. Had this (often) cruel universe afforded him the opportunity to finish his coaching career on his own terms, he would be coaching in his seventh Finals right now and his impact would be incalculable but there’s no question that one of the greatest sideline game managers of all-time would at minimum have this series tied at 2-2 and more realistically would have the Spurs up 3-1. While he’s been robbed of having the type of real-time direct impact on what’s happening between the lines as he used to with a clipboard in his hand, the good news is that El Jefe still gets to have an impact on helping the beloved franchise he has devoted 32 years of his life to in overcoming our biggest Finals deficit ever. Every time Pop has spoken to our players after we’ve faced adversity in the 2026 postseason, we have responded. Not just with demonstrating the appropriate fear and playing with the appropriate focus but also with making the proper tactical adjustments. I expect nothing different in Game 5 and I predict the tactical adjustment Pop will help Coach Mitch make will unlock an overpowering dynamism in our offense that will expose the Knicks as a paper tiger and that we will soon fondly refer to as the beautiful game 2.0. It starts tonight in our third ever NBA Finals elimination game. If we improve our record to 2-1 tonight in Finals elimination games, we earn the opportunity to play to improve our record to 3-1. If we win that one, we earn the opportunity to play to improve our record to 4-1. If we win that one, we finish the season out on our own terms. With the help of our good ole reliable banner-raising institution of a former head coach and current president of basketball operations, Victor Wembanyama and the #BlackAndSilver will face elimination from here on out and they will do so prepared to shock the world.
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Faith is a glimmering sparkle out on the horizon. I cannot surrender my certitude that our journey is not ending when I can see the flickering light out in front on the path a week’s distance away. We have now endured more adversity than has ever been overcome but we accept and embrace the challenge and step forward towards the redemptive journey’s end that is still ours to pursue. We will never lay down. Our ability to harden through struggle and take another stride forward after every single time we’ve been knocked back on our heels gives us the strength to know we can stay the course and we will persevere. I still believe.
Featured Image Source: Texas Public Radio
Headline Image Source: NEWS4SA
Treize de faits
2026 NBA Finals, Game 3
Dream On - Welcome to the 2026 NBA Finals, Spurs basketball. I think I can safely speak for all San Antonio fans in saying we are glad you finally decided to show up. Considering it came on the heels of having just endured three days of all-consuming emotional anguish, that may have been the most satisfying non-series clinching San Antonio Spurs playoff win I have ever experienced (and I have experienced all of them since 1990). Our 115-111 victory over the New York Knicks in the circus that was Madison Square Garden on Monday night was a remarkable demonstration of resiliency. Down 0-2 after squandering both of our first two home games in the series and entering the biggest city in the United States (as it was bursting with more excitement and electricity than it had experienced at any other moment in recent memory) to play in the world’s most famous arena, conventional wisdom suggested that the atmosphere inside MSG was going to be too overwhelming for the second-youngest NBA Finals team in history and we would consequently let go of the proverbial ropes and merely serve as bystanders for the coronation that was going to take place this week in basketball’s Mecca to crown the home team champions for the first time in 53 years. Instead, Victor Wembanyama and Stephon Castle became the first teammates age 22 or younger to each have at least 20 points, five rebounds, and five assists in an NBA Finals game and the San Antonio Spurs finally hit the necessary clutch shots down the stretch to win the composure battle over the veteran Knicks and send the New York faithful home stunned and spiraling. And what a gutsy display of clutch shot making it was to behold. First, Steph drained a 26-foot dagger three (after Vic threw him the ball with the shot clock running down) while we were nursing a four point lead with 1:53 left to play. After Castle’s triple extended our lead to seven, the two teams traded empty possessions before Mikal Bridges got fouled with 59.6 seconds left. Bridges went 1-2 from the line to cut the lead to six but we came up empty again after that which led to another clutch shot by Jalen Brunson in the final minute of the third consecutive Finals game when he drilled his own three with 33.7 seconds left to cut our lead three at 111-108. This led to our second clutch shot, this one courtesy of De’Aaron Fox. The 2023 clutch player of the year nailed a 15-foot step back “iceman” jumper by De’Aaron Fox to put us back up five with 12.2 seconds left to play. Somehow, New York responded again. OG Anunoby hit a corner three with 9.4 seconds left to chop our lead back down to two. This led to a timeout and a critical inbounds play. We got the ball into Fox who toed the sideline while getting it back over to Steph who received the expected foul with 6.8 seconds left. The 2024 Rookie of the Year calmly walked up to the line and drained two of the most pressure-packed free throws in franchise history to extend our lead back to four at 115-111 and effectively put the game to bed. Game 3 on Monday at MSG was a tough-as-nails gritty road victory that was as impressive (and possibly more given the spectacle) as the Game 7 road closeout victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder in the Paycom Center two Saturdays ago to dethrone the defending champs. While Victor was spectacular (as expected) in bouncing back from his colossal error at the end of Game 2 on Friday and was objectively the best player in the game for the first time during these Finals, the player of the game was Steph because of his season-saving clutch shooting in the guts of game to hold the Knicks at bay. The version of the Spurs that marched through the playoffs to the Western Conference championship finally arrived on basketball’s biggest stage on Monday to the delight of Spurs fans everywhere and I think the consensus on our side heading into Game 4 is we have finally shaken the Finals jitters and also figured out how we need to play the Knicks and as a result, we are cautiously optimistic we can dig out of the hole we created for ourselves as soon as tonight.
Meanwhile, New York fans have spent the past two days losing their collective minds over the refs and calling for Wemby to get a retroactive flagrant foul for dislodging the fist-full of jersey that Jalen Brunson had with 4:44 remaining in the first quarter. They need to get over that quick and start coming to acceptance that they never were the superior team and as a consequence there never was going to be a coronation. The championship they’d presumptuously been celebrating for three days prior to Game 3 was never theirs to celebrate. It’s a dangerous game to count your chickens before they hatch. This series was always going to be a dogfight. A dogfight on the court, by the way, Knicks fans. It is one thing to be losing your collective minds over the officiating on social media, it is quite another that some of you are assaulting random strangers in the streets for supporting a different basketball team than you. The city of San Antonio welcomed you with open arms, gave you tips on things to do while in town and great places to eat and in return, we can’t even feel safe to wear a Spurs jersey out in public in NYC without fear that we might encounter physical violence? What an absolute disgrace. Those of you who are blaming the Game 3 loss and the shattering of your seven straight weeks of good vibes solely on Donald Trump need to do some serious soul searching. On our side, we’re just going to be over here cheering on our amazing players, staying confident in our belief that we have to better team, and munching on our popcorn while we watch you meltdown, crash out, and continue to bring more and more bad karma on yourselves with each and every passing hour. I won’t lie, observing your overconfidence and premature celebrations after being gifted Game 2, I knew this is exactly how y’all would react. I predicted it in the last post but thank you, nonetheless 🙏 We need all the luck we can get in order to be the first team in NBA Finals history to comeback from 0-2 at home so keep doing everything you’re doing to self-sabotage the lighting in a bottle you were able to capture during the 13-game win streak. Keep doing all of it and more except stop assaulting Spurs fans on the streets of New York immediately. Seriously, what is the matter with y’all? I know I can’t say act like you’ve been here before when you haven’t since the Clinton Administration but start learning how to take your losses with some class because, and I hate to be the one to break it to you, there’s almost certainly more of them coming before this series is over. /advice-to-Knicks-fans
In other news, we have a plot twist. Guess which one of our favorite conniving characters from earlier in the postseason is back to make a cameo in the Finals, y’all? Apparently after getting eliminated by the Spurs on May 15th, The Sniveler (Chris Grinch—err, I mean Chris Finch) has been busy behind the scenes training a fellow NBA head coach (and a former Jedi Padawan of Gregg Popovich) in the Sith dark arts of working the refs in the postgame news conference. New York Knicks head coach (and assistant to Coach Pop on the 2003 Spurs title team) Mike Brown has officially been recruited and converted to the dark side by our reigning ref-working world champion. There has been a lot of ridiculous noise for Spurs fans to be annoyed with coming out of the camp of the Eastern Conference Champions as well as and especially from their fanbase during these Finals but Mike Brown taking a page directly out of the Sniveler’s playbook by having a 5-minute temper tantrum during his Game 3 postgame presser about the 24-8 San Antonio second half free throw advantage may very well take the cake. Come on, Mike. You’re so much better than this. You know damn well the only hope you have to slow down the greatest player in the world is to foul Wemby 75 times a game and when you know damn well that is your strategy, you cannot complain that the refs called more fouls on you than they did on us in the second half. Just like OKC and Minnesota in the past two series, you are mostly being allowed to guard Wemby by playing football. If the officials were calling these Finals games by the letter of the law (or even giving Wemby the same whistle as Brunson), you would lose every game by disqualification because your entire team would foul out. If you don’t want us to shoot more free throws than you in the second half, go ahead and try to guard Wemby straight up without fouling him constantly and let’s see what happens By the way, the level of cherry picking of information the New York Knick’s coach was presenting with this rant was enough to even make the Sniveler blush. I guess the fact that the Knicks were afforded a 16-8 free throw advantage in the first half and used it to help build their seven point halftime lead is irrelevant so long as the aggrieved party gets to be aggrieved. The biggest shame of it all is that Mike Brown knows better than anyone that the reason we won the game is because our defense was spectacular in the second half. We were the more aggressive team throughout the night (the more aggressive team almost always gets the better whistle) and we flat-out outplayed New York full stop. For Mike Brown to attempt to tarnish that rather than tipping his cap to the organization that helped him make his mark in this league is classless and a real shame but at least he made his Sith Lord Chris Finch proud. By contrast, I’m really pleased with the way that San Antonio Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson has represented the Pop coaching tree well throughout these playoffs (and especially after our two brutal Finals losses at home). Coach Mitch has never once complained about the refs after a loss and has consistently given due credit every time the opponent has outplayed us. We always have and always will consider Mike Brown to be a part of our Spurs family but I guess somewhere in between Sacramento and New York (perhaps on a pit stop in Minnesota) he lost sight of our Spurs values and gave into the temptation of the dark side. Drats! The Sniveler strikes again!
To end on a more positive note, as we start getting mentally prepared for another super intense emotional clash tonight in Game 4, I just want to acknowledge how super fun it was to watch the Spurs play an NBA Finals game again in Madison Square Garden on Monday and how much of a privilege it is that we have gotten to be the road team each of the last two times that basketball’s Mecca has hosted the NBA Finals. There is nothing else quite like watching basketball at MSG. I can attest to this from personal experience. On December 12th, 2017, I checked off one of my bucket list items when my partner Jenn and I attended an NBA basketball game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden during a vacation trip to the Big Apple. The Knicks defeated the Lakers in overtime that night 113-109 behind a 37 point, 11 rebound effort by Kristaps Porzingis (aka The Unicorn). It was an awesome game between two of the league’s most prestigious franchises but as you can see in the headline image for this post, I was in the world’s most famous arena for the first time (and only time so far) of my life supporting the San Antonio Spurs even though we weren’t even playing in that night’s contest. (Jenn, a native New Yorker but is also a Spurs fan took more of a “when in Rome” approach.) Even though that experience happened eight and a half years ago, I’ve been holding this nice thought in my mind that the aftershocks of my Spurs fandom energy being in that special building are still reverberating to this day and as a result, I was there in spirit cheering on San Antonio on Monday and I’ll be there in spirit cheering on San Antonio again tonight. We face another stiff test in as hostile but also as special an environment as we’re ever going to find but if we play our brand of basketball the right way again tonight in Game 4, we will put ourselves in position to even this series heading back home for Game 5. If that happens, look out. I will likely never in my life be able to afford to purchase tickets to watch the San Antonio Spurs play an NBA Finals game in Madison Square Garden but my Spurs fandom energy is going to be in the building tonight for free. And I’ll be rooting on the #BlackAndSilver to win Game 4 tonight with everything I’ve got watching from my living room at home while visualizing the sights, sounds, and smells of that sacred place like I’m right there sitting court side with the tv off.
Featured Image Source: Aerosmith.com
Dix de faits
2026 NBA Western Conference Finals, Game 4
Supersonic - That was for Downtown Freddie Brown, Spencer Haywood, Lenny Wilkens, Gus Williams, Jack Sikma, Dennis Johnson, Slick Watts, Xavier McDaniels, Detlef Schrempf, Nate McMillan, Dale Ellis, Shawn Kemp, Gary Payton, Rashard Lewis, Ray Allen and Kevin Durant. That was for the city of Seattle + every former player, coach, team employee and fan of the Supersonics and their iconic emerald and gold. Seattle is a beautiful, special city. Trust me, I would know. I’ve been everywhere, man. At one point or another in my life, I’ve visited 48 states and nearly every major city in this country (Burlington, VT and Anchorage, AK are the only two that come to mind that I have yet to visit but plans are in the works because I’m hoping to join the All Fifty States Club by next year) so I think my frame of reference is grounded when I tell you Seattle is a top-five American city. I have spent more time in Seattle than anywhere else besides Denver (where I live) over the past ten years and I know many wonderful people there who still talk about how much the Sonics are missed so cry me a river Thunder fans but it’s an objective fact that Seattle deserves their NBA franchise way more than Oklahoma City. The good people there didn’t deserve to have their Sonics stolen away because a greedy, two-faced rich guy owner cared more about being a big shot in his hometown than being the steward of a renowned franchise and a past-his-prime commissioner cared more about short-term profits than the longterm health of the league. In 2007, Clay Bennett used the lack of a new tax-payer funded arena as a pretext to move a beloved franchise from a vibrant, booming city to his obscure, mundane backyard and NBA Commissioner David Stern committed a dereliction of duty by allowing it to happen. As a lifelong NBA fan, there has been a faint but ever-present nagging melancholy providing a slight but real diminishment from my overall enjoyment of the league over the past eighteen seasons, the melancholy being the NBA is simply not the same without the Seattle SuperSonics. A league without the Sonics will always have something missing. So yeah, when Seattle-native and current San Antonio Spurs head coach Mitch Johnson made the necessary game-to-game adjustments on Sunday night to help the Spurs go supersonic on the Thunder in our Game 4 103-82 Western Conference Finals-evening victory, that was definitely for the city whose team was stolen by Oklahoma City. That was for Seattle. And given that the architect of OKC’s most humiliating defeat since winning the title is the son of a legend from the Sonics 1979 championship team, most of all, that was for Mitch’s father. That was for John Johnson.
On Sunday, the #BlackAndSilver delivered one of the most dominant team defensive performances I have ever seen in my 45 years of watching the NBA playoffs. The adjustment made by Mitch Johnson giving Stephon Castle the sole responsibility for relentlessly guarding the point of attack worked to perfection overall but especially in accomplishing its primary objective. Two-time reigning league MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (who had been comfortable in Games 2 & 3 and picking our defense apart) was back to seeing ghosts again. While Steph’s point of attack defense was the catalyst, it took a total team effort to spook OKC’s leader. Every player gave maximum effort and stayed disciplined with our attention to game plan detail for defending the MVP the entire night. It was a sight to behold. With Castle hounding the ever-loving hell out of Shai immediately every time the Thunder gained possession, Wemby and Luke Kornet met him in the paint (while also covering the weak side) and our perimeter defenders crowded him inside the arc (while still getting out to contest shooters). All five Spurs defenders were connected playing on a string the entire night. The most important byproduct of Mitch giving SGA a pop quiz in parapsychology (that he didn’t yet have the answers for) was it prevented the best playmaking guard in the league from elevating his teammates in Game 4 the same way he had been the previous two games. OKC’s role players, who had played like world beaters in Games 2 & 3, were forced by our suffocating defense to start regressing to the mean. Remember how Jaylin Williams and Alex Caruso shot a combined 8-11 from deep in Game 3? Clearly the adjustments worked because in Game 4, Jaylin Williams shot 1-7 from distance and Alex Caruso (whose stellar play in the first three games of the series had the media’s talking heads impulsively anointing him as the greatest role player of all time 🙄) laid a goose egg (zero points on 0-1 shooting). All told, Oklahoma City shot 6-33 from deep and 30-91 overall. For those who don’t want to do the math, that’s a putrid 18 percent from beyond the arc and a frigid 33 percent from the field. It all added up to 82 points, OKC’s third-lowest final score in their playoff history. There’s no question San Antonio (led by the tenacity of Stephon Castle) gave a defensive performance for the ages last night. Perhaps the most exciting part of getting that type of defensive performance in response to our backs being up against the wall for the first time in the 2026 NBA playoffs is that it’s proof of concept that when we play at our best, there is not a team in this league that can match our ceiling. Even though it’s supposed to be way too early because we’re supposed to still be way too young, when we play at our best, we are already unbeatable.
“Wembanyama, I think he’s gonna go. I think he’s gonna go… from half-court. Got it!” As the spotlight and stakes keep getting bigger and bigger, the player of the game’s ability to always meet the moment (when responding to adversity) is a stunning thing to continue to witness over and over again. Wemby was aggressive throughout Game 4 tallying 33 points (11-22 from the field, 3-7 from deep, 8-9 from the line), eight rebounds five assists, three blocks and two steals in the process of racking up a team-high +29 point differential in his 33 dominant minutes. His magical half-court buzzer-beater at the end of the first half was not only amazing in a vacuum but in this particular scenario it had the outsized psychological impact of allowing us to go into the break with a double-digit lead and momentum just when it looked like the Thunder (after cutting another 15-point first quarter lead down to nine) were going to start walking us down for the second consecutive game. Just when things were starting to tighten up and it was starting to feel like OKC was possibly going to claw there way back, the longest shot of Victor’s career (so far) provided reassurance heading into halftime that Game 4 wouldn’t be a repeat of Game 3. The Spurs never looked back in the second half and won the game running away. Considering that going down 2-1 in the WCF to the defending champs is supposed to be the type of pressure that a team as young and with as little playoff experience as us is supposed to wilt under, it was quite a rewarding experience to watch San Antonio respond so emphatically by playing our best game of the entire season. Unfortunately, there’s no time to savor the moment. We’re back in the orange and blue Paycom Center belly of the beast tonight and we’re still playing the champs, a team with a short memory and one that is more than capable of figuring out an adjustment to our adjustment, winning Game 5, and putting our back squarely back against the wall. How would Victor Wembanyama and company respond to the adversity of facing elimination from the 2026 NBA playoffs for the first time? That is not a question I want to be faced with answering 12 hours from now. The good news is we won’t have to if we replicate the same level of effort and performance that we displayed on Sunday. It’s clear that the San Antonio Spurs when playing at our best can already reach a level of play that the defending-champion Oklahoma City Thunder can’t match. It won’t be easy to do what we did on Sunday again tonight on the road against a now equally-desperate team and in front of 18,000 hostile spectators but if any team is too young and too inexperienced to know that we’re not supposed to march into OKC in Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals and replicate our best performance of the season, it’s the 2025-26 San Antonio Spurs. Can’t hurt to give it a shot. We’ve already secured another home game on Thursday. The pressure is squarely on the two-time defending MVP Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and the champs tonight to come up with some answers to the latest test. If we play with the same defensive intensity tonight as the last game and combine it with playing fast and loose on offense, we’re going to be one step closer to heading somewhere we haven’t been in 12 years. The inaugural playoff run of the Wembanyama-era has been quite a journey already and I have a sneaking suspicion it’s still far from over. Chapter 16 will be written tonight so sit back, buckle up, and enjoy the ride.
Cinq de moins
2026 NBA Western Conference Finals, Game 3
Sleep Now In the Fire - Give them credit. They were the better team in Game 3. Not by the margin they won by but there’s no arguing they weren’t the better team last night. This is the first time I’ve had to objectively concede another team outplayed us in the 2026 NBA Playoffs. Considering the first game against Portland was five weeks ago and it took until Memorial Day weekend before we even blinked once, I don’t expect us to blink again for a while if at all but that was a tough loss. It’s also a valuable teaching moment. We almost broke them in the first few minutes of the game but when we didn’t, we lost our edge and weren’t able to get it back. We should now know that letting your guard down in that scenario against a team this good means you lose. That’s a hard lesson we couldn’t have received any better way than being schooled by the MVP and his defending champs. So yeah, it’s a hard loss but one I expect us to learn from and grow because if we don’t, the Thunder are good enough to make us more than blink. If we don’t draw a line in the sand by coming out in Game 4 with a focus that shows we know our season is on the line for the first time and we don’t like this feeling cause we don’t want it to end so we’re angry and about to do something about it, the champs will wrap this up in three blinks of an eye.
I don’t know about y’all but I’m not ready for this magical season to end. It would be very easy to kick our feet back after Game 4 tips tomorrow evening and just enjoy the show stress-free. The 2025-26 season has already been a smashing success, after all, with us having already completed one of the greatest one-year turnarounds in NBA history from 13th in the West last year to the Western Conference Finals this year. Even this Thunder team we are trying to dethrone got bounced in the second round on their first crack at the postseason (2023-24). It would be very easy to allow ourselves to finally succumb to accepting the premise that it is impossible for a team with a core this young to win the title after starting the postseason as playoff virgins. Your lack of experience will eventually bump up against a team that knows how to exploit it ergo the only way this thing can possibly end is with us taking our playoffs lumps. It certainly would be very easy to succumb to that premise but I say screw that. That premise just doesn’t fit with how anomalously special this team has been this season. This might be the most talented young core ever assembled on an NBA roster and I haven’t even yet mentioned the variable that renders a premise derived from historical data null and void…the magic of who Victor Wembanyama is as a basketball player is singularly unprecedented. If anyone is supposed to be capable of computing the ways in which his team was beaten on Friday at AMD Ryzen speed and then making the necessary adjustments to punch right back tomorrow, it’s the fierce young challenger from Le Chesnay, France who’s been prophesized to be basketball’s messiah and hath risen to meet every challenge of his basketball career head on so far. I expect nothing different tomorrow night. I’m not ready for this season to end and while I’m concerned that we are down in a series after three games for the first time, I’m not panicking and I’m certainly not succumbing to the premise that this inaugural postseason run has met an expiration date because I know Wemby is not interested in taking incremental steps. There is a trophy available for us to be bold enough to bear down and take this year. There’s no question that Victor understands this and will treat the opportunity with the resoluteness necessary to meet the moment and tie this series.
Not even an alien can do it alone, though. It’s a team sport, after all. It requires not just individual talent but also five teammates executing a game plan together and when the opponent solves your game plan, it requires making the necessary adjustments in strategy to give them a new puzzle. The second most important person in determining if the Spurs will punch the champs right back to even the series after losing Game 3 123-108 at home in the Frost Bank Center on Friday night isn’t De’Aaron Fox (and what we can get from our all-star vet on an ankle sprain that won’t stop getting re-aggravated) or Dylan Harper (and what we can get from our rookie prodigy on an abductor strain) or Stephon Castle (our 2nd-year iconoclast who has finally corrected his turnover issues by only coughing it up once in Game 3) or even player of the game Devin Vassell (who had 20 points, seven rebounds, and two assists while earning the distinction by being the only player on the team to continue playing Game 3 with the appropriate sense of urgency after OKC had answered our 15-0 start). The second most important person in determining whether we will win Game 4 isn;t any of Wemby’s teammates, it’s the son of a 1979 NBA champion, a Gregg Popovich-protege and our 2nd-year head coach, Mitch Johnson. The Thunder have solved our game plan predicated on limiting the MVP by making Shai Gilgeous-Alexander play in a crowd and daring his teammates to try to beat us from the perimeter. In Game 3, they did.
Last night, SGA’s supporting cast accepted our dare and made us pay. Jaylin Williams and Alex Caruso alone made 8-11 from deep. Control of the series has flipped so the most important thing that needs to happen tomorrow night besides Wemby reasserting his dominance is Coach Mitch has got to make an adjustment with how we are defending SGA. Now that we know Gilgeous-Alexander has the answers to the test, the Stanford graduate who accepted the responsibility of following in the footsteps of a legend among legends needs to give the MVP a pop quiz in parapsychology. Mitch (with a scheme adjustment courtesy of his defensive guru associate head coach Sean Sweeney) needs to get Wemby back in the types of defensive positions that will get Shai seeing ghosts again. Not only does he have Sweeney’s world class defensive scheme designs to draw from in order to get SGA back to being uncomfortable in order to walk down this series but he also has the stories his dad, John Johnson, must have told him about the Seattle SuperSonics responding from a gut-punching Game 5 loss at home to the Phoenix Suns to go down 3-2 in the 1979 Western Conference Finals only to win two straight and clinch the series in seven as well as the guidance of his mentor, Coach Pop, who has won the Western Conference Finals six times. Mitch Johnson has done a phenomenal job so far at the impossible task of replacing one of the most decorated and revered basketball coaches of all time. One of the reasons he has been so successful is that he’s learned from Pop the power of drawing from every available resource to gain the decisive edge over the opponent. Tomorrow night, I expect Coach Mitch to make the definitive adjustment of this series and show the basketball-viewing world that the #BlackAndSilver have no intentions of letting this magical season end. The irony or perhaps the symmetry of the opportunity that the Spurs head coach and Seattle native has to immediately flip this series back on its head is that he’s facing the city that stole his beloved team, the team his father helped win its only title and the team that served as a tapestry for his entire childhood. If any city deserves to be on the receiving end of the first masterclass coaching performance of Mitch Johnson’s career, it’s Oklahoma City. Tomorrow night, the bright young coach who used to bleed green and gold will have Victor Wembanyama and the San Antonio Spurs ready to stare down the Thunder and go straight up supersonic.
Featured Image Source: The Economic Times
Headline Image Source: The New York Times
Cinq de faits
2026 NBA Western Conference Semifinals, Game 2
Talk That Talk - There were one hundred different ways we could have won Game 1 by simply doing one thing better. Number One could have pumped-faked one time on one of his eight three point attempts and instead drove for one dunk and the and one and we would have won. Number Two could have applied one more ounce of English to his one-of-a-kind finishing ability on the one layup he missed and the wunderkind puts our opponent one bucket closer to 0-1. Number Three could have demonstrated he wanted one rebound one tiny bit more than his defender one time and one pump fake before one finish coupled with making the one free throw he missed and we wouldn’t have finished the evening left wanting. Number Four could have foregone one ill-advised careless pass one time forestalling one unforced turnover and the one extra formulated shot it would’ve produced for sure would have been a game-flipping one. Number Five could have been whistled for one fewer ticky-tack foul by what proved to be one one-sided performance by the officiating crew and one loss later the opposing coach would have had one legitimate reason to be complaining that one (not four or five) of Number One’s twelve blocks was legitimately an illegal one. No wonder the next day’s film session included one special guest whose position on the list of all-time winningest coaches is not five, not four, not three, not two but one.
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I sat down on my couch to watch the Spurs sixth game of the 2024-25 regular season on the evening of November 2nd, 2024 just like I would have on any other night for any other regular season game. We were playing at home in the Frost Bank Center against the Minnesota Timberwolves, a tough opponent coming off of a Western Conference Finals appearance. Even though the season had started out a little bit up and down (we were 2-3 heading into that game), I was looking forward to a good early test for Victor Wembanyama (coming off his 2023-24 Rookie of the Year season), Stephon Castle (this year’s exciting blue chip lottery pick rookie combo guard), Chris Paul (newly acquired legendary future hall-of-fame point guard) and company against Anthony Edwards, Julius Randall and the entire Wolf Pack.
The first thing I noticed was the announcers reporting that Gregg Popovich aka Coach Pop or simply Pop would not be coaching that evening; he was out with an undisclosed ailment. They went on to say assistant coach Mitch Johnson would be the one roaming the sidelines for this contest. At first, I didn’t think much of anything about it (other than I was surprised Mitch Johnson got the call to fill in for Pop over Brett Brown, the vastly more experienced assistant with former head coaching experience in the NBA). After all, Pop had missed a game or two here or there over the past five seasons due to minor medical absences which seemed pretty understandable for a coach in his 70s and now at 75 in his record-breaking 29th consecutive season as the head coach of the San Antonio Spurs. I brushed it off as another one of those and thought, it will be cool to watch and see how this young assistant handles the responsibility for one game. (He won the game 113-103 over the currently relevant perennial Western Conference contenders from the Twin Cities.)
Little did I know this at the time but on Halloween, two nights early, I had witnessed the winningest coach in NBA regular season history (1390), winningest coach in NBA regular season + playoffs history combined (1582), three-time NBA Coach of the Year (2003, 2012, 2014), 10-time Western Conference Finalist (1999, 2001, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2008, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2017), sixth-time NBA Finalist (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2013, 2014), five-time NBA Champion (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2014) and Hall of Fame (2023) greatest coach in basketball history Gregg Popovich coach his 2,547th and final game as head coach of the San Antonio Spurs in Salt Lake City against the Utah Jazz. (He also won the game 106-88 because, knowing Pop, he would probably say that, while unexpected, bowing out inconspicuously after a road win in Utah is a fitting way to sign off.)
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On Tuesday, May 5th, the San Antonio Spurs President of Basketball Operations walked into a film room at Victory Capital Performance Center on the campus of The Rock at La Cantera and rolled up his sleeves. One year and three days after officially retiring from the role of head coach of the San Antonio Spurs and 55ish years after allegedly turning down a covert role with the CIA, Gregg Popovich aka Popo aka The Notorious G.C.P. aka El Jefe, never one to miss an opportunity to immerse himself in celebrating the culture of the beloved city he has made his home for the past 32 years, stood in that film room in front of the 2025-2026 San Antonio Spurs players and coaches and, in honor of Cinco de Mayo, held up a piñata. He proceed to run the tape of Game 1 of the 2026 NBA Western Conference semifinals and went play by play, point by point on every improvement the team needed to make in Game 2 in order to pummel the Minnesota Timberwolves into utter submission.
The next night, the #BlackAndSilver did exactly that eviscerating our visitors from the Twin Cities by 38 points, 133-95. This was the third-biggest margin of victory in a playoff game in San Antonio Spurs franchise history as well as Minnesota’s worst playoff defeat in franchise history. I think it’s safe to say that even though Coach Pop’s November 2nd, 2024 stroke left him with limitations that prevented him from returning to the physical demands of coaching NBA basketball, he still has the sharpest basketball tactician mind currently being deployed in the league. What a (not so) secret weapon and valuable resource Mitch Johnson and his players have at their disposal to tap when necessary. And, man, was it ever so necessary this week after fumbling away home court advantage and falling into a 0-1 hole in this Western Conference Semifinals series after a not-quite-ready-for-the-intensity-of-playing-a-more-experienced-playoff-opponent lackadaisical performance on Monday. When it became official on May 2nd, 2025 that the dream of Coach Pop coming full circle to coach the next-generation Wemby-Fox-Castle Spurs to the franchise’s sixth championship was dead due to his medically-necessary retirement from the bench, it was hard and it was sad even though we, as Spurs fans, all knew that he wasn’t going anywhere and was still going to be actively involved in the program through his role in the front office. As amazing of a job as 2025-26 Coach of the Year finalist Mitch Johnson has done in his stead, a subtle melancholy persisted beneath the surface all season knowing Pop had been robbed of the opportunity to lead this young, talented, special group while they are making their leap back into contention. That melancholy was lifted with Wednesday’s dominant, world-class response to adversity in the form of the 38-point drubbing we laid down on Minnesota and knowing how intimately involved El Jefe was in making it happen.
While Wemby had a strong, balanced performance in Game 2 with 19 points, 15 rebounds, two assists, two blocks, and a steal and De’Aaron Fox bounced back from his abhorrent Game 1 performance with a solid and steady 16 points, two assists and two steals, the player of the game was 2nd year phenom Stephon Castle. Steph imposed his will with his physicality on both sides of the ball. On defense, he held the T-Wolves franchise player Anthony Edwards in check as the primary defender, holding Ant to 12 points (5-13 shooting), zero assists, and four turnovers. Castle was once again in foul trouble (and once again called for a couple of soft ones) but he felt much more in control and intentional about what he was trying to do on that end of the floor in Game 2. On offense, he led the team in scoring with 21 points on an efficient 6-10 from the field and a stellar 9-9 from the line. He added four rebounds, four assists, and two steals for good measure. One of the questions posed by the talking heads in the national media heading into the postseason was asking if the lack of playoff experience would prove costly for the Spurs’ young, talented core in our pursuit of an “ahead of schedule” title run. I think it’s safe to say that the 2024 NCAA Champion UConn Husky was built for this.
While it is quite plausible that wire-to-wire 38-point historic beat down that we laid on the wounded Timberwolves on Wednesday night at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio might have broken them, we would be beyond foolish to count on it. This team has been here before, knows what it takes to respond and even though we are now +36 in total points for the series, the fact remains the series is tied 1-1 and Minnesota is currently still in control of home court advantage. They have an opportunity to reset and regroup tonight at home in the comfortable confines of the Target Center in Minneapolis and protect the home court they earned by snatching the toss up on Monday that was Game 1. A wounded animal is a dangerous one and if you underestimate the battle-tested Minnesota Timberwolves, you do so at your own peril. In order to regain home court advantage tonight, we need to come out sharp, focused and ready to control the tempo and the physicality of tonight’s proceedings. Game 3 is not going to be a cakewalk. It is going to be a war. Luckily for us, our (not so) secret weapon is likely holed up in a bunker somewhere deep in the bowels of Victory Capital Performance Center on the campus of The Rock at La Cantera back home in San Antonio confident that the message has been delivered about the preparedness that is necessary to play with the appropriate fear tonight and get this wounded animal back in its cage. With Gregg Charles Popovich back doing what he does best (preparing his team for playoff success), I like our chances to do exactly that tonight. We are beyond lucky for the last 30 years and everything that’s still to come. Thank you for choosin’ Texas, Coach Pop. Can’t wait to see what your incomparable basketball tactician mind has in store for us next. In Pop we trust.
Featured Image Source : The Honey POP
Headline Image Source: TODAY