Photo by Ronald Cortes/Getty Images

Even before the game, the omens were less than favorable.

For the season, the Spurs were 2-9 with no rest. And the two wins had been excruciatingly narrow.

One of those wins had come against the hapless Washinton Wizards. And while the other had come against Minnesota Timberwolves, it had required almost everything to go right for the Spurs, and almost everything to go wrong for the Timberwolves.

It didn’t help that the Spurs had embarrassed the Suns early in the season in consecutive contests, including one in which Victor Wembanyama had done this to Kevin Durant, as a rookie, while the Suns weathered their initial chemistry and injury issues.

Those issues have largely been ironed out at this point, though, and the Suns appear to have found their rhythm as they push for a top 4 seed in the Western Conference.

Durant, for his part, was probably also in the mood to silence fans who continued to post highlights of Victor burning him off the dribble.

No quarter was likely to be had. Like storm clouds gathering on the horizon of a ship launch, or choppy waters at the beginning of a voyage, the Spurs were looking more like the Edmund Fitzgerald than Old Ironsides, with legs heavier than loads of iron ore.

Sometimes the harbingers of doom are accurate. Roughly halfway through the 1^st quarter the Spurs were down by 7 points. By the end of the 2^nd they were down by 18. They had looked gassed at tip-off, and there was simply no recovery to be had.

Still, the teams and their announcers carried on. That’s their job. Finding reasons to play, reasons to talk, reasons to remain engaged.

For the rest of us however, there are volume knobs; the blissful invention of the little known Italian mastermind, Tomo Sonoro, to whom we all owe a great debt of gratitude. (I have no idea who actually invented it. Tesla, probably.)

At halftime I muted my television for the rest of the game.

There are benefits to watching an NBA game without sound. If you’ve never done it before, I highly recommend it. In a losing effort it is ‘so choice’. Both literally and metaphorically it’s the kind of thing that cuts right through the noise.

Normally, I’d switch over to radio wonder Bill Schoening after muting the TV, but there are some games even he cannot redeem.

There are only so many times that you can hear people talk about the effort that Wemby is making in spite of a steady diet of double (and triple) teams. Only so many times you can hear that Devin Vassell is having one of the worst shooting nights of his career. Only so many games in a season that you can tolerate hearing the same talking points ad nauseum.

After 116 losses in two years, sometimes you’ve heard every silver lining there is to hear.

God forbid you turn the television off though. You might miss something good, and that just wouldn’t do. It’s not a sickness, you swear, as you watch the roof get blown off of your favorite team.

So you put on some music a few minutes into the 3^rd quarter. Sometimes this helps. Watching the Spurs lose to the sounds of The Talking Heads, Johnny Cash, and Gordon Lightfoot just feels right.

You turn up the volume. The opening piano chords of The Police’s ‘King of Pain’ float glumly through the airwaves. Ah yes, this is it, a basketball Paradise Lost. My favorite team is losing, and I too am the king of pain.

Just a few more minutes. I’ll turn the TV off right after this. After this sequence. Well, no, probably the next one. Yeah, the next one.

Takeaways

It’s not often that I really have to reach for a bright spot. Believe it or not, I am more of an optimist, and have even been accused of cheerful homerism on occasion. However, it is worth noting that San Antonio’s bench squad were the ones to hold up their end of the deal in this one. It wasn’t spectacular, but it was steady and reliable, something that’s been hard to say about that group for most of the season. Four players scored in double-digits off the bench, and even though the defense remains subpar there, scoring was desperately needed as Devin Vassell scored a paltry 2(!) points for the entire game, Jeremy Sochan ended the evening with a -21 +/-, and Victor received the lion’s share of the defensive attention, something most teams have now focused on when facing the Spurs.
Something that was nice to see were minutes for Sandro Mamukelashvili, and he made the most of them, scoring 11 points in just 8 minutes and adding a fluidity to the bench’s ball movement per usual. I’m sure it’s not easy having to come out hot like that at a moment’s notice, but the for most of the season Mamu’s delivered when his number’s been called, and he deserves a moment in the sun for that. I’m not sure that he’ll still be on the team next season, but he’s certainly made the best argument for it that he can, and sometimes that’s all you can do.

Playing You Out – The Theme Song of the Evening:

King Of Pain by The Police