It was weird getting to zone out last night.

Over the years I’ve been pretty open about my tendency to do this when the game gets out of hand for the Spurs, but (for the most part) I just wasn’t able to disengage like that this season.

That is, I think, one of the biggest compliments that I can give this Spurs team, after years of spending 4^th quarters trying to brainstorm new ways to write about losses.

Sure, when I started writing for the site back in 2018, I would have to write about the occasional loss, but it almost felt like a novelty after so many years of watching the Spurs win so many games.

I had no way of knowing what I’d gotten myself into, even though my very first article ended up being about Kawhi’s exit.

The thing is, you can read about Icarus, and The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire, and the sacking of Babylon, and still not really comprehend the free-fall until you’re in it. There’s something about the immediacy of human experience that insulates us from fully grasping how vulnerable we all are, especially at the highest of highs.

In 2018 the Spurs were just four years removed from the most astonishing title in franchise history. The seven years between titles had felt like an eternity.

Now, it’s hard to grasp that it’s been twelve years. I mean, the Spurs were one year shy of going seven years without seeing the postseason, much less a title.

Somehow, the prosperity of this year feels like it has compressed all of that time into something that feels infinitely more brief. It’s strange how a good thing can almost banish the visceral eternity of a more difficult time. Odd how it can effortlessly alter the atmosphere of memory.

It’s one of the most fascinating aspects of mortal recollection that we have this bizarre way of romanticizing the past in the glow of a better present. We talk about the good times in the context of the bad times.

[smiling] “Remember how bad that was?!”

[laughing] “Oh yeah, that was terrible!”

I suppose the contrast is a necessary part of appreciation. I certainly have appreciated this Spurs season more than a great many that were arguably just as prosperous.

I remember having the great privilege of seeing my daughter being born. It was a long, arduous labor to an extent that words can hardly do it justice, and then, suddenly, it was over.

It was almost frightening how quickly things moved once our child was out in the world. The span in which the child was handed to her mother, and then to me, felt like it moved in milliseconds, though I know it must have been much longer.

I can distinctly remember wondering if time itself had sped up as I severed the umbilical cord in what felt like mere moments after she’d been delivered. Nothing prepares you for the immediacy of the event. I’m not sure that anything ever could.

It’s not unlike the way this Spurs season feels like it has materialized. We’ve all been witness to the labor and the difficulty and even knowing what was on the other end of it, somehow it still feels like a surprise.

The Spurs won 62 games. I had them marked down for 50ish at the start of the season, and I was one of the more optimistic ones.

62 wins is tied for the 3^rd most wins in franchise history. The Spurs are the #2 seed in the West, and were clear of #3 by eight wins. They’re just the 3^rd team in NBA history to increase their win total by 40+ wins in a two-year span. They tied the franchise record for wins on the road with 30.

When did this all happen?! It feels like one-minute I was writing about 16 and 18 game losing streaks, and patience, and deep vein thrombosis, and then suddenly this monster of a team materialized, and I spent almost every game glued to my television set because it honestly felt like they could win any and all of them, no matter how far behind they were.

I get that I’ve been writing about them the whole time that changes have been occurring, but it’s kind of the like the gulf between knowing that your child is roughly the size of a watermelon during the final month of pregnancy and then seeing that kid pop right out in front of you.

Maybe it’s just one of the limits of our finite cognizance; that knowledge is both limited and expanded by the relative immediacy of presence. Not so much ‘out of sight out of mind’ as ‘a bird in hand’ is very viscerally a bird in your hand.

I think all the time about how humanity is so very awful at both existing in and fully appreciating the moment. The miracle of birth feels like one of the rare times that nothing else interferes, nothing else distracts, nothing else takes precedence.

It’s an intense event because of how present we are; something that the modern zeitgeist has proliferated into countless courses and methods in pursuit of it.

I’ve been thinking about this for almost two weeks now. I thought about it last night, as the final quarters of the Spurs’ final loss of regular season ticked away, and my twitter feed gradually turned to despair and anxiety.

I thought about it at Easter, as I watched my daughter and her cousins blithely frolic on the gargantuan playground that I’d helped my parents install in their backyard two winters ago.

It’s a brutal truth that we’re always loving things through delay.

Augustine, the Bishop of Hippo, once broke down the present into three categories: Memory, the present of things past. Attention, the present of things present. And Expectation, the present of things future.

In that philosophical vision of reality, only one of the three consists of the actual, immediate present – we must otherwise define it by reference. And it seems fitting that one of the ways in which we experience the present is through the root of all heartache (expectation).

We will never be happier than we are now, until later. We will never be unhappier, until the moment that it passes. We hyperbolize and catastrophize, and ache in the delay.

I’m gazing off into the middle distance with my television muted and a music app playing loudly over the silence, as the Spurs go through the motions of the final moments of the final regular season game, in a display that serves as a commentary on the lack of precariousness that the season has provided, and suddenly a children’s song comes on, the algorithmic remainder of a time when car rides consisted of nursery rhymes and lullabies.

In an instant, my daughter materializes in front of me, tottering in a way that she’s well beyond now.

She’s not even two yet, bouncing at the knees in the way that toddlers mimic dance, singing her best version of ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’, lisps and all. She wants my approval, the words that convey pride. She needs them in the way that she’ll never stop needing them from someone.

She’s smiling at me, and I hope it never ends. I know that it both will and never will. Everything ends and never ends and keeps on ending and not ending.

Memory is an eternity and an instant, and I want to remember every moment. I want to notice everything and carry it away. We all contain the multitudes of daughters dancing now and in memory.

The season was a miracle and a tragedy. A miracle in the way it unfolded. A tragedy in the way that I will never experience it anew. And it’s still not over.

Be present for it. Present for it all. And Go Spurs, Go!

• Carter Bryant may have gone 1-7 from three last night, but man are the flashes starting to come hard and fast with the minutes he’s getting. I don’t think it’s possible to bottle the feeling I had watching him dunk all over Nikola Jokic near the end of the 1st quarter, but I’d almost be willing to watch the entire loss all over again just to experience the shiver than went up my spine when he did it, or the hyper-athletic pair of blocks he had on Curtis Jones and David Roddy barely a minute later. There’s still some inconsistency from long-range, which is understandable, but much like Steph Castle and Dylan Harper, Bryant is actually shooting over 40% from three over the last ten games, so give shooting coach Jimmy Baron his flowers, because he’s done incredible work with multiple budding players on San Antonio’s roster this year.
• I have to admit, I didn’t love the Spurs playing Castle and Harper if MATFO’s intention was to mail this game in like Ted Kaczynski. Outside of Wemby, the thing that makes this team so lethal is the way it can mix and match guards in any scheme and phase of the game. At any given moment, the Spurs have multiple star-caliber guards sharing the back-court, harassing the opposition and darting down lanes like the Roadrunner bolts through canyons. Thankfully Harper only sustained a thumb injury to the point of being listed as ‘day-to-day’, but that could have been disastrous, as the bench in particular (as well as Keldon Johnson) just does not function at their absolute best without him. The Spurs are going to need to be able to lean into their depth as a postseason advantage, even without accruing further injuries, so that felt like a miss from the coaching staff. Still, I understand that you have to play somebody.
• I think this might really be it for Bismack Biyombo after this season. After looking pretty creaky last year, I assumed he’d pretty much reached his basement as a player, but he somehow looked even more immobile this season, to the point that I felt confused at to why he was even on the roster. I understand that there are players you keep around because they’re good for the team, but the Spurs absolutely have to upgrade at the 3rd big man spot this off-season. Whether in the draft or in free-agency, it should be a pretty low asset cost to exceed the degrading skill of Biyombo and Mason Plumlee, and with both Wemby and Kornet missing some games this season (separately and together), it’s a point of clear need.
• I’m a big fan of De’Aaron Fox, and am usually in the habit of defending him against fans who hate on him because of his contract, but it has to be noted that he has been absolutely frigid from beyond the arc as of late. Not only is he shooting 25% from three over the last 10 games, but he hasn’t finished a month shooting better than 33% from three since January. Granted, he’s never been a sniper from downtown, but the Spurs will need him to be closer to 35% to maximize the tandem between him and Castle as teams look for ways to scheme against San Antonio’s start back-court. I’m really hoping he turns it around, asap.
• I just have to praise Stephon Castle one more time for his defense this season. Even playing at less than full-octane, he’s remains a black hole for whoever he’s matched up on. If you have twitter, you should take a look at some the charts on this tweet I’ve linked. He wreaked havoc on everyone from Luka Doncic, to Devin Booker, to SGA. There’s a reason I started calling it Castle’s Dungeon.
  
  

Playing You Out – The Theme Song of the Evening:

You and Me by Lifehouse