SAN ANTONIO (AP) — The San Antonio Spurs’ journey to the NBA Finals has been filled with obstacles and challenges.
During their first-round matchup with Portland, they surrendered home-court advantage before ultimately claiming the series victory. The same pattern repeated itself in the second round against Minnesota. In their Western Conference finals battle with Oklahoma City, they fell behind 2-1 before managing to eliminate the reigning champion Thunder in a grueling seven-game series.
Now in the championship round, they’ve once again surrendered home-court advantage after dropping Game 1 to the New York Knicks. It’s another familiar challenge for this resilient squad.
“We’ve been consistent in that regard,” Spurs coach Mitch Johnson said Thursday as his team prepares for Game 2 on Friday night. “I think one thing we have learned in our three series is that series are long. Games are long. Things shift quickly, whether that’s health, who’s playing well or hot, quote-unquote, at the time. Teams at this stage typically have shown the ability to evolve on the fly and improve within a series.”
Such improvement will be essential if the Spurs want to travel to New York with the series tied at one game each.
Their Game 1 performance featured numerous struggles: poor shooting overall (36%), dismal three-point accuracy (26%, connecting on just 11 of 43 attempts), insufficient ball movement with only 16 assists, being outscored 50-42 in the paint, and failing to protect a 14-point advantage in the third quarter. While New York deserves recognition for causing many of these problems, the Spurs recognize they can perform at a much higher level.
“I think the reason we lost that game isn’t even technical (or) tactical,” Spurs star Victor Wembanyama said. “We need to approach the game with a better mental state. We just need to play our game. We just need to be normal.”
Normal?
“‘Normal’ means trusting each other, trusting the basketball gods, trusting the game plan, executing, and not relying on talent so much to make shots or to save the day,” Wembanyama said. “We’ve been playing a certain way all season. We’ve been successful this way. There’s no reason to change the day the finals start.”
Identifying areas for improvement came easily for the Spurs.
For the Knicks currently, that task proves much more challenging.
New York has won 12 consecutive games, becoming just the third team to accomplish this feat during a single postseason. The previous two teams to achieve this — San Antonio in 1999 and Golden State in 2017 — both captured NBA titles. While the Knicks are performing like championship contenders, star guard Jalen Brunson emphasizes that New York cannot adopt any mindset suggesting their work is complete and victory is guaranteed.
“It’s all about just getting better every single day, keep chipping away, keep chipping away, being 1% better,” said Brunson, who led all scorers with 30 points in his finals debut Wednesday. “When you take steps back, how can you improve? … Having that mentality and focus and approach I think allows us to still be students of the game and still find ways to learn, even through wins, and I think we need to continue to do that.”
The Knicks had experienced their second nine-day layoff between series — an unexpected result of sweeping Philadelphia in the Eastern Conference semifinals and Cleveland in the East finals — and managed the extended break effectively.
However, New York’s Mikal Bridges anticipates Game 2 will showcase better play.
“I don’t think our Game 1s, even though we won, have been great at all,” Bridges said. “It’s tough to assimilate the emotional aspect, how physical it’s going to be when you’re in practice every day, besides being in those games. It’s tough. … Now, we kind of got a rhythm. We’ve got to be better and I know we will be Game 2.”
The Spurs share similar expectations for improvement.
While this isn’t yet a must-win situation for San Antonio, traveling to New York trailing 2-0 would make their championship quest significantly more difficult. The Spurs have overcome every challenge presented during these playoffs and must rise to the occasion once more.
“It’s very reassuring,” Wembanyama said. “We know we’re not here by chance. We’ve been through some weird — what do you call it? — weird situations, whatever. Yes, it’s reassuring to know that these guys, the 18 guys we got, are built this way. They are resilient.”
