Victor Wembanyama must be human after all, and despite losing in the Emirates Cup Final, the San Antonio Spurs can cope, knowing $212,373 is waiting for them for whatever they have in mind. The two-way players get half of the pot, too, but more than the money, the ride is what coach Mitch Johnson thinks they\u2019ll take most from it.<\/p>\n
As a team on the come-up that wasn\u2019t labeled a contender before the season started, the Spurs were playing with the least amount of pressure, and the young guys grew up a bit in these higher-stakes games. When playoff time rolls around, the Spurs will be one of the few who passed their postseason pre-check and will be mentally sharper. Keep in mind that the runner-up in previous years reached the conference finals or the NBA Finals.<\/p>\n
Yet, as cool as Las Vegas is, these events would be better without a neutral court because fans are rowdier when they are seeing their team at home. For example, imagine how the Frost Bank Center would have turned into a madhouse if Wembanyama\u2019s third-quarter flurry happened there. Or consider how the Knicks, who haven\u2019t won anything important since 1973, and how Madison Square Garden\u2019s lid would have flown off when OG Anunoby buried a triple to put them up eight in the last two minutes.<\/p>\n
The third quarter was the most exciting sequence of the game as both squads combined for nine 3-pointers. All I could think about as both sides drained them was Cuba Gooding Jr. yelling, \u201cShow me the money,\u201d in the film, Jerry Maguire.<\/p>\n
The Spurs have shown a lot of their basketball character through 30 percent of the season. Yet the lesson they can take away from blowing the fourth quarter is what not to do in a playoff game, like giving up the 3-point line and being sped up into tough shots.<\/p>\n
Aside from not collecting a bigger check, the real loss for the Spurs is that they can\u2019t practice future celebrations by drinking their preferred liquid refreshment from the Emirates Cup.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Victor Wembanyama must be human after all, and despite losing in the Emirates Cup Final, the San Antonio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351302,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82,42860,78694],"class_list":{"0":"post-351301","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-spurs-analysis","13":"tag-what-we-learned"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351301","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}