It was 104 \u2013 104.<\/p>\n
In the final seconds of game two of the NBA Finals, Victor Wembanyama grabbed a rebound and passed it up court to teammate Stephon Castle. Castle didn\u2019t see the pass coming \u2014 it hit him in the back and bounced into the hands of the Knicks\u2019 Jalen Brunson.<\/p>\n
The Spurs lost that game on the way to eventually falling to the New York Knicks in the NBA Finals series 4-1.<\/p>\n
For many fans, these hiccups looked like inexperience. Wembanyama is 22 and Castle is 21. The Spurs are the second youngest team to ever make it to the Finals.<\/p>\n
Dan Solomon wrote a retrospective on the team<\/a> for Texas Monthly. He said that what\u2019s true now for the team doesn\u2019t have to reflect their future.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can reasonably expect that they\u2019ve learned from this, and that those aren\u2019t the mistakes they\u2019re likely to make the next time they\u2019re in this position,\u201d said Solomon.<\/p>\n The New York Knicks quickly became the \u201cmain characters\u201d of the Finals. Americans are primed to root for the underdogs, which The Knicks decidedly were \u2014 they hadn\u2019t seen an NBA title in 53 years.<\/p>\n The story left Spurs fans in a strange position.<\/p>\n \u201cThat was kind of a weird experience,\u201d said Solomon, \u201cwatching as a Spurs fan and watching from Texas to realize that the broader conversation isn\u2019t about the team that you care about. It\u2019s about the other one.\u201d<\/p>\n For some, that insulation from the narrative can be part of what makes rooting for the Spurs feel so special.<\/p>\n \u201cThis part of the state doesn\u2019t have another team,\u201d said Solomon. \u201cSan Antonio gets one and they really, really care about it.\u201d<\/p>\n The Spurs just aren\u2019t as flashy as the Knicks, so what else keeps fans watching? Well for one, the team is built on a roster of future talent.<\/p>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a lot to be optimistic about,\u201d said Solomon. \u201cI think that these players aren\u2019t going to get worse. If the biggest problem was youth, and I think that it was, then that gets cured just by the passage of time.\u201d<\/p>\n From Solomon\u2019s perspective, what happened in New York this season is only the beginning for the Spurs.<\/p>\n \u201cA few different plays at the end of a few games, and this is a completely different story,\u201d he said. \u201cI don\u2019t think you\u2019ll see those mistakes happen again.\u201d<\/p>\n If you found the reporting above valuable, please consider making a donation to support it\u00a0here<\/a>. Your gift helps pay for everything you find on\u00a0texasstandard.org<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0KUT.org<\/a>. Thanks for donating today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was 104 \u2013 104. In the final seconds of game two of the NBA Finals, Victor Wembanyama…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":719976,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":["post-719975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=719975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/719975\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/719976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=719975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=719975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=719975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}