What We Learned from the Spurs win over the Jazz

SAN ANTONIO, TX - NOVEMBER 2: Victor Wembanyama #1 of the San Antonio Spurs smiles during the game against the Utah Jazz on November 2, 2026 at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, Texas. NOTE TO USER: User expressly acknowledges and agrees that, by downloading and or using this photograph, user is consenting to the terms and conditions of the Getty Images License Agreement. Mandatory Copyright Notice: Copyright 2026 NBAE (Photos by Michael Gonzales/NBAE via Getty Images) | NBAE via Getty Images

It’s giving midseason.

Somewhere in the second quarter, with the Spurs up one and about to be up more, I realized I wasn’t watching the game. I was, instead, watching myself not watch the game, which is a worse hobby and the one I’m apparently best at. The game was fine. The game was exactly what it said on the label: a nondescript tilt between two teams already headed down different tracks. The shine of October basketball had worn off completely and, like summer turning to fall, the Grind had arrived.

Shocking how quickly that happens.

As a first quarter blowout turned into a 2nd quarter snoozer, my brain began to wander a bit. I could be anywhere in the world right now. A plastic stool in Hanoi, a bowl of pho, a little light rain. A mountain pass in the Andes, thin air, nobody asking me for a take. Man, I should be reading books. Seeing films. I should be the kind of person whose passport has all those cool stamps in it. This one precious life the universe handed me was unraveling in real time as Ace Bailey stepped into a 25-foot pull-up three to cut the Jazz’s deficit to one.

Then Stephon Castle missed a layup and I almost decided to call it a night. It was as annoying as it was unremarkable and I just didn’t need it anymore. I reached for the remote and, as I did, Victor Wembanyama, who a minute earlier had similarly flubbed an alley-oop, grabbed the rebound and tipped it back in. Twenty seconds after Bailey’s three. No celebration. Barely a facial expression.

I’d love to tell you that’s the moment I’d been looking for, but that would be too tidy. What I’d been searching for was a hook. A story, a cause, a catalyst. Anything to hold off the particular ennui of being a fan of a good team. And Wemby wasn’t even good last night, not by any stretch. Five of fifteen. Zero for five from three. Five turnovers. He was in that mode he gets in from time to time where he decides the Key to Victory is to simply chuck it.

The Spurs won by 22 anyway, not because of a miracle but because this roster has more than one way to be competent. The Spurs are, mercifully, more than the sum of their parts.

Not that the parts are bad. Quite the contrary. Dylan Harper scored all 17 of his points before the third quarter was half over. Stephon Castle is an animal. De’Aaron Fox looks like the guy we paid for. Tarris Reed continues to grab rebounds in a way that feels like it’s going to be important (seven in about seven minutes last night). Every wing combination we’ve thrown on the court is its own kind of fun.

I mean, look at Harrison Barnes. A man as old as time itself (he’s four years younger than me) had an insanely active night. He knocked down threes from 29, 25 and 24 feet, he ran around, he caused trouble. Early in the fourth he got tangled up with Brice Sensabaugh, slid across the floor, got back up, and just stared at him while the refs reviewed it in slow motion. I’m told that clip racked up 140,000 views on the world wide web within about an hour.

The thing about the Grind is that it doesn’t have to mean anything, which means that everything within the Grind gets to be exactly what it is. A tip dunk. A well executed outlet pass. An old man staring down Brice Sensabaugh. Like, I didn’t come out of the womb craving the Larry O’Brien trophy. I just was at my breakfast table in 1996 watching Michael Jordan dunk on Rik Smits during a SportsCenter rerun, and some part of me said, with zero strategic vision, “Yes. More of that.” More of that was the entire ask and, frankly, it still is.

Look at us. You and me. Like I said, we could be anywhere in the world right now, but we’re right here with the Spurs and the Jazz on a Monday night in November. The stools in Hanoi will still be there someday, but a precocious superstar, having the worst night of his season, is putting a ball back through the hoop like a child tucking in his stuffed animals for the night.

You don’t have to impress some greater importance on a moment like that to make it mean something. You were there. It’s a part of you now and you got to live it.

If that isn’t special, I don’t know what is.

The beautiful game. pic.twitter.com/bX57x1dKoA

— J.E. Skeets (@jeskeets) November 3, 2026

• Dylan Harper seems almost casually good at basketball. It’s remarkable and breathtaking, these things he’s doing, but it also has that effect of seeming effortless when he’s casually dismantling another team. In the second quarter he stole the ball and in a blink Vassell was dunking off his pass. In the third, he stole it again and Stephon was finishing an alley-oop before I’d even registered it. He added 8 assists and 7 rebounds on top of all his scoring. I find myself almost taking it for granted at this point, and we’ve really only started to scratch the surface of what he’s capable of. Scary to think about! (For our opponents. For us it’s just exceedingly cool and fun.)
• I know it’s just the Jazz, grain of salt and all that, but I never get tired of seeing the Spurs get out on the break and run. They won fast-break points 26-9, against a Jazz team that turned it over just 11 times, a season low for Utah, so a lot of that was pure rebound-and-go. They also won the paint 52-36 and opened the game on an 18-2 run. Run for days my boys. Grab the ball and never stop running. Only good can come from this. Open looks from three, easy paths to the rim, potential foul trouble for the opponents. Push that pace. Push that pace. PUSH THAT PACE.
• This is not how development works and, to be clear, I don’t know what I’m talking about, but I absolutely crave Tarris Reed minutes. I want him to become a Sasquatch, Godzilla, King Kong, Loch Ness, Goblin, ghoul and a zombie with no conscience. I want basketballs to fear him checking into the game because they’re about to get rebounded to within an inch of their lives.
• I love a wire-to-wire win. Next time you hear me complaing about a wire to wire win feel free to come to my house and take an ice cold waterloo out of my fridge as payment for my sins.

So, you’re a Waterloo Man, eh?

I’m a man of all seasons, to be clear, but right now, yes, I am currently in a Waterloo phase of my Sparkling Water career.

Any particular reason?

There is a particular Black Cherry flavor I’ve grown fond of and I just can’t stay away at this point. It scratches this weird nostalgic part of my brain that yearns for a Blue Sky soda I had in my youth. Do you remember Blue Sky soda?

Vaguely. That had kind of cool cans?

Yeah, the cans were cool. I don’t know. I think I had just never experienced the concept of a soda that existed outside the mainstream world of the Coca-Cola and Pepsi family trees, so when I went on vacation and saw this crazy looking can with a cherry sitting on a cloud it just… broke my brain a little bit and I had to have it.

Did it taste good?

Who could say? I was six years old. I’d left the summer heat in Texas and woken up the next day in a Colorado mountain town sipping an alien soda from heaven. Maybe it was good, maybe it wasn’t, but it stirred something deep in my soul that I think I’ve been searching for ever since.

And Black Cherry Waterloos scratch that itch for you?

They do. Publix also pretty regularly throws them in Buy One Get Ones for me and who am I to turn down a deal like that.