The Beauty of Team Ball

Oh the joy! Man I love it when the Spurs win. But last night was not just a victory, it was a behind the woodshed, prepare to meet your maker, stone cold beat down. And to be honest, it was a whole lot less satisfying than I thought such a beat down would be.

I didn't write up a profile of last night's game ahead of time because I wasn't sure what to write. Everyone who writes columns like ours of course tries to be objective. We try not to let our hometown biases color our opinions of what's going to happen. But we are all human, and having biases is a part of being human. Caring so much for a team you identify with, hoping for your team and its colors to triumph is part of what makes you human. But so is the disappointment and sorrow that follows when they let you down. And that's what emotion thousands of Rockets and James Harden fans are left with this morning: abysmal disappointment. 

The atmosphere of the game when the first buzzer rang should have foreshadowed something: the arena was mostly empty. Twitter and Reddit were all wondering, where are the Rocket faithful? This is an elimination game!! I mean, $1 beer night is great and all, but how could you leave your team hanging like this RocketNation? By the end of the first quarter it became apparent that the fans weren't the only ones who didn't show up. 

James Harden was awful. There are nights you give it your all and come up short. There are nights you take those shots and they just don't fall. But if you're an MVP caliber player, if you're the leader of your light brigade you don't not take the shots at all. Westbrook may have gone down early, but at least he went down in a blaze of triple-double glory, at least he tried. There are no words for how Harden played last night, but if I had to choose a string of them, I'd pick: shameful, embarrassing, pathetic, confusing, disgraceful, disappointing, and ridiculous (not in the good way). 

The Spurs outmanned and out gunned the Rockets in every stat category. By half time there were six Spurs in double-digits. Aldridge was a beast, the Aldridge of old. Jonathan Simmons showed the world how $150 a dream can change the course of a lot of lives, and Gasol was aggressive and beat up on the Rockets interior with sheer size. We can talk about lack of shooting success, defensive rebounds, offensive rebounds, ball movement, whatever you like. The Spurs put on a clinic last night. But that's not what won the game - the Spurs won via sheer force of will, a sword sharpened through decades of discipline. They wielded that sword, played real Spurs Team Ball, and drew it across Mike D'Antoni's throat.

I don't think there's any doubt any longer that POP is the GOAT, and I don't think the Warriors are comfy in their slippers assuming a sweep is theirs either. The Spurs stepped out, in their first playoff year without Duncan, last night without Parker and without Leonard, and played Team Ball. They played next man up, they trusted the system, and their will and confidence silenced the arena and hurried the Rockets.  I think we saw a spark of greatness last night - greatness of the 2014 variety. Spurs fan or not, watching their 2014 Championship Team play was a thing of beauty that cannot be denied.  We saw the beginning of something last night. The question going forward is can this Spurs team, still very much finding itself with a new cast of characters and a new style of play, can they hang on to that spark? Can they hang on to that heart, that fire: can they hang on to The Most Beautiful Game?


Image credit to Hoops Habit