This is a MASSIVE Opportunity for the Spurs…

This is a massive opportunity for the San Antonio Spurs as they face off against the Golden State Warriors for the second time in three days. They lost to them on Wednesday and have a chance to avenge Wednesday's loss and this game has even a little bit more stakes on it as we're playing for seeding in the Emirates Cup. We are going to discuss how the Spurs can get that done today here on Spurs Digest with your host Kenan Mourner. And guys, without further ado, let's just get right into it because I have been clamoring, the Spurs have been clamoring and I know all Spurs fans because you guys have been commenting like crazy on these last couple videos, are clamoring for this game because Wednesday did not go well. We lost and I understand you're not going 82-0, but the way the Spurs lost, Warriors getting 36 free throws to only our 16, allowing Steph Curry to go off for a 44-46 piece. I see 44 somewhere, 46, it was 46, but you see random numbers everywhere. Letting Steph go off for 40-plus, the Spurs turning the ball over 20 times was not a great showing on our part and De'Aaron Fox did not have one of his best games, but we have a chance to avenge that in a more important and more pivotal spot here tonight and we're going to discuss it. Of course, it's these two guys right here. It's Victor Wembenyama and it's Steph Curry. These two guys are going to be the keys to the game as they are pretty much every game. Not the X-Factors always, but the key. The Warriors are going to win, they're going to need another explosion from Steph. If the Spurs are going to win, they're going to need another great game from Victor Wembenyama which he has been putting through every single night, it feels like, except for a couple. He's 26-13-4 on the season with 3.6 blocks, shooting 50% from the floor, 34% from three. The man has been playing like an MVP candidate and one of the true MVP frontrunners that we have in this league thus far throughout the first 12% of the season. But let's just touch on a little bit of last game because last game is going to help preview this game. You see there in the 2nd and 3rd quarter, the Golden State Warriors, they ended the quarter strong in the 2nd and they did what they do in so many 3rd quarters which made them such a dangerous team over the last decade, which is take over the 3rd quarter. How they took over that 3rd quarter, a lot of foul calls where it was a little touchy ticky tack and you didn't love it on that side because we weren't getting the whistle on our end. Again, we are not blaming the rest for it, but realistically, they got a lot of free throws. That helped them get the game out, slowed the game down, but helped them chip into the lead that the Spurs had built in the first quarter by getting up 14. But Steph had a big 3rd and then the San Antonio Spurs, when teams are going on run, they looked a little bit like that old Spurs of the last couple years where you just see them sputter out for a little bit of time. They hadn't really done that for much of this season, which is why the lulls that you're going to naturally have in a game, they managed to quell those and actually get themselves to the next portion. We were not doing that as much and we were allowing the Warriors to gain momentum and we were playing without rhythm. In the game overall, we pretty much played the same way every single game except for a couple key factors that I'm going to talk about later. It has to do more so with fouls and then assist to turnover ratio. We'll really dive into it in just a moment, but otherwise, we played pretty much the way that we're always going to play and we look the same. We're a really consistent team when it comes to field goal percentage, 3-point percentage, free throws we actually shot better than we typically do. We are a good rebounding team, obviously a good defensive team. So overall, we didn't really play a bad game. We had bad spells and we just didn't play the smartest of game plans in my personal opinion. Right now, for this Group C game, 1-0 for the San Antonio Spurs. The Warriors are 0-1. We have a plus 11 differential, which is the second best, but since the Nuggets have actually lost, we are the number one. All we have to do is win all four of these games and we will be the number one and instantly put ourselves into that final realm of the Emirates Cup, which I believe is something we should gun for. The Emirates Cup, though it might not feel cool or important to you, I think that this could be a really nice time for the Spurs to get quality, meaningful games in and if you put them in high pressure, high leverage moments, you get to see the best of these players and maybe some players who you're like, oh, he shocked me. So now when you're getting to these game 80s, game 74s where you're playing for seeding or game 85 and 86 when you're in the playoffs, you're like, okay, let's see what we really can tinker with and you can go back to these moments. But let's preview in full the Warriors versus the San Antonio Spurs. The Spurs are a better team than the Golden State Warriors. We really should win this one. Better offensive rating. Better defensive rating. We're a 9th offense, 6th defense, the Warriors are 22 and 10th. Their net rating is an 11th, 17th. Rebounding percentages are better, 4th and 10th to 21, 23rd. Field goal percentages, 4th and 5th to 15th, like everything that we do right now is better than Golden State. It's a reason why we're 8-3, it's a reason why they're 7-6. They have lost some late games and put in some bad spots to some not so great teams and overall, this might be hard to see, I apologize right there, that's showing that we are 5th currently in net rating and it's hard to see because I had to go all the way down to where the Warriors are 17th in net rating. This is offensive rating, defensive rating, everything, you're net rating together. We are 5th in net rating in the league. We're one of the best teams in the league. We have been all season long and we're going to continue to be. So why did we lose last game? We lost last game in one part because of the fact that the Warriors do have talent on their team, two, we talked about the fouls, and three, I just thought we didn't get certain players in the best scenarios. I mean, you have Al Horford, you have Draymond Green, you've got Quentin Post, you've got Gary Payton II, you've got these players who can bother Wembley laterally, except for Quentin Post, take him out of that, but Al Horford can even slide a bit even though he is an elder statesman of the NBA, but really Draymond Green, GP2, the guys that they're putting on Wembley to kind of bother him, you can slide with him. Of course, because Wembley's agile and super athletic, but obviously he's not a guard. He has guard-like skills, but he is not a guard. So you can slide with him. The thing that they're giving up is massive, a massive height advantage, as we all know, and it was just where Wembley was catching the ball. We're going to discuss that a little bit more here, but it's really just where we're utilizing our stars and how we're utilizing our stars, because the Warriors, theoretically, because of their versatility and their switchability, they're a team that could guard us pretty well, but we do have just the great equalizer in the world and the greatest mismatch in the world, one of them at least, and that guy there, because he is so dang tall and has such good touch around the basket that it's difficult to have to deal with that. But as you see here, the top is the spurs and wins, the eight wins this year. The bottom is the spurs and losses this year, and it shows you a lot. That turnover, the assist to turnover ratio, 27 to 16, so that's about 1.5, 1.3, that's a little bit, that's not the best in the league, of course, but that's still good. We want to get those turnovers to get to a two-to-one ratio, that's really where you want to be, but we're nearing a two-to-one in our wins. And our losses, 24 and 18, that's like getting closer and closer to one, and that's not going to get it done. If you're assisting as much as you're turning the ball over, it's not going to get it done. And that key thing over there, personal fouls, 20 in our losses, or sorry, in our wins, rather, and then 27 in our losses. We are fouling so much more. We play defense at a high level, we get out in transition at a high level, we get points in the paint at a high level, and the big thing about getting points in the paint is, of course, we are, they can kind of try to leak out sometimes, a lot of teams don't really try to do that all that often unless they have the opportunities to, which they don't really against our team because we're laterally quick, but we're putting the ball in the basket a lot of the time because we're getting high-quality shots, so they're having to go underneath the basket to take it in. They're not able to get out in transitions, they may be able to get out in short transitions from four on three possibly if we're not getting back, but we've been doing a good job of getting back. But when we're fouling, we're allowing them to offensively slow the game down, get two free throws and probably get two points on the board, and then we're allowing them to set up their defense. And when we're allowing them to set up teams, I should say, to set up their defense, we're not spectacular in the half court. We're great in transition, we're great in the fast break, we're good when we have rhythm, but we are not great when it's say, hey, run this set, run this set, because we don't run the sets that's prevalent, the most prevalent to our team's success. In my personal opinion at times, we can become lethargic and we can get not-quality shots which then just leads to more buckets and better possessions for the team going on the offensive from there. This, well I want to talk about Wemby a little bit. I want to talk Wemby a little bit. And obviously we're going to talk these other two. But Wemby, the other two as in Fox and Castle because they're very important. But Wemby, that's his last three games. I show this because I want to focus on the three point shots. He's 11-25 in his last three games from three. He was 6-25 from three in his first eight. He's shooting a lot more threes now. I'm not loving it. I'm really not loving it. I love the fact that he is able to take these threes and make these threes. Of course, Wemby is a great shooter. But I don't love taking 7-9 threes a game. It's starting to get back into what we saw last year which was still obviously elite. But what was making him so elite and scary earlier was his want to be inside at just a high level. It was everything was downhill, downhill, and getting him in spot. I would love to set him pin down screens and back screens to get him 8-12, 14, even 16 feet away from the basket with smaller guys on him so he can really take one dribble and shoot. Then off of that, he is a good passer and he does make plays off of that. Now you can get the double teams, kick it out, rotations, and maybe get him on a backside lob again. Or you get a drive because people are so afraid of the fact that Wemby is there. I would love to get him back into that 3-4 threes a game unless obviously you're rolling like you were against Chicago. 6-9, you're fine with it because he can get hot and you're going to have games like that. But I don't want this to become a trend where he is just taking 7-9 threes again because what was making him so dangerous early in the season was the fact that he wasn't. Another thing I wanted to point out with Wemby is in his wins, he is doing two things much better and it aligns the same thing when I was talking with the team just barely. 2.6 turnovers and 3.5 fouls in our wins. So he's not turning the ball over at a higher rate and he's not fouling and getting into instant foul trouble. In our losses this year, 5 fouls and 6 turnovers. He's getting into foul trouble to where he can't play the same kind of tenacious defense and run and protect at the same level so people can attack him a little more. And then offensively, he's getting the ball 18-20 something feet out because he's more perimeter based in those games that you typically see and he's turning the ball over more. That just can't get it done. The points are down and all those things, but the big things for me are the personal fouls and the turnovers. Talking about Stephon Castle now, I love the way Castle's been playing. We need to have him continue to play. He gets up for these Steph Curry games, he gets up for these Warrior games, he's going to continue. He's 19-7-8 over the course of the season. Over the course of the last three games actually, this man is 18-12-6. That is 84-85 magic numbers if he did that for an entire season. He's playing phenomenal basketball and doing 12 assists with only 2.5 turnovers is elite distributing ability. So he is playing at an elite level at the guard position right now. Love to see that from him. And then the other guy that we're going to need tonight, we're going to need this guy. He needs to be efficient. He did not play well against the Warriors last game. And that's okay. De'Aaron Fox on the season, he's getting his win back, but he did not play well against the Golden State Warriors and he's going to need to play well. We need him around 18-20, but we need it efficient. We need not the 6 turnovers that he had last game. We need to keep the turnovers down, the fouls down, and the rest of this team has been playing the same way all season long. That starts with Wemby. When he gets in foul trouble and turning the ball over, it sets the tone for the rest of the team. And we cannot have that if we're going to beat this Golden State Warriors team that's now feeling good and now rested because they were able to go from a back-to-back going from Oklahoma City to San Antonio to two days and chilling in San Antonio and now get to come back to it. We have the ability to win this game. I believe we will win this game. We're favored. And I think that we'll get it done tonight. I truly do. This team has a lot of get back in them and I believe in this team. Let me know what you guys think in the comments about the score of the game. Who do you think is going to win? Who do you think is going to lose? But tonight, I really think it's about this guy setting the tone. De'Aaron Fox being efficient and Stephon Castle continuing to play the way they play because after that, the San Antonio Spurs have really been consistent. It has been maybe a couple different bench players, a couple different things here and there. But overall, the Spurs have been consistent as a team. But when we're not fouling and we're not turning the ball over at a high rate, we are a pretty unbeatable team and we don't even have our full requisite pieces yet. We're still missing Dylan Harper, of course. But let me know in the comments what you think about the Warriors and the San Antonio Spurs. This is a massive opportunity for the Spurs to avenge a loss that we should have won to get another win in the Emirates Cup standings and really start to separate ourselves in that so we don't even have to worry about getting to that next round. Let me know what you guys think. This has been Spurs Digest with your host, Kenan Mourner. I appreciate all of you guys and I'll be seeing you guys again very soon.