Hera decided I've been spending too much time on Olympus lately, so she materialized a couple of great tickets for tonight's game, and a parking pass right outside the FedEx. Wemby was listed as questionable, so I did a little magic on his behalf - more on that later.

The Spurs were chucking bricks in the pre-game shootaround, and I told Hera it looked like a long night ahead. But they somehow managed to get two balls caught in the net at the same time. A couple of guys deposited more, trying to get them to fall, but they were wedged pretty tightly. Then Wembanyama did something I had never seen before. He jumped up and kicked the bottom of the net. Only one ball came out of the knot, even though he got in a pretty solid kick. (He made it look so easy.) I was going to throw up a couple of my photos, but I just saw that someone had a really quality video of the kick on TikTok already. (https://www.tiktok.com/@overtime/vid...41500210859278). The other thing he did in the warmup that really cracked me was come out to mid-court and practice flopping. I've never seen that before either. He wasn't getting many balls through the net, but he didn't look injured either.

He didn't start, but he came in at about the 8 minute mark of the first quarter. Honestly, for the entire first half he looked rusty and sluggish. He finished the half with 11 points and 3 or 4 boards. Hera commented that it was hard to believe he even had 11 points - he looked pretty bad. But I told her that it was like Duncan used to be - even when he seems to be playing badly we'll look up early in the 4th and he will have 22 or 23 points. On a "bad" night. That's pretty much exactly how it went. He sure didn't look dominant, but he finished with something like 30 points in 20 minutes. But he only had a handfull of rebounds, which was big in this contest.

So how did the Spurs manage to lose to the sub .500 Griz? They got out-hustled. In truth, most of the Spurs didn't look like they cared. It was one of the least energetic games I've witnessed. Castle and Fox both looked like they stayed out on Beale until late last night - or maybe they spent the afternoon there. In addition, Castle played stupid ball. Did the Grizzlies benefit from some home cooking by the zebras? Sure. But Castle lost his cool and committed two really terrible frustration fouls, one right after the other. And then, with about 3 minutes left, the Spurs took back the lead and the Griz looked ready to lose a close one - and Castle picked up his sixth personal foul...while going up for a jump ball. That gave the Griz two free throws, and the lead back.

But the other big thing, and I think the real root cause of the loss, was the coaching. In the first half, Wemby was called for a goaltend - and rightly so. Johnson spent a challenge on the play and lost. And it really looked like he was trying to get Wemby a block, to make sure his new streak kept going. It was a dumb coaching decision, but not his worst of the night. With Fox and Castle playing like gimps, Jordan McLaughlin came into the game with the kind of energy those two both needed Even though he only scored once, he gave the Spurs a real boost in his three and a half minutes, and sort of changed the complexion of the game which had become pretty ugly. We never saw him again.

But that's not the worst coaching decision. The Spurs would have been toast without Julian Champagnie. He was the only guy who could put the ball in the hole, and was the Spurs leading scorer through most of the third quarter. But the Spurs just quit getting him the ball. But the worst was on the last play of the game. Landale missed both of his FT's to leave Memphis with a 1 point lead and 16 seconds left to play - and the Spurs still had a timeout. Wemby wanted to come in. What Mitch SHOULD have done was call the TO, put Wemby in the game, and dial up a play for either him or Champagnie. Instead, Fox wound up chucking up a heavily-contested shot that got blocked, while right behind him was Julian Champagnie totally uncovered.

There are more examples, but this was a poorly-coached game, as well as a very poorly-executed game by the Spurs. I had no idea that the highlight of the entire night had happened in the pre-game warmup, when Wembanyama kicked the net. Unless you count the time when Hera got put on the Jumbotron by the Memphis Goddess-Cam.