Mutacious

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omfg how are you not looking for the ball there

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Did not have Landry Shamet going nuclear deep into the playoffs on my bingo card. Huge minutes for NYK again.

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OG hits a corner 3, falls down on the shot. Then blocks the fast break layup on the other end???!! So good

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This is the most out of sorts I’ve seen Wemby in a high stakes game in a looooonggg time. I thought he’d be absolutely locked in after G1.

[LakeShowYo @LakeShowYo]

Knicks fans are insane 😭😭😭

“My Mayor is Muslim, my bagel is Jewish, my Christian’s Dior… Knicks in 4!!!”

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@brandxn77 @SxndoFC @mldiffley 3/5…Jordan is actually sub 50% for his career (just barely).

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@brennan_t13 @SxndoFC @mldiffley Those are all Lakers seasons btw — he has Bucks Kareem (who was still pretty solidly efficient but less so).

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@SxndoFC @mldiffley The game doesn’t even take scoring efficiency into account

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Castle just caught a body. Holy hell.

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@JonesOnTheNBA He has always had great hands and is a way more sturdy post defender than people realize. But he has a tendency to fall asleep off ball and he has definitely lost a step in recent years.

Definitely not as bad as people on social media seem to think. (Got cooked tonight though)

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Harden has mostly been a disaster on both ends.

Brunson ISO’d him for bucket after bucket on that big run. Gave up huge corner threes to Bridges and Shamet down the stretch once Cavs started doubling Brunson.

He did hit a late floater there but not a good shooting night at all.

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@BlvckJxsus @Ballislife Tim Duncan is a legend, but Wemby is on track to do all of this his year 22 season (Finals MVP isn’t a given obviously, but certainly not impossible).

Clearly DPOY (Duncan was 5th) and first all-defensive (Duncan was actually 2nd team). Should easily be all-NBA first team.

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@Zcards55 Take 😅

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Incredibly disappointing effort from the Pistons tonight. I expected a lot more from them.

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Insanely impressive levels of self-awareness, growth, and general maturity from Keldon Johnson here.

Mad respect.

[The Players’ Tribune @PlayersTribune]

Keldon Johnson on his role with the @spurs: “I remember a couple years ago, I had a hard conversation with Pop. One morning, we were getting ready to play Dallas, and he pulled me to the side and told me that he thought it would be best for the team if I started coming off the bench. I said, ‘Yeah, of course. Whatever’s best for the team, I’ll do it.’ And I truly meant that, too.

But I’m also just human, man. And I was like 24 years old. If I said that I fully bought into this role from the jump, I’d be lying. I had averaged 22 points in the NBA. I’d won a gold medal with Team USA at the Olympics. So I just didn’t understand. I couldn’t wrap my head around it. And ultimately, I didn’t take it well. I sulked. I let the outside noise affect my play. I didn’t present the best version of myself as I was coming off the bench for the rest of that season. And I knew that I was much better than that.

I’ve been reflecting on that part of my journey a lot lately, with the position we’re in right now.

To backtrack a little bit…. When I was drafted in 2019, that was probably one of the most stressful nights of my life. I’d had a great year at Kentucky, and I thought I was going 9 or 10. In my mind, my floor was 15 to Detroit. The crazy thing is, I didn’t even work out for San Antonio. We talked a little bit on FaceTime, but I honestly didn’t think I’d still be on the board at 19 when the Spurs picked. Definitely not at 29, where I ended up going. I don’t know why I slipped so much, but thank God I did, because I landed at a proven organization with vets who could mold me.

That situation could have gone one of two ways. Thankfully, it went the good way.

Dejounte was young, too, but he knew the ropes better than me, and he made sure that I did everything the right way. I can’t thank him enough to this day for how much he’s helped my career. Same thing with DeMar DeRozan. Those guys really embraced me and took me under their wing as a young guy, and showed me how it was done. I feel like I had such a great group of vets, whether it was LaMarcus Aldridge, Patty Mills, Rudy Gay — all those guys went out their way to make sure I was solid. I feel like they knew how good I could be before I even knew how good I could be. They didn’t let me skip any steps, which was huge for my career early on.

And yeah, fast-forward to summer 2024, and I got to thinking back on my first couple years here in San Antonio, and how I could get that spark back, get back to being me. That’s when I started to see the bigger picture. We had picks. There were all these signs that we were building something that was gonna be special, all these bright green flags.

But there was this one red flag.

Me.

In that moment, I had to take a hard look in the mirror. And man, I just got embarrassed. I hated that feeling — the feeling that I had let my vets down, and especially let my younger teammates down.

This organization believed in me since day one, when Pop and our GM at the time R.C. Buford took a leap of faith on a player who was sliding in the draft and didn’t even have a workout at their facility. They had a plan, and I was a big piece of that plan. I just needed to get out of my own way. Period.

I knew that I could either be the person who tries to fight the change, who makes it about them and their ego, and tries to do everything their way (which never really works). Or, I could trust the process. And the Spurs never gave me a reason not to trust it. So I bought into my role, and I put my best foot forward each and every night. Whatever I had to do to be the best version of myself, I did it. And I feel like this season has been a testament to that.

I’m just really at home here. I think that’s probably obvious, right? The cowboy hat isn’t a gimmick. San Antonio is all me. Being a country boy, that’s just a part of who I am. From Huntington Prep to Oak Hill Academy to Kentucky, I feel like I just carried that country boy vibe with me everywhere I went.” https://t.co/WnVP4cXPll

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@Sunny083193 This could not look less intentional. She’s fighting through a screen and the contact causes it.

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That Ausar Thomson 2-hand chase down block is one of the craziest things I’ve seen on a basketball court in a minute

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@astiachr @matissa15 What does that have to do with the question asked? It’s asking about strength of opponents.

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@shmerf @DBGyt_ How in the world is 18.8% 3FGs (“31st”) within 3 ranked spots of 42.9% (“34th”)?

I don’t follow the WNBA all that closely, but that has to be one of the most insane basketball stats I’ve seen.