Spurs clinch 18th straight 50-win season with 28-point comeback vs. Kings
The Sacramento Kings have at times resembled a competent basketball team since their baffling trade of franchise player DeMarcus Cousins, but they keep finding new and increasingly ridiculous ways to lose games.
On Wednesday night, they were fortunate enough to catch the San Antonio Spurs on a night when the Spurs opted to rest Kawhi Leonard and LaMarcus Aldridge, and when coach Gregg Popovich came in looking fresh off a back-alley brawl.
Sure enough, the Kings came roaring out of the gate, starting the game on a 24-8 run and building a 22-point lead by the end of the first quarter. Eight minutes into the second quarter, they'd stretch that lead to 28. They were playing like the version of the Kings that Vivek Ranadive would imagine in the cold sweat of a fever dream; Buddy Hield raining threes, Tyreke Evans getting to the rim at will, and Skal Labissiere defending the paint and craftily scavenging for buckets.
But things started to fall apart in the final four minutes of the quarter, as a weirdo Spurs small-ball lineup of Patty Mills, Dejounte Murray, Manu Ginobili, Kyle Anderson, and David Lee blew holes in their defense and reeled off a 15-2 run to close the half.
They picked up where they left off in the third quarter, with Lee in particular putting a hurting on the Kings, ducking and diving into pockets of space and finishing in traffic. Then Mills and Ginobili caught fire at the same time, and by the time the final frame rolled around they'd sliced the deficit to four.
The fourth quarter was pure carnage. The Kings' offense completely dried up as the Spurs buzzed around the floor, Mills and Lee continued to breathe fire, and Danny Green iced the cake with a flourish of late 3-pointers. San Antonio won 114-104, authoring a 38-point swing over the span of 28 minutes and posting the league's largest comeback this season. It's the team's ninth straight win, and the third straight in which it's overcome a deficit of at least 15 points.
To top it all off, it improved the Spurs' record to 50-13, making this their mind-boggling 18th consecutive season with at least 50 wins. Their millennia-spanning streak has been an NBA record for quite some time. The next-longest such run belongs to the Los Angeles Lakers, who had 12 straight from 1979 to 1991.
It's also worth mentioning, as always, that the last time the Spurs didn't win 50 games, was the lockout-shortened 1998-99 season that was only 50 games long. The Spurs didn't go undefeated, but they weren't far off, going 37-13 (a 61-win pace) and winning the title. Had that been a full season, the Spurs would be sitting on 20 straight with 50-plus.
Extolling the Spurs has long been a pointless exercise. There's nothing new and, increasingly, nothing surprising about any of this. The Spurs are ridiculously good, seemingly always have been, and probably always will be. Simply put, they are the standard-bearers for excellence in the world of professional team sports.
As for the Kings, well, they are whatever the exact opposite of that is. They're about to miss the playoffs for the 11th straight season. Nothing about this is new or surprising for them, either. The game was simultaneously Peak Spurs and Peak Kings.
Every yin has a yang.