Losing the NBA Championship to the New York Knicks four games to one was a difficult pill for the San Antonio Spurs to swallow. But it was filled with important lessons for their team development, the biggest one being that there's a huge difference between confidence and arrogance.
A similar pattern kept popping up throughout the series between the Spurs and the Knicks. San Antonio would lead for the majority of the game, only for New York to win in the end. The only time that didn't happen was game three, when the Spurs actually managed to hold onto a lead.
The worst of it was game four. By three minutes into the third quarter, the Spurs were up by 29 points, and Madison Square Garden was dead silent. Led by Jalen Brunson and OG Anunoby, the Knicks mounted a rally that saw them win by one point. It was the biggest finals comeback in NBA history.
Sure, this iteration of the Knicks is a notorious fourth-quarter team, due in no small part to Brunson being the king of that same quarter. There was something else at play, though. That was the fine line between confidence and arrogance, which San Antonio definitely crossed after the OKC series.
The Spurs have some serious growing up to do
Beating the then-reigning champions and winning a hard-fought Western Conference Finals definitely put some swagger in the Spurs' step. How could it not? They took down the two-time MVP, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, with 90% of the basketball world supporting them while they did it.
After that, having confidence in their game made sense for San Antonio. They earned that. What fans saw while watching them in the finals was arrogance, the belief that the championship was already won and that the Knicks were just standing in the way of a history that was already written.
The fatal mistake any team in any sport can make is looking past their current opponent to what's next. It's an error a lot of young teams like the Spurs make. Victor Wembanyama is 22, Stephon Castle is 21, and Dylan Harper is 20. Even Keldon Johnson, the longest tenured Spur, is only 26.
Ironically, the Knicks were the team who beat the Spurs for the NBA Cup earlier this season, and San Antonio still took them for granted. The Knicks only led in the finals 23.6% of the time. They knew that's all they needed. Stay close, push in the fourth quarter, and let the Spurs' arrogance do the rest.
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