Analysis GRADES: 12/5/2025 Spurs 117 @ Cavaliers 130

[scott]

Scott's Notes:

• Burn the tape
• Don't understand why we sat Devin when he was on an insane heater
• Keldon was good
• Would be nice to see some guys back in NOLA to ramp up for the Cup quarterfinal
• I've nothing else to add, but I will reiterate... burn the tape

What You Said

• @Area 51.247 - Trend or flaws in the team structure and systems? Good defensive teams (CLE (22-3 + 14-7), MIN, PHX, even ORL) have been making adjustments at halftime that fuel huge runs against the Spurs. As the renowned Total Quality Guru W. E. Demings espoused, "Eliminate slogans, exhortations, and targets for the work force...Such exhortations only create adversarial relationships, as the bulk of the causes of low quality and low productivity belong to the system and thus lie beyond the power of the work force."
• Anonymous - What a discombobulated 2nd half that turned out to be. Wonder if Ron Harper's presence dysregulated Dylan? Adjusting to NBA travel takes some getting used to and it sounds like Dylan went to Rutgers to stay close to home. This might be his first real welcome to the NBA moment. Honestly, no one expected a win, but, Vassell's insane shooting in the 1st half gave us a shot of hope. False hope is still hope. The offense stagnating in the 2nd half was reminiscent of the T-Wolves 2nd half. Iso-ball is not the way forward for this squad. Still lot of learning and growing to do and losing is the best teacher, sadly. Getting manhandled by G-leaguers was sobering.
• @heyheymymy - Solid first half but a third quarter collapse that ended hopes. Harper having a bad game and Biyombo/Olynyk as the remaining bigs due to injury proves insurmountable.
• @jeebus - No one gets above a 3 after that gutless performance in the 2nd half. Kornet gets a 5, however, for being just fantastic in general. Spurs need some reinforcements, fast
• @LeBowen - Our guys just had no legs left at the end of the road trip, but it still felt like a winnable game because Cavs were nothing special.

 

[mazerrackham]

Ugly game, couldn't stand to watch it all so didn't submit grades this time, but thanks for putting the turnovers in the box score summary @scott

 

[mazerrackham]

I made the statement when the game started that we'll need Devin to be on a heater and he almost made me believe but then it was a disappointment of a second half.

 

[Ice009]

Can't blame Devin for the loss. He played a darn good game. another weird thing is, Mitch was sitting Devin for a long stretch there when he was red hot. No idea why he was doing that. Devin may have had an even bigger game if Mitch didn't sit him for so long on one of those stretches.

The Cavs made the adjustments at half time to aggressively take the ball inside, and with Bismack out there, no resistance was offered and they scored a lot of easy buckets inside to start that 3rd quarter. Spurs just couldn't keep up on offense with jump shot after jump shot and no inside presence to get easy buckets in the paint for themselves.

Dylan also played a poor game so that didn't help. He usually scores quite a few points in the paint which opens it up for the shooters a little bit on his drives when he's scoring at the rim, but this game, I don't know what happened he was terrible. Not sure if he was trying too hard playing in front of his dad or not? I think that might have been one factor (if this was the first time his dad watched him live in the NBA), and also probably fatigue and just having an off game all played into his poor game. A combination of all three I think.