Highlights: Devin Vassell, Jeremy Sochan’s return headline the Spurs’ loss to the Suns

You don’t know what you never had until you almost never had it.

Playing for stakes is nice. Playing for steaks, well, that’s even more delicious. It feels like a decade since the Spurs have played for anything that matters (on the court). Having a chance to advance out of their group in the NBA Cup is a welcome change of emotional and physical drama. Alas, a title run for the second iteration of these NBA Cups was not in their cards. But an 11-10 record in a stupidly loaded Western Conference was not definitively in their tarot cards either.

On Tuesday night, Devin Vassell led the team with 25 points off the bench while Victor Wembanyama notched another double-double with 15 points (mostly from the first five minutes of the third quarter) and 13 rebounds. Jeremy Sochan debuted after a month-long recovery from thumb surgery and contributed 14 points and 12 rebounds right off the bat.

Vassell, Sochan, and Keldon Johnson are starting-caliber players, so it felt like the Spurs had an embarrassment of riches with regard to their bench. With Vassell and Sochan back in the fold, this young team is suddenly deep and poised to (hopefully) go on a winning streak. It’s no surprise that the rotation tightened up with the return of Sochan as the team only ran 9 players for the game.

I’m a big fan of the touch pass. It exudes confidence without the smugness. It’s like wearing a three-piece Italian suit without socks. Socks are the most smug article of clothing. I won’t be taking any questions. I’ll take more of these open threes from Devin Vassell off of two exquisite touch passes from Chris Paul and Victor Wembanyama though.

Stephon Castle did his best Cooper Rush impression of Rush doing a Dak Prescott impression of Prescott doing a Tony Romo impression of Romo doing a Troy Aikman impression. The transition pass to Vassell running a slant was so pretty, it made me forget how ugly the Cowboys have looked lately.

Look, we’ve really missed having Jeremy Sochan on the court. Of course he came back right on brand with supernova fluorescent hazard green hair color so that Paul can conveniently find him anywhere on the court. Sochan’s so hard to miss that Paul could find him open in a sea of rabid Black Friday shoppers swarming around sea-foam green terry robes on sale.

Ho-hum: Just another marvelous Castle drive to the basket, showing off his skills in getting buckets at the rim. With more mouths now to feed on this team, Castle still maintained his impact on the floor, scoring 16 points in his team-high 34 minutes (and 21 seconds) of play.

It will be exciting to see the full integration of this team once all the pieces and lineups are firmly in place.

At full strength, it seems like Paul has his pick of the litter when it comes to who will be on the receiving end of his dimes. The point god doesn’t even look like he’s breaking a sweat out there with all of the kids racing down the court for easy buckets from him. CP3 had a business-as-usual 8 assists and continues to average near his career average in assists per game.

At this point nothing Wembanyama does will surprise me. Snatch a lob from Paul in mid-air (with his back to the basket) and just casually stuff it through the rim with his feet barely leaving the floor? Cake.

Next time, he’ll have to add layers of difficulty to impress me. Let’s see a highlight where he’s standing in front of the basket, catch a pass with his right hand, and then toss it to his left hand for a dunk without jumping or moving his feet an inch off the floor. That doesn’t sound too difficult after I typed that out so we’ll workshop more unreasonably challenging basketball moves we want to see from our favorite 7’3” Spur.

If you missed the game because you were too busy online shopping the Spurs 2024 City Edition apparel (they look fresh!), here are the full-game highlights:

Next up, the Spurs head back to San Antonio to take on the Chicago Bulls on Thursday, November 5, 2024.