Jeremy Sochan shined in the Spurs’ loss to the Rockets

It’s all in the hips.

The Spurs’ rally came up short as they lost a nail biter to the Houston Rockets. Tre Jones led all players with 24 points, and Jeremy Sochan poured in 21 points alongside 8 rebounds. Victor Wembanyama notched his 9th straight double-double with 13 points and 10 rebounds. Despite the loss, several highlights stood out from the Tuesday night game.

The nice thing about watching Wembanyama in action is that any seat is a good view even if Coach Popovich is standing in your line of sight. Obstruction-free viewing is part of the Wemby NBA experience.

Jeremy Sochan had himself quite the night offensively. He was particularly aggressive from the three-point line, going 2 – 6 from downtown and also helped carry the scoring load, scoring his 21 on 9 – 14 shooting overall.

As the late, great Carl Weathers would say, “Just tap it in. Just taaap it in.” Wembanyama off the nice feed from Tre Jones gave the ball a little tappy tap–tap-taperoo. For his part, Jones continues to drive the Spurs offense, handing out no less than 5 dimes in the last 5 games.

The Spurs overall were in a giving mood on Tuesday night, handing the out 30 total assists.

Whenever my 40+ year-old astigmatic eyes squint on Twitter and sees the caption “Mamu at the Buzzer,” for a second I am fooled into thinking it says “Manu at the Buzzer.” Then I wonder what Ginobili could do if he was a 6 foot 9, 240 lb bearded beast of a man doing a euro-step and flippantly flipping passes left handed to teammates. That being said, Sandro Mamukelashvili tonight played a very efficient 11 minutes and contributed 6 points, 5 rebounds, and 3 assists.

This incredible play looked like it was pulled out of “The Matrix 5: Neo Plays NBA Jam to Save the World” or if Pedro Pascal aka Mr. Fantastic had to play one-on-one with Victor Von Doombanyama in the next “Fantastic Four” movie.

Wembanyama just incredulously cuts around the corner and finds a sliver of space around his defenders along the baseline to ultimately launch from outside the arc of the “restricted area” and gently lay the ball in. The combination of purposeful movement, agility, footwork, and otherworldly length paints a pretty picture of basketball.

Here is another angle of that same play for you obsessive types. I’ve already watched it 19 times so you’re in good company. I’ll stop at 21 because 21 seems like a good number, a vastly underrated, often forgotten, and very much underappreciated number.

Blake Wesley, here, showed off his nifty hops and court vision, taking off for the thunderous dunk after finding an open pocket in the defense. The sophomore led the Spurs bench with 10 points.

If you missed the game because you were too busy writing a script for a Happy Gilmore/Matrix crossover movie, here are the full-game highlights:

Next up, the Spurs head to the Live Music Capital of the World in Austin, Texas for a couple of games, starting with the Denver Nuggets on Friday, March 15, 2024.