No Celebration After the First Win: Johnson and Fox Say the Spurs Must Raise Their Floor
San Antonio's 122-106 win at Dallas got the Spurs into the win column, but head coach Mitch Johnson and De'Aaron Fox spent the postgame talking about standards - a first half that gave up 44 points in the paint and a floor Johnson called way too low.
The San Antonio Spurs won their first game of the season on Saturday night, 122-106 at the Dallas Mavericks, and by the sound of the postgame, nobody in the locker room treated it as a finish line. Reporting by ClutchPoints, published early Monday, describes a team that did not sound relieved to get into the win column after two tough losses. De'Aaron Fox said of the room after the game: "If you were in there, you would've thought we lost the game."
Head coach Mitch Johnson set that tone. "Our floor right now is way too low," Johnson said, in the ClutchPoints report. The Spurs had gone into Dallas at 0-2 after home losses to the Oklahoma City Thunder and to Houston in Austin, and even in the win, Johnson pointed to a first half he did not accept: "I felt like it was a tale of two teams. Still, 44 points in the paint in the first half is ridiculous. They went on some runs in the first half that we've got to keep getting back to the standard that we know we are capable of, continuing to push ourselves individually and collectively to just be more consistent and raise our floor," he said.
Fox carried the same message from the players' side. "That's the standard," Fox said, adding that the four-point loss to Houston was not a game the team would call a good one either. "It's less about the win or the loss column and more about the way that we go out there and play," Fox said. The win itself, already reported by this station, was built on Victor Wembanyama's 23 points, seven rebounds and four blocks and Dylan Harper's 22, with Fox and Stephon Castle adding 19 apiece as San Antonio avoided its first 0-3 start since 2008-09.
The schedule now gives the Spurs room to build the consistency Johnson is asking for. Per the ClutchPoints report, only twice more before Thanksgiving - against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Oct. 31 and Nov. 17 against the Detroit Pistons - will San Antonio face teams expected to finish near the top of the standings. The immediate test is at home: the Spurs host the Sacramento Kings on Tuesday at the Frost Bank Center, in a game this station has already previewed.
