Warriors Show Spurs They Have a Lot of Work to Do to Regain NBA Crown

No, this week's Golden State-San Antonio showdown wasn't on a mainstream TV network. Falling on a Monday, not a national NBA night for TNT or ESPN, neither network was able to add a matchup some had hyped as the best regular-season game ever.

Indeed, it was just hype.

The 120-90 final score in Golden State's favor showed that no one missed much if he or she didn't see the contest—except that the Warriors played their usual sublime game. That's always a pleasure, even in these blowouts against Cleveland, Chicago and now San Antonio.

And while the Spurs might have been underrated entering the season, they were massively overrated entering this game.

It's reflective of this day and age that many folks believed the Spurs' point differential was a more important stat this season than the Warriors' win-loss record.

Ludicrous. Statistical analysis is a critical part of the league, but it shouldn't be used irresponsibly for people to run their mouths or overturn what we learn with our eyes and ears. And that is that the Spurs remain in the category of good, not great.

The Warriors are the best team in the league because they can win games in so many ways, even if that's obvious. We saw some of them Monday night, including Stephen Curry's vastly improved defense.

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But the constant for the Warriors is a team-oriented way to create and ride momentum, both elements that come about only via human emotion.

The Spurs have succeeded this season through systematic execution that has persisted in lopsided games to produce even more lopsided final scores. A robotic approach is respectable for its consistency—but absolutely not superior, especially when it comes to the playoffs.

We learned that as recently as two years ago, when San Antonio won it all: The Spurs surged in the postseason because they were so humanly driven to redeem their NBA Finals collapse in Miami the previous year.

The Spurs also won then because they were the best in the league at this nouveau chic of extra-pass basketball. Now, the Warriors have the ability to take that style to the nth degree, with better players and a more dominant No. 1 star in Curry, even with as magnificently all-purpose as Kawhi Leonard is.

Leonard in 2014 was an example of how great players elevate their games in the playoffs when more is needed. He will do that again this spring, but the reality is that he has no help on that front. Tim Duncan, Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili are no longer close to being among the most talented players in the game, which is the prerequisite to having that extra gear for playoff time.

The logical way for the Spurs to elevate their game late in the season is better integration of LaMarcus Aldridge, their prized offseason signee.   

The problem there is that Aldridge is not a big-moment player and never will be. That's why he could never fully win over the city of Portland—or win a single playoff series until Damian Lillard got there. The idea that Aldridge will morph into some clutch stud for the Spurs in the postseason is folly.

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It's the same reason anyone who has written off the Oklahoma City Thunder already this season is being rash. Talent can get better execution; execution can't get better talent.

The Spurs have a lot of good players. They are sharp and unselfish. By winning the offseason Aldridge sweepstakes, they became one of the deepest teams in the league. There's a lot to like about the Spurs, including Duncan's sustained defensive discipline, a factor that was sorely missing as he sat out Monday.

Spurs coach Gregg Popovich's usage of the regular season to accent the negative and gloss over the positive is understood by now. Losing so badly Monday will undoubtedly work as a teaching point, especially to Aldridge, who had five points and three turnovers and saw Golden State outscore San Antonio by 20 points in his 25 minutes on the floor.

Popovich's team needs to get a lot better to be as good as Golden State—and now it knows that.

Here’s what Ginobili had said going into the game: “For sure, Golden State has been the best so far—and we want to see where we are.”

"At this point they're better than us," Ginobili told reporters after the game. "I'm not embarrassed to face it."

In some way, both teams got what they wanted out of this duel: The Warriors again emphatically proved their worth to doubters, while Popovich got the reality check he doesn't mind.

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No one should draw any overly grand conclusions from one game. But now that this 30-point download has fried a few megabytes in those computers hyping the Spurs' half-season point differential, we're left to wonder about the key question:

How can San Antonio actually get to be a lot better come playoff time?

Kevin Ding is an NBA senior writer for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter, @KevinDing.